She looked vaguely familiar. He frowned. Had he met her before? That she was a Saxon was obvious, but he could not quite place her and he didn’t feel up to the task of dealing with her, now or ever. The last few months had made him rather ill-disposed toward Saxon women. It was not fair, deep down he knew it, but he couldn’t help it. Every time he saw one, he hoped she would be Ylva, come back at last to finish what they had started. But it never was, and every time his resentment grew.
The woman in front of his hut, with her dark hair and ample chest looked nothing like his little she-wolf. The disappointment seeping through him prevented him from doing what he would normally have done, and ask what she wanted. Instead, he placed his basket on the ground and waited.
“Ulf?” She looked relieved to have found him, and certain she had identified him.
“Yes?” Perhaps he should have invited her into the hut but for a reason he could not fathom, he was reluctant to do so.
“I’m Judith. I believe you remember me?”
Judith, of course. Yes, he remembered her. Ylva’s friend. Ylva’s lover. The second woman who had tried to kill him. Except that, unlike Ylva, she had really meant it, even if she had only managed to inflict a scratch.
He had not immediately recognized her because the first time he had seen her, in town, her face had been bruised and swollen after Walstan’s assault. The time after that, she had run at him, weapon in hand before he could take a good look at her. And, of course, then she had looked rather gaunt, like someone half starved. He was relieved to see that five months later she looked better, as if she was finally eating enough.
“Yes, of course, I remember you,” he said rather tersely. How could he not?
Unfair as it was, he could not forget—or forgive—that without her, Ylva would have stayed longer in the village. She had only left because her friend wanted to go, he was certain of it. As if that were not enough, without this woman’s untimely interruption, he would have been able to slake the lust the little she-wolf had awoken in him. There was also the uncomfortable knowledge that Judith knew the taste of the kisses of the woman he had obsessed about for months, a notion that stirred his jealousy, try as he may to suppress the feeling. Last but not least, though she had failed, that womanhadtried to kill him. All this meant that she was the last person Ulf wanted to see right now.
What was she doing here in any case?
He looked around, hope surging through him. Had she come alone, or was Ylva here also? No, of course not, she wouldn’t be hiding if she had come. Another wave of disappointment made him growl at the Saxon.
“What do you want? I’m busy.” The acorns needed boiling and he had meant to finish the chair he was making for Liv that afternoon.
“I need your help.”
He arched a brow at this unexpected answer. The woman didn’t lack courage, he had to admit, coming to him of all people, for help. But if she thought she only had to appear and he would magically run to her rescue, she had another thing coming.
“The last time we saw one another, you tried to kill me,” he reminded her rather unnecessarily. “Do you really think I’m the?—”
“It’s about Ylva.”
Ylva.
The word was like a punch to the gut. All sorts of possibilities assaulted his mind. She had been captured again, forced to kill someone else and gone mad with guilt. Some bastard had raped her and left her for dead in a ditch. She had contracted a mysterious illness and was about to die.
He took a step toward Judith. “Ylva?” he repeated, unable to say more.
“She doesn’t know I’m here. But I thought?—”
Ulf did not wait to hear the rest of the sentence. It mattered not what the problem was, if the woman thought that he could help, he would.
He took Judith by the arm and marched her to the field where Ratatoskr was grazing.
“Just take me to her.”
Ylva couldn’t believeher eyes when the tall Norseman she had thought about every day for the last five months entered the hut.
There was only one reason for Ulf to be here. Someone had told him what was happening. And there was only one person who could have done that, only one woman who knew where he lived and why he would want to be told.
Judith.
A wave of irritation swept through her. Was that where her friend had been these last three days? In the Norsemen village? How had she dared go behind her back to find him? They had talked about this again and again and Ylva had made her opinion clear. She wasn’t ready to see him just yet. What had Judith told him? How had he reacted? The questions were jostling in her mind, making her head spin, not a pleasant feeling considering her stomach had only just stopped roiling.
She threw a resentful look at Judith, who merely stared back, not sorry in the least. She clearly thought she had done the right thing.
But as far as Ylva was concerned, this could be a disaster she would never recover from.
“Good afternoon.”
