‘I’d always considered that I was attacked to protect another. I guess it didn’t go as far as I figured it must have done, given my beating.’ He put his finger against her lips. ‘No need to tell me his name.’
‘No other exists.’
His mouth flopped open. He must have heard wrong.
‘What do you mean? Drengr decided to invent something?’ he asked, genuinely puzzled. ‘My cousin Thorarinn assured me that he had heard multiple rumours. I can just about recall some of the jokes.’
‘Rumours which had no basis in fact, as you now know. Ugly rumours intended to discredit me. Turgeis was obsessed with spreading them. ‘Having his little joke’ was how my nurse put it. I was supposed to keep myself above such things and float like an unperturbed swan.’
She moved out of his arms. She reached for her discarded undergarments and dressed. While she was doing so, she kept her face turned away from him. The silence grew oppressive and he internally winced. His words must have sounded far harsher than he’d intended.
‘Svanna? I’m trying to apologise,’ he said. ‘I would have taken more time to prepare you properly. I didn’t consider and I’m sorry. But you should have said something.’
‘How was I supposed to know what you thought about my previous love life? We never discussed it.’ Her entire being radiated righteous indignation. ‘Would you have believed me if I had mentioned it? Or would you have believed those rumours your cousin, whom I have never met, repeated?’
‘I don’t know. I thought someone must have made you wary about physical contact,’ he said, because only the truth would do when each word from her stabbed him. ‘I should have thought about the alternative, and I’m so sorry. I am sorry for everything.’
She finished dressing and turned to face him. Her body was hunched and her arms wrapped about her waist as if to ward off a blow.
‘I think you deserve to know the full truth,’ she said in a toneless voice. ‘Try not to hate me too much. I should have told you before we married, but I thought maybe it was unimportant. The past was the past and unalterable, and it could remain there. I see now it was hugely important, and I was wrong. My excuse is that I assumed our encounter was unimportant.’
Rand’s throat tightened. ‘Why would I hate you, Svanna? Whatever happened was in the past. I accept you had nothing to do with it. I’ve wronged you.’
‘The night you were attacked, I was pretending to be a servant—or, rather, to be myself. Reckless, I know, but I was fed up with being Ingebord. My foster-mother had retired with a bad head and my nurse was attending her. It was what the real Ingebord would have done—snuck off to have some fun. The King had been making his usual prediction of me marrying his son, a boy I considered about as appealing as a three-day-old trout.’
‘You were under tremendous pressure,’ he said carefully, trying to think. Dim memories of laughing with a young girl, one who blushed and who was called… He groaned, hating what must come next, fearing he was wrong. He had to be wrong.
‘I thought no one realised who I was. Such fun.’ Her eyes briefly shone with the memory. ‘I had a brief flirtation with a young warrior, which ended with a chaste kiss and a promise to meet in my foster-mother’s herb garden. I heard my nurse calling, hurried away to my bed, and pulled the furs over my head without seeing anyone. My dreams that night, and many nights afterwards, were filled with the young warrior, but I learned from my nurse that he’d departed for the east to make his fortune. No reason given, other than that.’
A warrior who had suddenly left. His blood ran cold. How many ships had left that morning? Which warrior? Him or Thorarinn? A sickening realisation swept over him. What had happened to her had occurred after he’d escaped, after he’d received that beating where he would have said anything to make them stop.
‘Later, I suspected that somehow we must have been betrayed.’
‘Why did you think that?’ he asked, forcing the words from his throat. In all the intervening years, he’d never once considered whether anything had happened to her. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said when the blows were raining down, urging him to confess and tell the secret place where they met. Maybe he had said something, anything to stop them. And what then? He’d never considered that something might happen to the young woman if she was discovered.
The only slender hope he had to hang on to was that it had not been him and they had already known, but it was a forlorn hope.
‘After learning that the warrior had departed on the morning tide, I was unable to resist going to the herb garden to see if any token was there. I was about to leave when Turgeis entered and attempted to rape me… Would have done if Tippi had not intervened.’
Rand put a hand to his scar, trying to make sense of Svanna’s confession. She’d suffered dreadfully, but she was blameless. He tried one last time to keep that flickering hope alive. ‘You had a flirtation with my cousin?’
She shook her head. ‘With you. I’d no idea that you were attacked because of it. You must believe that.’
Rand searched his memory. He had the vaguest memory of Thorarinn apologising, but that was all. Thorarinn couldn’t have been the one to betray them? His mind recoiled from the idea. His cousin would never do anything intentionally to harm him.
‘I have little memory of that night. I had forgotten our flirtation entirely. And the blows kept coming until the world went black.’ He put a hand over his eyes. ‘I’ve no idea what I confessed to. All I knew was that I never did anything to dishonour the Queen’s daughter. I want to think I kept saying that, no matter how hard they beat me, but I don’t know.’
He waited, hoping for any sign of redemption, any sign that she understood what he was trying to say.
‘I believe you. I never blamed you for any of it. If anything, our brief time together stood out as a glorious time before the awfulness. Turgeis was, and remains, at fault, no one else.’
Rand released his breath. She held no anger towards him. She had probably never considered it, but it showed him her depth of character, that she couldn’t even contemplate him having betrayed her. ‘I don’t deserve that, but thank you from the depths of my soul.’
She watched him from under her lashes for a long heartbeat. He wanted to put his arms about her and hold her tight, but he knew he had to let her come to him. Patience had never been harder.
‘Because of what Turgeis did, I cultivated my reputation as an Ice Maiden. He used…used to enjoy tormenting me, whispering about what he intended to do to me once he’d secured me. After Maer returned and Drengr was vanquished with his sons banished, I dared to hope the memory would fade to nothing.’ Her voice faltered, but she pressed her hands together and after a long heartbeat continued. ‘But Turgeis saluted me during the raid. His way of saying that he remembers that awful promise he uttered after Tippi bit him—he looked forward to enjoying my favours like Randolfr Fullrson had.’
‘He mentioned me?’
