Aoife hastily pulled her own skirts back down and sat up, frustrated by his changes of mood and her inability to understand him. “Last night. What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing. You did nothing wrong. When I said I made a mistake, it was only because…” He hesitated and looked at the ground. “It is important we don’t have a child. Not yet. Last night… Last night lust clouded my mind. It will not happen again.”
“What other purpose do I have here? I don’t understand.”
“There is nothing to understand.” He looked back at her, frowning.
She found that hard to believe.
For a moment she thought Tormod would leave, but then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You asked me last night whether there was a child. There is. My first wife’s son. He will be sent over. Probably he is with the settlers we are expecting. Now that I am married, my father will have sent him.”
“And I will care for him? We will be a family?”
Tormod did not answer right away. “Perhaps. This can be decided when he arrives. For now, let us just be together as man and wife. Am I not enough for you?”
“Yes, of course. I just thought that… Nothing.” After all, what else could she say? At least she no longer worried that she had displeased him. And then the impact of his words hit her. “Your wife’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Not… not yours.”
“No. But to admit that would be to admit that I had made a terrible mistake,” Tormod said.
She smiled cautiously at him. “You would not be the first man to marry a woman who already carried another man’s child. Couldyou not have divorced her? Your people do not seem averse to divorce.”
“It was not only the child.” Tormod hung his head. “It is more complicated. By the time I realised, I didn’t want to admit that she had fooled me. Not only was the child not mine, but she only wanted me because she thought I was more likely to become jarl than her lover.”
“Who was he?”
Tormod frowned at her. “I don’t know. She would never tell me but we agreed to stay together and she promised to be faithful in the future.”
“But she wasn’t?”
“No, she started sneaking away from the village to meet him.” Tormod sighed. “Maybe if I tell you what happened you will understand.” He sat for a long moment before he spoke again. “I thought we had met by chance in the woods one day when I was out hunting. For a few weeks we met in secret at an abandoned hut deep in the woods between her father’s village and my own. I thought she loved me and persuaded her to run away from home to marry me.”
“You did not go to her father to ask?”
“No, my father and hers did not get along. They often fought over land, accused each other of stealing cattle.” He shrugged. “I thought I was being so clever, stealing his daughter away from him without his knowledge.”
“You married her, though?”
“After a month or so, she told me she was pregnant.” He stared at his hands, purposefully not looking at Aoife.
“When I told my cousins, I thought they would be pleased, but they were not.”
“They did not believe her?”
“No,” he said, then made a wry face. “They had been away for a few weeks. Their father’s death had caused many problems forthe family. I suppose it is one of the reasons I was hunting alone when I met Ingrid.”
“They weren’t happy about the marriage?”
“Ulf was especially outspoken,” Tormod said. “But I don’t know if that was better or worse than Arne not speaking to me for months.”
Aoife smiled. “It is nice to know it is not just Britons Ulf is suspicious of.”
“And it was just as well they did not trust her. I was too willing to believe everything she told me. They kept an eye on her, Arne and Ulf in particular.”
Aoife tilted her head to one side, considering his words. “Why?”
