Still, he had to ask, “Are you sure ’tis not guilt guiding you?”
She had stopped feeling guilty the day Selig put those damned chains on her, but she couldn’t tell her brother that. What she still regretted was giving Selig a reason to despise her, because it didn’t look like she was ever going to be forgiven for it.
So she lied again. “I am forgiven, so there is no longer guilt to trouble me.”
His eyes searched hers for a long moment before he sighed. “Are you really asking me to leave you here with him?”
This was her most difficult answer to give. She wanted so much to go home. She wanted her life returned to normal. She was tired of the anger and confusion, and being attracted to a man she didn’t dare love.
“Aye,” she said, and swore to herself it would be the last lie she would ever tell him.
Chapter 33
SELIG CAME AWAKEat the third shaking. His hands went immediately to his temples.
“Thor’s teeth, did someone hit me over the head again?” he groaned.
“You have yourself to thank this time—and my excellent ale.”
“Is that you, Kris?”
“Why do you not open your eyes and see for yourself?” she queried.
“I would as soon not. I sense too much light even with them closed.”
Kristen shook her head at him. Amusement was high in her tone. “So this is what marriage has led you to?”
Another groan. “How could I forget?”
His eyes did open now, the barest crack, but not to look at his sister. His head turned directly to the corner where Erika could usually be found. That it was empty did not cause any undue alarm—yet.
“Where is she?”
“Speaking with her brother in the chapel.”
His eyes flared wide and came accusingly to Kristen now. “And no one woke me?”
He started to sit up, but something dragged him back down. Erika’s chains, wrapped around his neck. He only vaguely recalled one of the servants telling him he had found them out in the bailey. Selig had hung them around his neck for want of somewhere else to put them, since he hadn’t been willing at the time to go near his chamber.
“No one woke you because you were not needed,” Kristen was explaining. “If she is to convince her brother that you are not the miserable wretch who has kept her chained nearly to your side, it cannot be with you standing close to intimidate her.”
He didn’t address the part about the chains, merely grumbled, “I do not intimidate her.”
“Her brother would not see it that way.”
He tossed off the chains and tried sitting up again. He couldn’t move as fast as he wanted, not when the pain from his overindulgence was almost as bad as that first morning he awoke with the head injury. Yet what he was feeling could only be called panic.
“Did you at least place a spy to hear what she tells him?” he demanded.
Kristen’s brows shot up. “When only you, me, and Father can speak their language?Youmight not mind asking Father to spy for you, but I would not be so daring.”
“Youshould have seen to the task yourself.”
“Me?” she exclaimed. “I did my part by getting the man well and truly furious with me. He ought to like you now in comparison.”
He gave her a glare. She was just short of laughing at him. And the only effort she made to help him was to fetch his comb for him. He wasn’t even going to try changing the clothes he had fallen asleep in.
When he was just about out the door, she ventured to ask, “Do you still hate her?”
