Tira had ceased her desperate struggles to stare stunned, too, as Rowen seized her chance and threw herself overboard while Thorgren rushed to the railing to try and grab her, only to straighten up empty-handed. His own curses even more foul as he spun and slapped Tira across the face so violently that she fainted—ah, God, why would these terrible memories not cease to plague her?
“Here, eat some soup.”
A brimming bowl thrust at her, Tira had all she could do to grasp the vessel, her hands were trembling so.
Brinda spoke with a lilting accent more Norse than Scots, the Orkney Islands a stopping point for centuries for Vikings traveling southward on their longships—or so Tira had learnedfrom Thorgren during the rare moments when he had spoken to her with some civility.
His life as a brutal raider was Thorgren’s way of emulating his ancestors, whose exploits had been immortalized in the Norse sagas.
Yet to Tira, he was nothing more than a beast with a broad face and flattened nose who had stolen her innocence and abused her for months—aye, even more cruelly after he lost half of his men and two ships during the attack that came so close to rescuing her from her torment.
“Aye, so close,” Tira murmured, her hands still shaking so much just to think upon Thorgren that soup spilled down the front of her woolen tunic as she raised the bowl to her mouth.
“Och, lass, you’re a mess,” Brinda muttered as she ladled up some soup for herself, shaking her head in disgust. “It’s a wonder Laird Sigurdson sees anything pleasing in you at all. Your long hair tangled and your gown soiled. Your face pale and wan. I heard you were a rare beauty when he first brought you tae Orkney, but I didna see you then and it’s a tale now that’s hard tae believe. Eat your soup and I’ll warm up some water so you can bathe.”
Tira nodded, doing the best she could to chew and then swallow the chunks of cod that were tasteless to her.
Brinda’s words about heating water not uttered out of kindness but that she had been charged with Tira’s care while Thorgren had gone raiding along Scotland’s eastern coast—and he wouldn’t return for a fortnight.
A blessed fortnight when she wouldn’t have to attempt to sleep beside a brute of a man who reeked of sweat and filth, Thorgren loath to bathe at all. Many a night she had lain awake after he’d had his way with her and then rolled over to snore and break wind, the guttering light from an oil lamp illuminating the markings etched with black ink onto his shaved head.
Pagan markings that made her shudder now to think of them, though he had told her Orkney had become Christian centuries ago. Thorgren nonetheless followed the path of his forebears with his strange talk of Odin, Thor, and Freyja, which made Tira lower her bowl to cross herself and mouth a silent prayer for deliverance, even if it meant death.
Aye, she wanted to die. Even if her father hadn’t given up hope for her and intended to launch another rescue attempt, she was no longer the daughter he remembered.
She was no longer the unsullied young woman who had grieved with him last summer at the untimely death of her mother.
She was no longer the lovestruck young woman that Errol Sutherland wished to marry—ah, God, that was her worst torment, to think of him!
Tears filled Tira’s eyes and she set the bowl upon the floor, unable to swallow another mouthful.
Thankfully, Brinda didn’t chide her, but shrugged her shoulders and set a pot of water inside the hearth to warm so Tira could bathe herself.
Yet why even make the effort? It was all she could do to find the strength to rise and move over to the cot where she slept upon a straw-filled mattress.
This musty cottage wasn’t where she had lived during the long winter months with Thorgren, but on the opposite side of Hoy where he had left her with Brinda.
A small village lay nearby where the raiders who hadn’t accompanied Thorgren on the first raid of the spring, lived with their wives and families. Four of those men were hunkered down outside of the cottage to guard her as well…as if she could ever try to escape being so close to giving birth to Thorgren’s child.
Tears coursing down her cheeks, Tira heaved a ragged sigh as she sank down upon the lumpy mattress and curled onto her side.
No other position comfortable for her with her swollen belly so huge and the bairn feeling so heavy inside her.
A bairn she couldn’t bring herself to hate no matter how she had tried, Tira resting her hand protectively upon her stomach.
Her fervent prayer now that the child should live, but that she succumb to the sweet release of death after the birth.
“Forgive me,” Tira whispered, feeling the tiniest of kicks beneath her fingers that made fresh tears well in her eyes.
She had always wanted children, but not this one—God help her,not this one! Errol was to have been her beloved husband and the father of her bairns, but that longed-for dream was gone forever.
Tira was certain she had caught a glimpse of him standing with a bloodied sword upon the shoreline where he stared after Thorgren’s retreating ship—but had she simply imagined it? Wished it?
If it was Errol at that sheltered cove where the Orkney raiders had taken refuge for the night, why hadn’t he tried to find her earlier? Had everyone believed her dead after those Mackays had abducted her from the graveyard where she had gone to pray for her mother?
That wretched day last summer had become a blur in her mind of horror and disbelief, but nothing could have prepared her for those same enemy clansmen bartering her away to Thorgren, who had been raiding with his men along Scotland’s northern coast.
He had ravished her that very night and plunged her into abject desolation, even as he had blustered to his men that Tira washiswoman and he would slay any of them that glanced at her with lust in his eyes.
