The Captive (11 page)

Because no matter what they called one another or how they defined the connection between them, Gwendolyn of Wessex belonged to him as no woman ever had.

And no matter how rational his plan for returning her to safety, he now understood he could never let her go.

A
DREAM HELD HER FAST.

Gwendolyn knew that what she saw was not real, but she could not seem to wake herself from disturbing visions that plagued her deep in the night.

“Don’t,” she murmured, clutching Wulf by the tunic to plead with him. “Don’t do it.”

She was desperate to stop him from something. The emotions felt so real she wondered if she was wrong and this wasn’t a dream at all. The passion had fled from Wulf’s expression. He was all warrior now—cold and unmoved by her pleas.

But what had she asked him for? To release her? To come back to her?

She tried to ignore the heart-wrenching hurt in her chest, but the scene kept playing in her mind. Wulf refused to look at her. Refused to love her…

“Gwendolyn.” Wulf’s voice called to her, stern and commanding like the man himself.

Dream and reality blended, the veil between them blurring before it lifted.

She seemed to awaken simply because he wanted
her to, a fact which annoyed her considering how hard she’d tried to snap out of the dream on her own.

Now, they lay in Wulf’s bedchamber in the temporary encampment. He’d sneaked her back to the small village of tents, wrapping her in his tunic so that she would not be naked for the short journey. They’d made love on his bed among fine, soft blankets, with a torch burning inside a decorative metal lantern hung from the framework of the tent. The setting had been far more decadent than she would have imagined for the man and she’d wondered vaguely who took such care to erect beautiful surroundings for him that he hardly noticed.

“You were dreaming,” Wulf informed her, his real self becoming more distinct from the vision of him in her nighttime imaginings. “You seemed frightened.”

He held her close, his instincts protective even deep in the night. Her defenses low while wrapped in his arms, she could not help but confide the truth.

“I wanted something from you and you were so unmoved. I pleaded with you.” Gwendolyn remembered the ache in her chest that had felt so real. “But your mind was made up.”

She realized she’d gripped his arm and held him fast, the tension from the dream carrying over into her touch. Forcing herself to loosen her grasp, she wondered where such depth of feeling had come from. For so long, she’d felt like she’d been the one held too tightly. Now, she’d wound herself around Wulf like a clinging vine.

Wulf, however, caught her wrist and held it. His dark hair followed the line of his shoulder like a shadow.

“That is what happened with Hedra.” His grip was tense. “I refused to listen to her when—”

He appeared more shaken now than when he’d con
fronted eighteen mounted warriors. His pallor faded and he seemed to see beyond her into the past.

“Hedra.” The woman whose death he’d felt responsible for. Would he confide the truth of what happened? “She is the woman Harold fights to avenge?”

He nodded. “I closed my heart to her when she pleaded with me once. I have never forgiven myself.”

“Tell me what happened.” She drew a tightly woven blanket closer to her neck to ward off a sudden chill.

She did not know if he would tell her. He was a proud man. But the haunted look in his eyes suggested he had not made peace with Hedra’s death.

He turned away from Gwendolyn to fill a drinking horn from a heavy silver pitcher beside the bed. He sipped from the vessel and handed it to her.

“As children, Hedra, my brother Olaf and I were inseparable. We were of noble families, but early on, before we understood that their marriage had already been arranged, it was clear that Hedra held a special affection for me.”

She sipped the mead, drawn in by the emotions apparent in his voice. He may have grown into a dispassionate commander, but he had not always been that way.

“Hedra and I were adventurous souls, while Olaf was every inch the dutiful son,” he continued, his gaze directed toward the flickering torch hanging from the tent roof, but not really seeing it. “Hedra and I kissed once—and more—enough to make me think she would never willingly wed Olaf and that one day we would be together. She begged me for patience while she found a way to tell her family. So, imagine my surprise when she wed Olaf with nary a protest.” The hard edge that entered his voice was one she recognized. The hurt
Hedra had dealt him was one that remained with him even now.

“Perhaps she did not have the strength to disappoint her family. Every daughter desires to be dutiful.” Anything less was a sin. And while the Danes did not recognize the same religious laws, she knew it could not be so different for them.

A part of her ached for the choice Hedra had been forced to make, even though Gwendolyn couldn’t help a rising tide of jealousy for the woman Wulf had cared about so deeply. What would it be like to have a man care for her that way?

“She would not jeopardize her brother’s claim to the throne.” Wulf plucked the mead from her hand and took another sip before handing it back. “Harold’s ambition was more important to her than her happiness, or mine, or even my brother’s. But when my brother died protecting their homeland from a bloodthirsty neighbor, she asked me to wed her so that our lands and people would remain united.”

“That is common enough.” She could not imagine why they had not married, why this story did not have a happy ending. “Godric’s family hoped that tradition would follow suit for us after Gerald died.”

“I refused her.”

The cold words chilled her. And if that had been their effect on her, imagine how Hedra had felt if she loved him?

The heart-wrenching ache in her chest she’d felt during her dream would probably only begin to describe the pain.

“But you loved her.” She did not need to hear him say it to know as much. He would not have felt so betrayed by her marriage to his brother if he had not loved her.

“Aye.” The word sounded torn from him. “But I could not tell if she asked for the union out of remembrance of happier times, or if this was another facet of her family’s ambition. I could not wed for the reasons that drove her.”

Wulf watched Gwendolyn blink in surprise, perhaps not understanding how hard his heart had grown during the course of his brother’s marriage. But he had loved Hedra, and to his mind, she had spit on his affections with the choice of his brother over him. Why couldn’t she have led the life they’d dreamed about? Why did she turn her back on everything she’d pretended to honor?

“So you refused love when at last it was your turn to receive it.” Gwendolyn’s soft accusation was no more than he deserved. She clutched the horn as if she might need to use it as a weapon against him at some point.

Did it speak so ill of him that he could not trust a woman who had forsaken all the vows she’d made in private to him?

“How could I wed a woman who would not claim me in front of her family and the world just a few years before that? If a strong wind washed up a more appealing stranger on her shore, would that have negated the vows she made to me as easily as her brother’s wishes voided those another time?” He shook his head, still not seeing how he could have married her after she’d carved his heart out and expected him to choke it down at her wedding feast.

“How did she die?” Gwendolyn’s skin had grown pale and he regretted telling her the tale.

But she deserved to know. Not only because of her position in his life, but also because of her strange dream. Whatever she’d seen in her vision had frightened her. Perhaps the truth would not be as alarming.

“After she proposed a union between us and I refused, she—” His throat turned thick, the memory of finding her as keen as ever. He tried again, needing to put the story behind him. “She took a potion of some kind. She rowed a small boat out into the water and took the draught, then perished at sea. We searched for her for days before someone at a nearby village rode up to say her boat had washed ashore there. She still wore the crown bearing my brother’s mark. My mark, as well.”

There had been a terrible moment where the messenger had not made it clear she was dead. They had thought she’d been found nearby and could ride to her to bring her safely home. Wulf remembered how his heart had lifted, but he did not know if it had simply been a moment of relief from his own guilt or if he’d been hopeful of amending his harsh words to her. He’d never had time to figure it out before the messenger realized his mistake and made clear that Hedra was indeed dead.

“She was adrift without either of you,” Gwendolyn remarked, her gaze faraway as if she rewrote the dream in her mind’s eye. “Lost at sea without her old friends.” Shaking her head, she bit her lip and seemed to emerge from her thoughts. “I’m so sorry. You must have been devastated, not only to lose a dear friend, but to have an argument between you at the end.”

He closed his eyes at the magnitude of the truth. He did not often allow himself to feel it, but he did so now. Somehow, Gwendolyn had guessed at his pain after knowing him such a short time when those who had known him his whole life had never suspected he might grieve for her as much as anyone. The Danes were not a people to express their feelings aloud, but while he was not sure how comfortable he felt sharing this with
Gwendolyn, he noted a certain relief in having told the tale.

“In my land, we honor our warriors by sending them out to sea.” Wulf would have never considered Hedra “adrift,” but then, perhaps he’d never understood her as well as he’d thought. “I took heart that her final act was one of defiance—to give herself a warrior’s honor in death.”

Gwendolyn stroked a hand over his shoulder, deftly relaxing muscles he had not realized he’d tensed.

“If she was found far from your homeland, why does her brother hold you responsible?” She tucked her cold toes close to his calves, as if to absorb his warmth.

That gesture, so everyday and universal, connected him to the present instead of the past. He appreciated her quiet support—her trust, even. Not once had she suggested by word or glance that he’d been responsible for Hedra’s death.

“Why would he not? Our families were very close and our friendship was common knowledge since I moved into my brother’s house after his death to help her. Everyone knew we argued that night.”

Gwendolyn wrinkled her nose in confusion, the expression endearing.

“She killed herself.” Gwendolyn let the bald facts speak for themselves. “You did not push her boat out to sea.”

“My
words
pushed her out to sea, Gwen.” He knew it. Harold knew it. Anyone who had been close to their families understood what had happened. “Hedra took her life because I could not forgive her for marrying my brother.”

“For this, her brother would kill you?” The ris
ing note of surprise in her voice told him she did not understand.

“You are Saxon. Perhaps our ways seem foreign to you. But there are many who believe he should seek vengeance.” Wulf had traveled to many other lands, before Hedra died and since. He knew that the way of the Danes was considered strange to some. Barbaric, even. But his people lived by a code, and he could not break it.

Gwendolyn mulled over this as she finished her mead. Her dark hair gleamed glossy in the torchlight with the curls that had sprang up from her swim in the sea.

He had not told her how much it knocked him in the gut to think of her washing up on shore, dead because of words he’d spoken. Not directly, perhaps. But she would not have dived into the sea if he’d not declared her his in front of all his men. He could not bear another woman’s blood on his hands.

“Would he win if he challenged you?” Gwendolyn’s question was not what he expected. She glanced sidelong at him, considering. “Would you have to let him win since he is a king?”

“He is a good ruler and a just one. I have hurt the kingdom enough to rob them of his full attention these past years. How could I take the life of their leader, as well?” He shook his head, seeing no answer to a problem he’d thought over many times. “But in a fair fight, Harold Haaraldson could never hope to best me.”

“Who becomes king if you were to beat Harold in battle? I mean, what if he caught you unaware and you were forced to fight? Does he have a son who would try to avenge him?”

“Nay. And the kingdom would belong to me. Our
family was to have taken it with Hedra and Olaf’s child since Harold’s wife has no children.”

She handed him back the cup and he set it aside, having lost his taste for mead. He did not enjoy seeing his future spread before him this way. Like a bay with no outlet, he could not see a path that promised fine sailing.

“You would make a fine king,” she said finally, turning to fluff the pillow behind her head and settle back down to sleep. “But I admire you for refusing to cut down a nobleman.”

Was that what he was doing? There were some among his followers who found his unwillingness to engage Harold cowardly. They did not challenge him on it, as Wulf was not only a strong warrior, but the most effective raiding force their people had ever seen. His men were too wealthy to complain, but the unrest at home had gotten to them all.

“Wulf?” Gwendolyn called to him from the bed with soft invitation in her voice. “Remember that first day, you told me you did not want to plunder for riches, but for pleasure?”

She traced the heavy embroidery stitched along the coverlet where it peeped out from under the fur blanket. Her fingers were long and elegant, a noblewoman’s hands. He smiled to think of her tossing aside her own embroidery, her spirit too wild to be tamed by domestic pursuits.

“I remember very well.” He had not understood at first why he’d been called to claim one woman alone when her keep had been loaded with lucrative prizes that could have been his for the taking. But the fates had woven a different outcome for their meeting.

“I am glad you decided to indulge yourself. I see now
the weight of your responsibility—to your family and Hedra’s. To your followers and to Harold’s people. And after bearing the burden of so many expectations, you are entitled to some diversion.”

The kindness of the sentiment did not dull the more obvious meaning. His blood rushed hot through his veins, burning away old regret and guilt, leaving naught but red-hot awareness behind.