“Are you serious?” she barked. Then, before he could even ask her what she was saying, she continued. She looked at the child sitting up, leaning her back on the bed, close to him, and lowered her voice. “You’re serious about this whole slave thing, is that it? She’s beneath you so she sleeps on the floor? I bet we’re supposed to be thankful to you for it, too, huh?”
He sat up. “Huh?”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, for goodness—”
“Camelee.” He cut her off. He’d been patient long enough. He didn’t like the way she was making him soft. He had to stop it before his men saw it. “You will cease this,” he warned. “We are weary.”
She was obviously too simple-minded to recognize when a man had had enough, for she raised one eyebrow and put her hands on her hips, ready to fight. “Oh,” she contended, “so now it’swe? Good, then you don’t need me.”
“No.” He glanced down at the child, sucking her thumb, and trying and failing to keep her eyes open. “Not now, it would seem. You are free to go.”
She gasped. He thought it a strange reaction—as if she had never been spoken to like that before. Impossible if she came from this time…or if she was royalty. Was she some princess escaping an unwanted, upcoming marriage? She looked as if she could be royalty, save for her red, puffy eyes. He’d walked in on her and the child weeping. Camelee had gathered herself though and stopped when she saw him.
She was a curious thing. Why had she been weeping? She had said she had no husband so what was so terrible about going with him? Had he not treated her well from the beginning?
“I—”
She held up her hand. “Good day,” she said, then disappeared through the flap.
“Mumma coming back?” the little girl asked him.
It both warmed his heart and worried him that she thought of Camelee as her mother already. Camelee said she didn’t want to be a mother. It seemed her mind was made up. She left the child with him to go sleep outside in the cold. A mother wouldn’t do such a thing. She would lay on the floor with her child and keep her warm. Good thing he’d been thoughtful and gave the girl his blanket.
He hopped off the bed and reached for his fur cloak. He returned to the girl and took the blanket from her. He rolled it up and put it under her head. Then he covered her with his cloak and looked down at her. He wondered what truly happened to her mother. Should he leave Camelee out there with Fin?
“Mumma coming back?”
“Yes, Hild,” he said softly. “She is coming back.”
Where else was she going to go?
*
Camelee stormed outof his tent, wishing there was a door she could slam. She wanted to scream and rant and rave, but that wouldn’t help her here. Besides, what kind of example would she be setting for Hild? Not that she cared about how the girl saw her. He thought to throw the child at her in the hopes of what, she wondered angrily; convincing her that she did want to have his children and without pain killers? Because you know, she did things the old-fashioned way now.
She hugged herself while she crossed the camp and fell onto her pallet. She didn’t need his stupid tent. She certainly wouldn’t lay on the floor by his feet like a loyal dog! She’d rather freeze.
Someone dug his boot into her side. “Up now. There will be no sleeping all day around here. Get with the others and start making our meal.”
“Get your foot out of my side before I hack it off with the chief’s axe,” she said in her toughest New York accent, a role she did in one of her first movie roles as Josephine, a gang leader’s girlfriend inSilver Bullet, a crime thriller.
Her attacker wasn’t buying it. He pulled back his foot and meant to kick her. Someone stopped him. Akkar.
“Friend,” he warned, “she belongs to the chief, Wolf Kristiansen. Harm her and he will surely kill you.”
Her assailant paled and ran off. Camelee thought about telling Wolf about him for the way he treated a woman. She didn’t care if she was in ten seventeen and things were different. She wouldn’t stand by while women were being assaulted.
“Thank you,” she said to Akkar.
“For what?”
“For scaring that creep away.”
He shrugged. “In truth, I was thinking abouthislife, not yours.”
“Ugh, right. For a minute, I forgot that you’re a savage son of a—Viking.”
“How could you forget that?” he asked sounding serious enough. He looked to be about eighteen years old, with russet hair shaved close up to the tops of his ears. There was a long, single braid swinging between his shoulders in his fur cloak.
