“How do they all fit?” Genevra wanted to know, leaning in toward her in the saddle.
“Their dwellings are all piled atop one another in neat, sometimes quite beautiful buildings reaching toward the clouds.”
“How can that be?”
The wonder and amazement in Genevra’s expressions made Camelee want to tell her everything.
And she did, for the next four hours, until they reached their destination, a large, fortified fort. There were Danes watching them from their posts on the wooden battlements surrounding the fort.
Wolf called something out in his Norse language and the thick wooden doors, made of carved branches and thick ropes, were pulled open.
They were allowed passage into the bailey. The reality of everything hit her. It hit her hard. The stench would remain emblazoned in her memory for her life. “What is it?” she asked, holding her hand over her nose.
“The stream runs through here,” Alric told her, riding up beside her. “They dump their waste in it.”
She gagged. A giant pig strolled in front of her horse and made the beast rear up. She tried to hold on to the reins, the saddle, anything. But she fell to the ground, into the dirt, and whatever else was at the bottom of people’s shoes. Oh no, she could never stay here.
She sucked in a breath when a strong arm came around her middle and lifted her through the air…and into his lap.
“Are you injured?” Wolf asked, searching her eyes.
“Just my pride…and my butt.” She glanced at him from beneath a long spray of dark lashes and laughed a little.
“I could see to it,” he offered with a provocative smile that curled her toes.
She ignored his advance and shifted a bit. His thighs were like sitting on two thick metal poles. “I don’t feel secure or safe—”
He pulled her closer. She was sitting with both of her legs hanging over the left side. He slipped his hand beneath her right thigh and flipped it over the other side. She had to admit it was more comfortable and balanced this way.
Chickens squawked as they rushed out of the way.
Camelee looked around. There were various fires burning throughout the courtyard and people standing around them or working at the scattered tents, housing a smith, a tanner, one tent selling wares and another selling fabrics. There was a man pulling a wagon with long loaves of bread hanging over the sides and a variety of different loaves filling the middle.
Flies gathered around discarded food—or who knows what.
“Wolf,” she groaned. “I can’t stay here.”
“You will do fine, Camelee,” he tried to reassure her. “I will help if I can, but you must prepare if there is no way back for you.”
“No, I can’t believe that. I can’t stay here,” she cried. “Look at this place! It’s disgusting and inconvenient.”
“Denmark is nicer,” he told her with a thread of pride straightening his shoulders. “We bathe once a week.”
She groaned louder. “I have to get home.”
“Yes, Camelee, you have made that clear. You know, I do not have to let you go.”
She turned in his lap to glare at him. She didn’t care if she fell. Was he really going to start up with this nonsense? “I thought we established that I am notyours. I do not belong to anyone.”
“You are mine, Camelee,” he said.
It was all he said. He stared into her eyes while he said it like some kind of beautiful wizard who could hypnotize her with the power of his gaze. Possession and…playfulness blended in his voice and it felt like a love potion seeping through her skin when he spoke. She wanted to refute his declaration, but she couldn’t form the words. In that moment, she wanted to belong to him in the most possessive way. Sitting against him, she could feel that he was fit.
Images of him naked and in her bed invaded her thoughts. She tried to remember to breathe. She reached for her throat and looked away from him, severing their gazes. As soon as she did, the spell was broken.
“Think what you want,” she brooded, folding her arms across her chest. “You and your archaic ideas, which have been at least suppressed in the men of my day. They may still think we belong to them like servants, but we—”
“What is archaic?” he asked her.
