When she didn’t move quickly enough for him, he snatched her wrist and pulled her away.
“Do as I wish in public, Camelee,” he warned her.
“All right. In public, I will. But alone, I will fight you every step of the way! I mean, you just killed someone for asking a disgusting question, and right in front of Hild!”
“Good. Let her know, too, that I will not stand for any insult or threat against her or her m—friend. As for killing someone,” he bit out at her, “if he thought about having his way with any of you, he would do it. He would always be a threat to you, to Genevra…and to little Hild. No. I could not allow it. And now the rest of the men know it.”
“But I thought you didn’t want anyone to know that you cared.”
“Possession and caring are two separate things, Camelee.”
She lowered her gaze and walked behind him. What could she say? For now, she was tired of fighting.
He stopped and turned to look at her with the slightest, most handsome smile. “What are you doing back there? Come, and walk with me.”
Chapter Twelve
The next fewdays went by with Camelee growing more miserable. She didn’t have to tell Wolf how she felt. He could see it in her eyes, or the faraway look in them every so often when she was washing a dish or serving a meal. The bustle of the keep, with cooks and tanners, and seamstresses, and dozens more, all preparing for Christmas swiftly approaching only seemed to make her more unhappy. He did what he could to keep her, and Genevra as well, from serving. Hild needed them. No one questioned that a little girl should need her mother and grandmother.
They couldn’t find Alric. It was as if he had disappeared.
“Maybe he found that dentist of his,” he told her one afternoon while they watched Hild play in the inner yard with some of the Danes’ children. Genevra stayed close to the girl, standing a few feet away. Wolf and Camelee stood off to the side.
Camelee gave him a hopeful look. “Oh, do you think so?
He didn’t know, but the sting of her wanting to leave wasn’t getting any easier. In fact, he hated that she couldn’t wait to be away. What truly troubled him though was that he cared about what one of his captives thought. She was a servant, just as Genevra and Hild were servants now. If they didn’t learn it from him, they would from some other chief, and life would not be as easy as it was now.
His side had won and took the throne. All Saxons held captive were the property of the warlord who took them. Like it or not, Wolf was master over them, over Camelee.
But he felt it was the other way around. He did whatever she asked, or he promised he would—as ifhewereherservant. He wanted to groan at the terrible truth—that he was allowing a woman—a Saxon woman to break through his impenetrable defenses and come to his heart. She circled it, studying it for a way to get in, the tip of her sword dragging along the ground behind her. But he suppressed his anguish and refused to think about the consequences another moment.
“You look upset.”
He turned to her. “Upset?”
“Worried. Troubled,” she supplied.
She was discerning. A good trait. “I think too much,” he told her with a smirk as he kept his gaze on Hild.
“I know what you mean,” she said, smiling at something Hild did. “What are you thinking about?”
He ground his teeth. What could he say without sounding like something she hated?
“The coming years…thefuture.”
“What about it?” she asked, and her voice stroked his eardrums and played like a song he wanted to hear for the rest of his life.
“Let us speak of something else.”
“No,” she protested softly, weakening his resolve. “Why?”
“There does not have to be a reason. When I say something, I do not like to be questioned.”
Her head snapped to the right so she could look at him square in the face and let him see the fiery darts ready to shoot from her eyes.
“You want me to hate you, is that it?”
“No.” He offered her a confused look. He didn’t want that. “I want you to stop—”
