“I know you told me,” Camelee said, “but help me understand why you have never taken a husband.”
“My heart would not let me love someone else,” Genevra told her while cutting small pieces of dried meat for the girl.
“Someone else implies there was an original.” Camelee didn’t know why she was asking. But her breakdown was over. She had to take care of Hild.
“I do not know who he is,” Genevra said, sounding sincere. “I have never loved a man that way. ’Tis as if my heart has been reserved for another. I feel my emotions beyond the veil, but it isn’t me who must release them.”
Camelee wanted to weep for them. Perhaps they were all mad.
“What about you?” Genevra asked. “Why have you not taken a husband?”
“No time,” Camelee said with a small laugh. “They are better off, trust me. My standards are too high and, most of all, the thought of love repulses me.”
“So, like me, you have never loved a man before.”
“Man or woman in a romantic way,” Camelee verified. “Right.”
“Our lives do indeed seem to be intertwined.”
“Well, not really,” Camelee corrected her. “You can’t love because some special guy has to come and unlock your heart. Whereas I can’t love because my heart has been broken beyond repair.”
“It is not too late, Camelee. If you love or care for Hild, it is not too late.”
Camelee would have liked to have thought on it more, but the locked clicked and the door creaked open.
Wolf’s handsome face appeared on the other side of the door as it opened fully. His shoulders filled the doorway. She wanted to get up and run to him, to feel safe. But he didn’t deserve her affections. He was ashamed of his feelings for her. He—
“Are the lodgings fitting?” he asked upon entering. He smiled at her and then at the table of food.
Better now that you’re here.
Camelee blinked and then blushed at her thoughts. Was she serious? Really? She was developing attachments to a thousand-year-old man?
“Your kindness is greater than I could have imagined,” Genevra sang. Hild smiled at him!
It made Camelee want to cry. Why here? Why now? If she stayed with him any longer…she felt as if she were choking. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t let herself fall in love with him.
Since Genevra had already said something, she assumed she had to say something, too. She didn’t want to throw flattery at him. Sure, he treated them better than some of these other eleventh-century men, but she was still his servant.
Nevertheless, she didn’t want him to think her an ungrateful brat. She understood that what he’d done for her already was probably dangerous. The Danes—even the king—would think she was his weakness. Was she?
She looked up at him, and as if he could feel her eyes on him, his gaze slipped to hers.
“Thank you—my lord.”
He grinned and raised a sexy brow. “I will see that another bed is brought in.”
“Don’t go to the trouble,” she said and turned to smile at Genevra. “I don’t mind sharing a bed with them.”
“A bed for me,” he clarified in his rumbly low voice when she turned back to him.
“Oh.” She forgot to breathe. “You really don’t have to.” She wanted him to.
“I do,” he told her. “There are some here who do not know what I would do to them if they went near you—any of you. All it takes is a few moments for them to hurt you. With me here, I will simply kill anyone who comes through that door at night.”
She appreciated why he was staying, but– “You willsimply kill…?”
He nodded and picked at the bread. “That’s correct. You are mine. I have every right to protect you.”
