It was difficult, but within an hour, she had managed to wash her hair and her body and keep her leg dry. She was wearing only the same dirty tunic when Merrik entered the dimly lit bathing hut. He tossed a linen shift in her lap.
“It’s clean. Put it on. Here is a dress and an overtunic. I don’t wish to arrive at my home with you looking like a starved boy.”
She just stared up at him. “Thank you,” she said.
“When you are finished, we will see the cobbler. You need shoes.”
When they returned to the longboat some three hours later, her belly was full, she was well clothed, and there were soft leather shoes on her feet. She hadn’t felt like this for two years. She felt like a... She couldn’t find in her mind how exactly she felt.
“I’m afraid,” she said to him finally as he walked slowly beside her. She was limping, but he made no move to carry her or assist her. She appreciated his restraint. The soft wool of the gown didn’t hurt her healing leg, for which she was grateful.
“Why?”
“What will you do with me and Taby? What will you do with Cleve?”
He frowned then, but said only, “You will know when I tell you. I wish to see if Cleve bought Taby the proper clothes.”
Her little brother looked clean and as well garbed as she did. But what surprised her was that Cleve also was wearing a new tunic and new trousers and there were leather shoes on his feet with soft leather straps criss-crossing up his calves. He looked magnificent. He grinned at her and puffed out his chest. It was the first time she had ever seen him smile. She was overwhelmed. She scarcely saw the scar that was even more hideous when he smiled. It wasn’t important. It wasn’t Cleve, this was, and she was glad, so very excited.
She couldn’t have prevented it even if she’d thought about it. She turned to Merrik and shouted. Then she threw her arms around him, squeezing his back tightly. “Thank you,” she said, her arms still around him, but she was looking up at him now and she realized in that instant what she had done, that she had touched him, that she was, in fact, holding him hard, treating him as she would a trusted friend, a relative, a husband. And what she realized fully in that moment was that he was a man, a big man, a handsome man, and to be pressed against him, to feel his flesh beneath her fingers, brought her pleasure, a strange pleasure she’d never felt before, but it was there and it was deep within her, and she was shocked at its intensity. But she didn’t release him. If anything, she pressed closer, feeling him, feeling the pleasure it brought her.
He didn’t touch her. If anything, he stiffened. His arms remained at his sides. He said nothing. Finally, Laren realized that he was still as a stone. She had shamed him with her actions. She was nothing but a slave even though he had protected her. She was nothing at all to him. She quickly released him and stepped back, her head down.
But Taby wasn’t aware that anything was amiss. Cleve put him down and he took Laren’s place quickly enough, tugging on Merrik’s tunic until he leaned down and picked him up. The child hugged his thin arms around Merrik’s neck, squeezing him as hard as he could, laughing and laughing. “I’m a prince,” Taby said. “You bought clothes for a prince. Someday I will reward you.”
Merrik felt something sharp and sweet unfold deep inside him. He held the child close, smelling his child’s sweet scent, loving the sound of his laughter. He wanted this child and he would never let him go, never.
“I thank you, Prince Taby,” he said against the child’s soft cheek, a cheek not so thin now.
He looked at Laren. She was standing there, Cleve beside her, and she was just looking at him and at Taby and he saw something on her face that he didn’t understand. It was fear, he realized at last. Was she afraid of him? Surely not. She had thrown herself at him, no fear there. Or did she realize that Taby was his? What he had felt when she had pressed herself so willingly and completely against him, he discounted. It didn’t matter. He’d felt a shock of lust only because he hadn’t had a woman in a very long time. He looked away from her and caressed Taby. He kissed his cheek, felt him with his big hands and frowned because he was still too thin, his small bones still too prominent, his ribs too sharp.
He closed his eyes a moment, just feeling the warmth of the child seep into him, filling him with a sense of rightness, a sense that this small human being had been born for his care, for his guardianship. As for Laren, she was naught more than Taby’s sister. He wondered yet again who Laren and Taby were.
Vestfold was a huge land. Steep cliffs hugged the fjord, soaring upward, drowned many times with low-lying clouds. The hills and mountains were covered with firs and oak, many so steep and sharp that she couldn’t imagine ever making her way to the top of some of those tall peaks. The fjord was like smooth glass, but the current was with them and the men spoke and jested whilst they rowed.
The air was warm and smooth, the sun high and brilliant. It was an incredible land. She’d never imagined anything like this. She couldn’t look away from the endless stretch of cliffs, seemingly larger with the rounding of each turn in the fjord.
“This is my home,” Merrik said. “Soon we will pass Gravak Valley. I have many cousins who live there.”
He fell silent, but she saw a smile tug at his mouth, and he shook his head.
“Will we stop?”
He shook his head. “Nay, I wish to return home. It is odd but I’ve felt something, a strange feeling that gnaws at me when my thoughts aren’t focused. I don’t like it.”
Laren had learned not to discount such feelings when they came. “What are these feelings?”
“They make my flesh itch. They make me want to hurry faster, for there is something not right at home.” He shook his head. “It is nothing, surely nothing. I grow as foolish as a female.”
“I am not foolish.”
“Very well. I grow as foolish as a female who is not you.”
“Has your home a name?”
“Aye, for generation upon generation my father’s farmstead has been called Malverne. The name is older than these mountains on either side of us, and none know what it means or from what language it comes.”
“Malverne,” she said. “ ’Tis an odd word and not one I recognize either, except that it—” Her voice fell like a stone dropped from one of the huge towering cliffs.
