LITMIR.BIZ

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look of the garment. He sought solitude, but there was damned little of it to be had anywhere in the village.

      To hell with it. The heat felt good. Already he could feel the tension drain from his body. He pulled open the inner door, stepped into the cloud of steam, and drew a cleansing breath of moist air tinged with herbs.

      Ah, heavenly.

      There would be a bench somewhere. A place to rest. Cautiously he took a step. Another. The heat grew intense, and a healthy sweat broke across his skin. Christ, he couldn’t see a thing. Where was the bench? It should be right—

      A vision materialized in the vapor. A woman. She sat with her back to him, long damp hair clinging to her nude body.

      George swallowed hard. How long since he’d had a woman? Too long. In one languid motion, the vision drew a ladle of water from a bucket at her feet and poured it over her head.

      She turned, and the rise of one perfect breast came into view. Water sluiced over her skin. One shimmering droplet clung like honey to the pebbled tip of her breast.

      He wet his lips.

      As the vapor cleared, their eyes met.

      “Rika.”

      She gasped, but did not cover herself, nor did she look away.

      He was aware of his heart dancing in his chest, of the heat, and the closeness of her. He fisted his hands at his sides because he didn’t know what else to do.

      Her eyes roved over him in an entirely different manner than they had that first day when she’d stripped him naked like a beast in the courtyard. Finally she turned away.

      He breathed at last.

      Seconds later he was dressed and stumbling out the door into the courtyard. The cold air hit him like a hundredweight stone. He felt drugged, hungover. Not himself at all.

      A shape stepped out of the shadows and Lawmaker’s peppered beard glistened in the starlight. “What say you, Scotsman? Will you wed her?”

      Time stood still for a moment, a day, a lifetime, as the sound of the sea filled his ears.

      “Aye,” he heard himself say. “I will.”

      A sliver of moon rose over the water, and in the pearly light Lawmaker smiled.

      Chapter Four

      She didn’t feel like a bride.

      Rika stood naked before Sitryg, the woman who had been her mother’s closest friend, and frowned.

      “Come now.” Sitryg slipped a light woolen shift over Rika’s head. “Is this not what you yourself wished? To wed the Scot?”

      “Ja,” she said, but would not meet the older woman’s eyes.

      “I will say this much for him,” Sitryg said, then pushed Rika down onto a stool and began to work a tortoiseshell comb through her hair. “He’s fair handsome, and canny as any man I’ve known.”

      “Hmph. That’s not saying much. Who have you known?”

      Sitryg clicked her tongue. “Enough, girl. In a few hours he shall take you to his bed. If you’re half as smart as I think you are, you’ll change your mood before then.”

      “Why should I?” The comb pulled harder. “Ow!”

      “Because it will go easier for you if you do. A man expects a compliant bedmate, not a sharp-tongued serpent in women’s clothes.”

      At least she’d agreed to wear women’s clothes. She would have preferred Gunnar’s hauberk and helm. It seemed, somehow, more fitting to the occasion.

      Rika crossed her arms over her chest and ground her teeth. Ja, compliant she’d be for as long as it took. And if her experience with Brodir was any indication, it wouldn’t take long.

      She’d do it for Gunnar. Nothing else mattered. After all, how much worse could it be than what she’d already experienced in Brodir’s bed? Rika toyed with the wide hammered bracelets circling her wrists.

      “I suggest you remove those,” Sitryg said. “They don’t belong with your gown.”

      Rika ignored her. She never removed the bracelets. Not ever, except in the bathhouse, and only when she was alone. A shiver ran up her spine as she recalled Grant’s eyes on her in the sauna last eve.

      He could have taken her then, in the heat, on the birch-strewn floor. Brodir would have. But Grant hadn’t, and she knew why. She repulsed him. Disgusted him. Her size and plain features, her scars—Thor’s blood, had he seen her with her bracelets off?

      He’d stood not an arm’s length from her and had said not a word save her name—yet she’d felt his contempt. Oh, she knew well that sensation. Her father had taught her young that she was less than nothing. She and her brother—their mother, too.

      Why Fritha had stayed married to him all those years, Rika could not understand. When her mother died, it seemed almost a blessing. So peaceful did she rest on her funeral pyre, Rika longed to go with her to the next world.

      Then there had been Brodir’s lessons.

      Rika closed her eyes and swallowed against the taste souring her mouth. By rights, she should have told someone and Brodir would have been punished. But she had not. The humiliation had been too great. Too, she feared he would exact some worse revenge. Instead, she’d borne his abuse in silence.

      And she could bear it once more at the hands of a stranger. She must.

      “Leave me now,” she said, and rose from the stool.

      Her pale woolen gown lay strewn across a bench in the small cottage where she and Grant would pass their wedding night. Most of the islanders slept in the four longhouses that ringed the central courtyard, though some couples built cottages of their own after they wed, in the style of the mainlanders—and the Scots, she supposed.

      “Let me help you finish dressing.” Sitryg reached for the gown.

      “Nay, I can manage on my own.”

      “But—”

      “Sitryg, please.” Rika put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. Only then did she realize she was trembling. This was ridiculous. She must compose herself. “Leave me now. I shall see you at the ceremony.”

      “As you wish.” The old woman covered Rika’s hand with her own. “Your mother meant the world to me, you know. I would help her daughter in any small way I could.”

      She smiled, remembering how close the two of them had been. “I know that, and I thank you.”

      Sitryg squeezed her hand, then left.

      Rika collapsed on the freshly made bed and whispered “I must be strong” for the hundredth time that day. As strong as her mother had been. As strong as Gunnar would have to be to stay alive until she could reach him.

      This wedding was only the first of the trials she must endure. Her father’s wrath would come later and, after she returned, she’d have Brodir to face.

      The fire in the room did little to warm her. Rika rose and snatched the gown, pulled it on and smoothed it over her shift. Perhaps she wouldn’t return to Fair Isle at all after Gunnar was freed. She could stay on the mainland and make a new life. Now there was a thought.

      She donned her sealskin boots and secured her hair with a kransen, a plain bronze circlet that rested lightly on her forehead. It would have to do. She was no beauty, and it made no sense to fuss over her appearance.

      Besides, what did she care how she looked? It wasn’t a real marriage, after all. Following the celebration, Grant would do the deed—damn Hannes to hell—and she’d never have to suffer it again.

      An image of the Scot looming over her naked in the sauna shot through her mind like a lightning bolt. It was not the first time

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