“Are they dead?” was the first thing she asked in her blunt way.
Selig laughed. Beside them, Garrick and Royce both rolled their eyes over that bloodthirsty question. But Royce shouldn’t have been surprised.
He had first met Kristen’s mother in the dead of night with her dagger at his throat waking him, and he had little doubt she would have used it had he not given her the correct answers she sought. Soon after, he’d had to fight their Viking champion to the death. It was the eyes that told him who that champion was, the same aqua as Kristen’s. Knowing that, he couldn’t have killed him even had it been possible, which had never been quite established. But they were a close-knit family. You hurt one and the rest were your mortal enemies. He actually felt sorry for the Dane.
“’Twas thieves laid me low, Mother,” Selig was explaining, “and they are gone, slunk back to their dens. Only one of them would I recognize, so they will be hard to find.”
“That was only his first injury,” Kristen added. “He went to the Danes for aid and they imprisoned him. He was burning with fever and they lashed him.”
Brenna looked to her daughter. “Aretheydead?”
“Nay, but the one responsible is there.” Kristen pointed unerringly in Erika’s direction. “And is Selig’s to deal with when he is able.”
“Awoman?” Brenna and Garrick said at once.
Selig winced. “Must everyone find that so incredulous? I have not charmed every woman I set out to win. I have failed a few times, to keep my feet on the ground.”
A number of disbelieving snorts greeted that statement before Kristen said, with a potent glare for her brother, “He insisted on riding, though I see now ’twas a mistake. I am glad to turn the care of him over to you, Mother. I doubt me he will fool you with his assurances of beingfinebefore he actually is.”
Sister and brother were both glaring at each other now. Brenna, in full agreement with her daughter, began issuing orders. Selig looked to Royce for help. It might be his home, but Royce wasn’t about to argue with his mother-in-law, and his look said so. And then pandemonium broke loose as the women of the hall descended on Selig with a great many noisy tears.
Half were crying because he was alive, half because it was so obvious by the look of him that he had suffered. All of them wanted to assist in his recovery, and he was unable to convince them there was naught to worry over. None would listen to him. Even Kristen had trouble getting them to disperse without specific tasks sending them off, and there weren’t enough tasks for all of them.
Royce and Garrick stood back while Selig was carried off to the hall. Royce was amused, until he noted his father-in-law’s grim look.
“He will be fine once he has his weight back,” Royce said. “The pain in his head may take longer to go away. ’Twas a severe blow, I am told.”
“Who starved him?”
“The injury. ’Twas nigh a fortnight he was without consciousness.”
“Aye, that would do it,” Garrick said with a nod, then added, “I think I will go hunting this summer.”
Royce laughed. “Kristen said nearly the same thing, that Wessex has got itself too many thieves and ’tis time we rid ourselves of a few. But Selig wants revenge only against that one. ’Tis surprising how much he hates her.”
Garrick followed his look toward the Danish woman, who was being escorted into the hall behind the crowd. She was a bedraggled thing, though shapely, and might possibly be pretty if she were cleaned up.
“What does he mean to do with her?”
“What does any man do with a woman?” Royce countered with a shrug.
“Nay, not if he hates her.”
Royce was in a position to disagree. He had hated Vikings, which his wife had been. He had despised her for what she was, and thinking her a whore besides, had despised her even more. But having a woman like Kristen at his mercy had gotten beyond the hate right quickly.
But Kristen had never done him a personal injury, as Lady Erika had done Selig, and therein lay a world of difference.
Chapter 18
ERIKA SAT INa corner of the bedchamber, unnoticed, on the floor, her wrists and ankles tied again to keep her there. “Until chains can be fashioned for you,” she had been told by Ivarr. She was in no hurry to see that done.
The activity in the room had not stopped since she had entered. Water was brought and taken away. More was brought and taken away. Food was brought and taken away before it cooled. More was brought hot to replace it.
The healer, an old woman with scraggly brown hair and a sharp tongue that was not discriminatory in whom it touched, was mixing herbs at a nearby table. Selig had been stripped down, examined, poked at. Several women had been present the while, and not one blush had Erika noted among them. She was to learn later that only the healer had not seen him naked before—aside from herself. And Erika was the only one blushing—and not looking.
The ocean of crying she had witnessed over him was disgusting. You would think all those women were his wives, yet she knew very well Saxons allowed only one wife, and hewas living among Saxons. But not one woman there seemed to have the authority of a wife. The only one with authority was the black-haired older woman who tenderly applied a salve to his bruised back.
From what Erika had seen down in the bailey and previously learned from Kristen, she was afraid this was his mother. Another one of his family to despise her. She prayed she wouldn’t gain her notice, but wasn’t likely to for the while, since the woman’s full attention was on her son.
