“I know, Kiri,” Merrik said quickly, trying not to laugh. “It’s just that things are, well, very difficult right now.”
Chessa said, “Kiri’s right. Why can’t he marry me?”
“Chessa,” Rorik said, “be quiet.”
“No, I won’t. Kiri, your papa can have me for a wife right now, this afternoon if he wishes it. This evening if Mirana must have time to prepare for a celebration. I would help your papa learn about where he came from and why he was left to die as a small boy, then sold as a slave like your Aunt Laren.”
“I don’t know if you should marry Papa,” Kiri said, looking at Chessa. “You look just like my Aunt Mirana.”
“That just makes her very lucky, Kiri,” Mirana said and grinned.
“Maybe my papa doesn’t want a wife because he loved my mama so much. Maybe my papa just doesn’t like you. I don’t know.”
She wiggled out of Merrik’s hold and ran to the doorway.
“Sweeting,” Laren called after her, “just play outside with your cousins. Don’t go beyond the palisade.”
Cleve returned in early evening, a sleeping Kiri in his arms. “We spent the afternoon on the eastern cliff, watching the dunlin and oystercatchers.” He said nothing more, paid no attention at all to Chessa until late that night when everyone was preparing to sleep. He walked to her, just stared down at her, but said nothing for a very long time. There was a food stain on her bosom, her hair was loose, her face flushed from the heat of the fire pit.
“Look at my face,” he said.
She looked at his face.
“What do you see?”
She smiled up at him. Slowly, she raised her hand and traced her finger over his mouth, his nose, his eyebrows, smoothing them, then at last, she lightly traced her fingertip down the curved scar. “I see you,” she said. “I see the man I want, the only man I will ever want. I see you and I want to smile and laugh and perhaps do a little dance. I want to kiss you and touch you. What I see is the man the gods fashioned just for me. Now, Cleve, look at my face.”
He looked at her face.
“What do you see?”
He didn’t touch her as she had him. He said, “I have never seen eyes the color of yours. I had thought your eyes like Mirana’s, but it isn’t true. The green of your eyes is different, darker, nearly black in this dim light, and there is a slight tilt to the corners of your eyes that makes you look like you’re keeping secrets, that you know things that other people don’t know. Is that true, Chessa?”
“Nay.”
She wanted very much to kiss him. She’d kissed Ragnor several times and thought it strange, this touching of mouths.
“Cleve,” she said, standing on her tiptoes. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain he must hear it. She spread her palms on his chest, feeling the heat of his body, feeling the steady pounding of his own heart.
“Do you see anything else, Cleve?”
“I see a woman who will not do as she’s bid.”
“That’s all you see? Strange eyes and a woman who won’t be led about by the nose? I feel your heart, Cleve. It’s beating very fast now.”
“If you were closer you’d feel how hard my sex is. It means nothing, Princess. I’m a man and a man is always ready to bed a comely woman. It’s no more than that.” Then his hands were on her wrists and he was gently pushing her away from him.
He stepped back from her. “Merrik, his men, and I are taking Ragnor, Kerek, and Torric back to York. It should only take five days, no longer than eight days, depending on the weather, depending on things I can’t begin to think of. When we return then we’ll go to Rouen. In the meantime you will begin your monthly flow. I don’t think you’re pregnant. After all, you don’t want to bear Ragnor’s child. No, I feel that you are just being stubborn. You refuse to obey your father’s wishes and thus this is how you go about gaining your own way. If you refuse to wed William, I will return you to Sitric.”
“But didn’t you hear me? I’m not a princess.”
He shrugged. “I said it before and it’s true. Since you are the King of Ireland’s daughter you are thus a princess. You could have left Ragnor in here and told him that. He could have told the world. It makes no difference. Now, we’re leaving in the morning. I bid you good night, Princess.”
She stared after him. He felt he had to keep his word, both to her father and to Duke Rollo. She had to come up with a good reason why it was no longer so important. But it was much more than that. The woman he’d loved had tried to murder him. Surely that would make a man wary of women. She realized that she had to prove herself to him, prove to him that he could trust her, prove that he was safe with her, that he would have her loyalty forever.
But what if he really didn’t want her? But she didn’t believe that was true. She wouldn’t allow it to be true. All had seen him become as ferocious as a berserker those times she was attacked. She supposed she had to tell him the truth. Not only wasn’t she a princess, she was also still a virgin. By Thor’s hammer, she could just see his face when she told him that. She realized that she’d dug a very large hole at her feet and she was fast slipping into it. It had seemed such an excellent idea at the time. After all, if she wasn’t a virgin then William wouldn’t want her, thus she was free, she could have Cleve and surely, when at last he came to her, her virginity would have pleased him.
Now she knew it wouldn’t. He would know she’d lied. He would believe she was no better than Sarla, that wretched bitch Chessa wished were here right now, right this instant. Surely she’d kill Sarla for what she’d done to Cleve. She wondered how much more there was to the story than the bare bones she’d been told. Probably a lot more.
