Her eyes widened with pure terror. “I am not your property to give away!”
He nodded to disagree. “You are the spoils of war. My side won, yours did not.”
“But,” she said, returning to the table. “I don’t have a side.
“How can you not have a side?” he asked, genuinely curious. “Are you a traitor to your countrymen?”
“No!” she answered without haste. There was at least that. “Don’t try to put words into my mouth. Now tell me, what are the sides?”
“Danes against the Saxons.”
“A re-enactment,” she said in a low voice, almost a whisper.
“What is a re-enactment?” he asked. “You have strange speech.”
“But this can’t be real. It’s impossible!”
The two women, whom Wolf learned were called Brigid and Alison served him turnip and mushroom soup with carrots, and onions, and butternut squash. He tasted it and smiled. “It is real.” He invited the cooks to eat the rest before his men came looking for him. Camelee refused but he warned her that he didn’t know when her next meal would be. So, she ate.
“Now tell me,” he said after he asked Brigid and Alison to leave, “why do you keep saying this cannot be real?”
“Because I…I was in New York City this morning. I inherited some brooch and—I don’t know, I rubbed it. I felt compelled to rub it. A name appeared.Pendragon.I said it just like that—” She stopped and looked around as if expecting something to happen. “I said it and then I was here, under your net somewhere in England—”
“Mercia,” he reminded her, enjoying her tale and how she sounded telling it.
“Mercia.” She scrunched up her face. “How old is—” Her gaze roved over the room. “It may seem odd that I don’t know, but what year is it?”
It was odd. What was her ailment, he wondered? “It is one thousand and seventeen.”
Her mouth fell open a little. He was admiring it when she fell over once again into a dead faint.
With a sigh, Wolf rose from his chair, walked around the table, and scooped her up in his arms. She had opened her coat and he looked at the shape of her as it fell open. She was slight, thin, but curvy. He felt a bit out of breath. He didn’t know why.
He stretched her out on the table near his food and sat down to finish his meal.
He would decide what to do with her later. For now, though, he wanted to keep her.
Chapter Two
Camelee’s eyes flutteredopen. For one blissful instant, the memory of where she was eluded her. What was so hard beneath her? Where was Karen with her coffee?
No coffee.
Everything came back, not in a rush, but slowly, taking its time to lengthen the time of her torture. Dear God, no. Vikings? Was this a dream she was stuck inside of? An acting job on the series with that gorgeous blond? Whatshisname? She was afraid to open her eyes. What if she didn’t wake up? She couldn’t go on,actinglike she wasn’t afraid because she didn’t want to give some maniac the satisfaction of seeing her crawl.
Screw that. She was terrified. So afraid, in fact, that she’d fainted twice. But fainting was beyond her control. She wouldn’t tremble or fall apart. She just couldn’t. It wasn’t in her nature. Still, she didn’t want to face the Viking reality. He’d said they were in the year one thousand and seventeen!
Please, God, please, don’t let it be real or some cult group preparing to kill me.
“Are you going to pretend you are asleep for much longer?”
His voice rolled across her ear like a deep, ancient drum. The sound of him called to her and startled her. In fact, she was sure if it was possible to jump out of one’s own skin, she would have done it. She gave herself a moment to slow her breath and not throw up. She almost couldn’t do it. She was still here. Wherever orwheneverhere was. She was in trouble—about to lose her mind and her life. Either this guy was the leader of a whole bunch of maniacs who went around acting like marauding Vikings in twenty nineteen where they belonged, or she’d traveled back in time to–God forbid—ten seventeen to a Saxon village just taken over by Vikings, and she was now a slave.
If so, she seriously considered opening her eyes and cursing him to his face and letting him kill her.
“Camelee.”
Oh, why had she told him her name? The sound of it from his mouth sounded possessive, sultry, and almost oppressive.
