Heart of Honor (2 page)

“It’s been a long night,” she said. “I am going up to bed. I shall see you in the morning.” Lifting her full silk skirt out of the way, she started to climb the curving staircase, then turned back. “Are you not coming, Father?”

“In a bit. I have an Old Norse text I’ve been studying. There is a passage in it I would like to review before I retire. I’ll only be a moment.”

Krista knew how long one of her father’s “moments” could be. She started to argue, to remind him he needed his sleep, but she knew it would do no good. Her father was as passionate about his studies as Krista was about her ladies’ magazine.

Thinking of the article she needed to finish in the morning before the gazette went to press, she continued climbing the stairs.

The three-story brick building that housed the offices of
Heart to Heart Weekly Ladies’ Gazette
sat on a narrow street just off Piccadilly. The soul of the magazine, the heavy Stanhope printing press, one of the most modern presses of the day, sat on the ground floor next to a box that housed metal type, the letters, numbers and characters used to print the weekly publication.

Krista walked over to the wooden box. She had finished the article she had been writing for this week’s edition, and except for one minor change, the gazette would be ready to go to press the next morning.

Along with Krista, her father and Corrie, the staff included Bessie Briggs, who did most of the typesetting; a printer named Gerald Bonner; his young apprentice, Freddie Wilkes; and a part-time helper who did whatever jobs were needed to get the paper out to its subscribers.

The crew was working late, as always on the night the gazette went to press. It was dark outside, the streets mostly empty, a brisk April wind blowing in off the Thames. Standing next to the press, Krista adjusted a section of metal type, then turned at the sound of footsteps on the cobbles outside the paned window at the front of the office. Glass shattered and one of the women screamed as a heavy brick sailed into the room, missing Krista’s head by mere inches.

“Good heavens!” Corrie gasped.

The brick landed with a clatter and rolled several times across the wooden floor as Krista raced to the window.

“Can you see him?” Corrie rushed up beside her. “Can you tell who did it?”

Down the block, the glow of a streetlamp revealed a lad in coarse brown breeches running madly toward the corner. An instant later, he disappeared out of sight.

“It was only a boy,” Krista said, turning away from the window, wiping ink from her hands with a rag. “He is already gone.”

“Look! There’s a note!” Minding the broken glass, Corrie knelt on the floor and retrieved a piece of paper from around the brick, fastened by a tightly tied bit of string.

“What does it say?” Krista walked up beside her.

Corrie smoothed the crumpled bit of paper. “‘Stay out of men’s business. If you don’t, you will pay.’”

Krista sighed. “Someone must have paid the boy to do it.” This wasn’t the first warning
Heart to Heart
had received since she had initiated a change of format that included editorials and articles on education and social issues.

Last week, along with the usual fashion and domestic topics, there had been an article lauding Mr. Edwin Chadwick’s Sanitary Conditions Report, which called for changes in the London sewer system and clean, piped water—necessary, he believed, for the prevention of disease.

The expensive proposal was highly unpopular with the water companies, local authorities and rate payers, who argued they could not afford to foot the bill.

“There will always be someone who disagrees with our position,” Krista told Corrie as she plucked the scrap of paper from her friend’s small hand.

“You’re going to show that note to your father, aren’t you?” Corrie cast her a look of warning, knowing how independent Krista was and how she hated to bother the professor with problems that related to the gazette. “Krista…?”

“All right, I’ll show him.” She glanced at the hole in the window letting in the chilly April air. “Have someone board that up and clean up the glass.” She headed for the stairs, the note clutched in her hand. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

On the nights Krista worked late, her father insisted on accompanying her home. He had arrived at the office several hours ago and gone to work in his makeshift study upstairs. There was also a room for business meetings and one with a narrow chaise for napping if the hour grew late.

She knocked on his door, waited, knocked again. Finally giving up, she opened the door and walked into the high-ceilinged, book-lined room.

“I am sorry to bother you, Father, but—”

“Thought I heard someone.” He removed the wire-rimmed spectacles he used for reading, and looked up from the stack of books sitting open on his desk. He was bone-thin and extremely tall. Krista had got her taller-than-average height from both her parents, but her blond hair, green eyes and more rounded, full-bosomed figure were a legacy of her fair-haired mother.

“Got involved in this translation,” the professor explained. “Are we finished? Is it time to go home?”

“We aren’t quite done, but we will be very soon.” She crossed the room and handed him the note. “I thought I had better show you this. Someone tied this message to a brick and tossed it through the window. I guess they didn’t much like my article on Mr. Chadwick’s report.”

“Apparently not.” The professor looked up at her. “Are you certain you know what you are doing, dearest? Your mother had a number of strong opinions, but she rarely put them in print.”

“True, but she wanted to. And times have changed in the past few years. Our readership has been growing steadily ever since we went to the new format.”

“I suppose fighting for a good cause is worth a bit of risk. Just be careful you don’t push things too far.”

“I won’t. One more article on the need for citywide water and disposal improvements and I am returning to our campaign for better working conditions in the mines and factories.”

He chuckled. “As I recall, those articles stirred up a hornets’ nest, as well.”

Krista bit back a smile, knowing it was true. “Even so, I think our efforts are helping.” She rounded the desk to look over his shoulder. “What are you working on?”

“I’m going over some tenth-century Icelandic tables that calculate the sun’s midday height for each week of the year. They’re remarkably accurate. Earlier I was reviewing a translation of the
Heimskringla
text.”

The text was written in Old Norse, Krista saw, the language spoken in the Scandinavian settlements from around eight hundred until the last known Viking settlers disappeared from Greenland in the early fifteen hundreds. Her father even spoke the long-dead language.

She thought of the hours she had spent as a child in his study, listening to tales of the Vikings and even learning some of their language. She and her father had practiced together, and because she wanted to please him, she’d worked hard to perfect her skills. She was educated far more than most women, and along with her ideas of social reform, had, like her father, developed a certain fascination with Norse life and culture.

“You’ve a good deal of Viking blood in your veins,” he would say when she bemoaned her height and the fact that most of the men of her acquaintance were shorter than she was. “Your mother could trace her family lineage back to the Danes. You should be proud of your heritage.”

Mostly, Krista just wished her appearance wasn’t quite so different from other women.

Her father shuffled some of the papers on his desk, closed the book he had been reading and looked up at her. “I hear you and Coralee are going to the circus on Sunday.”

“Would you like to come with us?” she asked, surprised by his interest.

Her father chuckled. “Actually, I gave it some serious thought. I imagine you’ve heard about the main attraction. The man they call the Last Barbarian.”

Krista laughed. “Yes, I gather he is part of the sideshow.” Now she understood. “He is supposed to be a Viking.” Anything Viking drew her father’s interest. “They say he stands over seven feet tall and is covered head to foot with thick blond hair.”

The professor smiled and shook his head. “It is all nonsense, of course, spouted to increase the size of the crowd. Still, it might be interesting. They say he is a terrifying brute, worth the price of admission just to get a glimpse of him in one of his towering rages. Undoubtedly some poor creature escaped from Bedlam. Mad as a hatter, I’ll wager.”

“Probably. But since you seem so interested, I promise I shall pay him a visit. He might make a good addition to Corrie’s article.”

Her father nodded. “In the meantime, try not to light a fire under the rest of London’s male population.”

Krista smiled. “I imagine my articles have just as many supporters as naysayers, Father. Perhaps even more.”

“Perhaps. But most of them are in far less powerful positions.”

That was true enough. It was men and women of the poor working classes who wanted improved conditions, not the wealthy manufacturers who would have to pay for them.

Krista left her father’s office feeling a little uneasy at the notion. How far would men in power go to silence a voice that stood up for city sanitation and improving the awful conditions suffered by the working classes?

It didn’t matter. Her course was set, and besides, the articles had increased the magazine’s circulation by more than twenty percent. Though most men frowned on the notion that women wanted to be kept informed, it was becoming more and more clear that the female population wanted exactly that.

Heart to Heart
would continue to move in that direction while also giving its readers the serialized fiction and society news they also enjoyed, Coralee’s domain.

As Krista headed back downstairs to put the finishing touches on this week’s edition, she found herself looking forward to the day she would spend with her friend at the circus.

S
unday arrived and Coralee Whitmore appeared at Krista’s front door exactly at the appointed time to pick her up for their outing to the circus. A brisk spring breeze cut through the air, while a weak sun shone down over the river where the circus had parked its wagons and set up its tents.

Krista wore a short pelisse over her mauve-and-black-striped silk day dress, while Corrie wore a gown of aqua silk edged with rose braid, and a matching rose silk bonnet.

“This is so exciting,” Corrie said, filled as always with what seemed to be boundless energy. “I’ve never been to a circus before, have you?”

“Father brought me once when I was a little girl. It all seems different now.”

But perhaps it was just this particular circus. The Circus Leopold was a traveling show that originated in the far north, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. The troupe had made its way southwest though small towns and villages to Manchester, then traveled south through the countryside to Bristol, and eventually London.

Krista and Corrie wandered the grounds until it was time for the early afternoon show to begin. They enjoyed the single ring performance, under a heavy canvas canopy, that mostly featured trained-animal acts. There were two dancing bears, costumed in little red satin skirts and matching hats, and some very charming monkeys that chattered away as they climbed the tent poles into the rafters. The young women watched foot jugglers, tumblers, a pair of gaily dressed clowns and three trick riders who did flips and jumps while standing on the backs of galloping horses.

The smell of sawdust filled the air, and the music of a calliope drifted across the open field, along with the shouts of barkers hawking their wares outside the main tent. It was an interesting way to spend an afternoon, but Krista was a little surprised at how run-down everything looked.

On close inspection, she found the brightly colored costumes faded, the big, dapple-gray horses old and swaybacked. Even the circus performers seemed to be weary people who had seen better days.

Still, the circus was a novelty in London and something to mark the coming of spring.

“I should like to interview the owner,” Corrie said, determined to show the acts in a positive light. “His name is Nigel Leopold. Let’s go see if he is in his wagon.”

They set off in that direction, Corrie gazing around, making mental notes of everything she saw. She had an amazing memory for details, which was one of the reasons she was so good at her job.

“I really liked the bears,” she said as they walked along. “They seemed to be smiling the whole time they danced.”

Krista didn’t mention that earlier, when she had passed by their cage, she had noticed the trainer tying their lips back with a thin piece of string.

She glanced at her surroundings and noticed a group of performers heading back to their wagons to prepare for the next performance. One of the trainers was leading five big gray horses away.

“There’s something about this show,” Krista said. “Everything just seems a bit…
ragged.
”

“Yes, I noticed that, too. I suppose so much traveling is hard on the horses and equipment.”

“I suppose.” But it bothered her that the animals all seemed so beaten down. The ponies’ ribs showed through their thick winter coats and the bears hung their heads as if they hadn’t the strength of will to lift them.

She and Corrie made their way through the throngs of people pouring out of the main tent, and noticed a group gathering in front of one of the brightly painted circus wagons. There were bars on the cage, Krista saw, and wondered what animal might be kept inside.

“Let’s go see what it is,” Corrie said, tugging her in that direction. Coralee was at least six inches shorter than Krista, and smaller boned. They were an odd pair, one short, one tall, one of them blond, the other with fiery copper hair, and yet they had long been best friends.

As tall as Krista was, even standing at the back of the crowd she could see that the creature in the cage wasn’t an animal at all. The sign above the cage read The Last Barbarian, and beneath it Caution! Approach at Your Own Risk.

“It is him!” Corrie nearly shouted. “Come—let’s get closer.”

It was him, all right, the man Krista’s father had mentioned. He was hunched over in the cage, which was too short to allow him to stand completely straight, and naked except for an animal-skin loincloth that hid his manly parts. He stood there shaking the bars like a madman—prodded, Krista saw, by a beefy man with a scar across his cheek, wielding a long pointed stick.

The man inside the cage was manacled hand and foot, ranting and raving, cursing, she was sure, though none of the gibberish he spouted made any sense.

But he was certainly not seven feet tall. Nor was he covered with thick blond hair. Still, he was taller than any man of her acquaintance, with long, shaggy blond hair that hung well past a set of massive shoulders and an unkempt beard that hung down over a chest banded with slabs of muscle. Thick muscles bulged in his thighs and arms, and his eyes…

Even from a distance, she could see the wildness there, the fierce hatred burning in the incredible blue depths, the color more intense than any she had ever seen before.

“God in heaven,” Corrie said in awe. “We need to get closer.”

Her gaze still fixed on the creature in the cage, Krista moved at Corrie’s urging, and they weaved their way to the front of the crowd. Pity for the man tugged at Krista’s heart, and part of her wished she had never spotted the cage.

Dear God, the worst sort of criminal deserved better treatment than they were giving the man in that cage.

The stick jabbed into Leif’s ribs a second time and he let out a roar. He gripped the iron bars and shook them, knowing if he didn’t the stick would find its mark again. There were scars on his legs and arms, scars on his back, scars on his wrists and ankles from the manacles he was forced to wear.

Part of him no longer noticed the pain. That part could barely summon the will to rise each morning and face another hellish day, no longer cared whether he lived or died.

It was the other part of him, the part with the fierce will to live, that kept him going another hour, another minute. Kept him hoping that somehow he would find a means of escape.

Ignoring the roar of the crowd that had gathered in front of the cage, some of them pointing and laughing, others making jeering faces, he looked up at the tiny creature who slipped through the bars to join him. A
monkey,
they called it. Alfinn, he had named it, little elf—the only friend Leif had in this godforsaken world he had stumbled upon, and he valued that friendship greatly.

Leif spoke to the monkey as if it could actually understand him, making fun of the people who were making fun of him, though of course they didn’t know what he was saying. One day, he told himself, he would find a way out of this cage, free of the manacles that rendered him impotent against his captors. One day, he would take the stick away from the fat Snively and run it through the man’s wormy gut.

The monkey chattered, jumped up and down as Snively prodded Leif into a fit of rage again. The crowd roared and fell back from the cage. Some of the women cried out in fear.

He liked that they feared him.

It was the only power he held in a world where he was utterly powerless, his life no longer his own.

Little by little, the crowd began to disperse. They had seen what they came for, seen the wild man in the cage. When he looked out at them again, only two women remained. One was a redhead, smaller than average, and prettier, too, though she wasn’t the sort who appealed to him, being too much like a child.

He remembered what it felt like to hold a woman, a real woman, one who could stir a man’s blood.

The blonde was that way. Tall, voluptuous, ripe for a man’s touch, with creamy skin and a mouth made for passion. His groin tightened. It was good to know that as much as they tried, his captors had not yet broken him. Good to know that he was still a man.

He grinned at the monkey. “Now there is a woman…a real woman,” he said. “She could fire a man’s blood with a single glance from those pretty green eyes.”

Alfinn chattered as if he understood. The blonde said something to the woman beside her, then turned and started walking away. Leif watched as the breeze came up and blew her hat off her head. A cluster of thick golden curls rested on each of her shoulders, as shiny as the sun, only a deeper, richer shade. She bent to retrieve the hat, and even though the fullness of her garments disguised her feminine curves, he could tell that her waist was tiny and her bottom nicely rounded.

“See that, Alf. There is an arse built for a man’s pleasure. If I was not in this cage, I would give her a ride she would not soon forget, a ride that would satisfy us both.”

The grin slid from his face as the blonde whirled to face him. Her cheeks had turned flame-red and her green eyes snapped with fire. She strode toward him like a falcon swooping down on its prey, and Leif found himself stepping back from the bars of his cage.

“How dare you!”

For seconds, he stood there frozen, wondering how the woman could possibly have read his mind.

“You are a crude, vulgar beast! And to think I was feeling sorry for you—what a fool I was!” She glared at him, a look far more fierce than any he had hurled at the crowd. She turned and stomped back toward her friend before it occurred to him that she had spoken to him in the same language he had spoken to her.

“Wait!” he shouted after her. “Do not leave! Forgive me for what I said. I knew not that you could understand me. I did not mean to insult you. I swear I would never insult a woman!”

The blonde’s head went up but she just kept walking, her friend falling in beside her.

“Please, I beg you! I need your help.” A lump formed in his throat. Every day he came closer to losing his mind; dimly, he wondered if mayhap it had finally happened. “By the gods, please come back. I am begging you.” His voice broke. “You are my…only hope.”

She stopped then, stood there with her back to him for several long seconds. Then she turned and started walking back toward the cage. He wasn’t mad; she really had understood. Leif didn’t realize there were tears in his eyes until he blinked and they ran into the heavy growth of beard on his cheeks.

He wiped them away before she could see.

“I am sorry,” he said when she reached the front of the cage. “I know I insulted you, but that was not my intention. You speak my language. No one else understands. I am a prisoner here and in desperate need of your help.”

She was frowning, he saw, no longer angry. “The language you are speaking…how did you learn it?” Her words were pronounced clearly, not perfectly, but well enough that he could understand her.

“It is the way we speak where I come from.”

“That is not possible. No one has spoken Old Norse for more than three hundred years.”

“On Draugr Island, this is the language we speak.”

“Draugr Island? I have never heard of it.”

His heart was beating. He knew one slip, one wrong move, and the woman would walk away, and with her his only chance for freedom. “I sailed from there six months ago. My ship was lost on the rocks in a place far north of here. I was badly injured when I washed up on the beach.”

“You were shipwrecked?”

He nodded. “By the time I had healed enough to know what was happening, I had been captured and sold to the man who put me in this cage.”

The blonde was biting her lip, which was plump and a rich shade of rose. It amazed him to feel a fresh shot of lust for her. Living like an animal as he had for the past six months, he would not have thought it possible.

“I am called Leif.”

She looked down at his wrist, saw the faint trace of blood beginning to seep from the raw spot rubbed by the manacle.

“My father speaks your language much better than I do, Leif. He will be able to talk to you, help you get out of this cage.”

Leif forced himself not to move toward her. He didn’t want to do anything that might seem threatening. He couldn’t afford to scare her away.

“You will come back then, and bring your father with you?”

“Yes.”

“What is your name?”

“My name is Krista Hart.”

“Do you vow this on your honor, Krista Hart?”

For a moment, she looked surprised. “Yes, I vow it on my honor.”

He gave a faint nod of his head. As he watched her walk away, he suddenly felt exhausted. It was the feeling of hope, he knew. He had lost what little he had and now he didn’t think he could survive if she didn’t return.

He sat down in the cage, the little monkey, Alfinn, climbing up on his shoulder. Together they would wait for the man called Snively and his helpers to come. The men would take him into a larger cage, feed him, water him like an animal, spray him down with freezing water to keep him clean, then return him to the smaller cage for the next performance.

Leif’s chest squeezed. Mayhap tomorrow she would come.

He thought of thick, golden-blond hair tied back in curls that framed a lovely face and lively green eyes, thought of a body fashioned by the gods, and prayed that she was more than just a beautiful woman.