“You and I shall marry.”

The Scot’s eyes popped wide. “Yer daft, woman.” He’d be on his way now, thank ye very much. “Besides, I have a bride.” George rose shakily to his feet. Rika rose with him. Sweet Jesus, the woman was nearly as tall as he. “Arranged,” he croaked, “by William the Lyon—my king.”

She flinched at his words. “It matters not.”

Oh, but it did. Women should be small and delicate. Submissive. Her brash demeanor repelled him…yet his body felt strangely stirred.

“Once we are divorced, you can go home and claim her. The dowry is all I want. It’s mine by right, and I will have it.”

What she proposed was unthinkable. Marriage was a sacrament. ’Twas not a pagan ritual to be done and undone on a whim, simply to gain the bride her coin.

“I willna do it.”

“Then I hope you enjoy our island, Scotsman, for you’ll be here a very long time.” She turned her back on him and marched away.

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Ice Maiden, by award-winning author Debra Lee Brown, will grab you and not let go. When a Scottish clan laird washes ashore on a remote island, the price of his passage home is temporary marriage to a Viking hellion whose icy facade belies a burning passion…. And don’t miss The Ranger’s Bride, a terrific tale by Laurie Grant. Wounded on the trail of an infamous gang, a Texas Ranger with a past seeks solace in the arms of a beautiful “widow,” who has her own secrets to reveal….

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ICE MAIDEN
DEBRA LEE BROWN

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

Available from Harlequin Historicals and DEBRA LEE BROWN

The Virgin Spring #506

Ice Maiden #549

For James with love

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

The Shetland Islands, 1206

He was dreaming.

Aye, that explained everything.

Grit and salt stung his eyes. Icy water rushed over his body in a bone-chilling wave. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. If only he could move or cry out.

“He is perfect,” a feminine voice whispered close to his ear. A soft fingertip grazed his jawline.

“Perfectly dead, I’ll wager.” The rough voice was a man’s, the accent fair strange.

He cracked an eye to the flat, white light of dawn and tried to focus.

“You wager poorly, Lawmaker. Look, he wakes.”

Nay, he wasn’t dreaming at all.

He was dead.

The vision floating above him was enough to convince him. He’d heard of them, of course, in legends told around campfires late at night by seafaring Danes and Norwegians come to trade in Inverness. But he was a Christian and believed not in such tales.

Yet there she was, looming over him, waiting.

“Valkyrie,” he breathed.

The vision frowned, narrowing ice-blue eyes at him.

“You’re right,” the male voice said somewhere at the edge of his consciousness. “He’s not dead, just daft.”

Oh, he was dead, all right. How else could he explain such a creature?

Two thick, flaxen braids secured with rings of hammered bronze grazed his bare chest as she studied him. She wore a helm, as might a warrior, embossed with strange runes—the kind he’d seen on ancient standing stones near the Bay of Firth—and a light hauberk of finely crafted mail.

But she was a woman, of that there was no doubt. The blush of her cheek, the ripeness of her lips, belied her garments and her hard, calculating expression.

His gaze drifted lazily along the curve of her neck and the narrow set of her shoulders. Her arms were bare and sun bronzed, adorned with more of the same hammered metal. With each measured breath, her breasts strained ever so slightly against her hauberk.

“Am I—” he rasped. “Is this—” He coughed up another lungfull of seawater, then met the Valkyrie’s penetrating gaze. “Valhalla?”

Men’s laughter shattered the eerie harmony of cawing terns and cormorants.

“Likely the farthest place from it,” the Valkyrie said. “This is Frideray. Fair Isle.”

His head spun and a wave of nausea gripped him. “But then…” He tried to sit up. She pushed him firmly back down onto the sand. Another icy surge washed over his numb legs and he started to shiver. “Wh-who are ye?”

“I am Ulrika, daughter of Fritha.”

“Rika,” he breathed, fighting to stay conscious.

At her command, a half-dozen hands clutched him and hefted him from the beach. Pain shot through his limbs, and he bit back a groan.

“Thor’s blood, he’s heavy,” the man she’d called Lawmaker said. “We need another man.”

Instantly another set of hands supported his limp, sea-battered body. Her hands. They were small, softer than the others. His head lolled to the side and found her crystal gaze.

“My ship,” he mouthed, unable to make the sounds.

“Lost,” she said, “and every man with it.”

A searing pain twisted his gut, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Nay, it canna be. My…my brother?”

“All.”

The backs of his eyelids blazed with horrific visions of the shipwreck. The storm had come upon them in the night without warning. Biting sleet and lightning, gale-force winds the like of which he’d ne’er known in the Highlands. The howling haunted him still—a high-pitched railing, the shriek of the devil himself. The hull of their ship had shattered like a child’s toy against rocks that had no reason to be there. At least not from the charts they’d carried.

His brother. His men.

All dead.

“May God have mercy on their souls,” he whispered.

The woman snorted and tightened her grip on him. His eyes fixed on the hard set of her jaw as they bore him up a steep hill. She neither faltered nor slowed her pace, ignoring the labored grunts and winded breaths of her male companions.

He was vaguely aware of the landscape around him. Rocky and barren, with a chill deadness about it that was reflected in the woman’s eyes. She didn’t look at him, not once, until the thatched roofline of a long, low house came into view.

They stopped outside the stone structure. He sucked in a breath as his bearers dropped him unceremoniously onto a bench in the courtyard.

“You’re a Scot,” the woman said, and eyed him speculatively.

He nodded, trying to focus on her face. “Grant. George…Grant.” His head throbbed as the white winter sky spun above him like a dervish.

“Grant,” she said. “An odd name.”

“I…I am…The Grant.”

“A chieftain?” Lawmaker said. “Well, then, Ulrika, he is a good choice after all.”

The woman slid a wicked-looking dagger from the scabbard at her waist. He tensed as she cut away his sopping plaid. God knows what had happened to his weapons. Likely lost at the bottom of the sea.

He was too weak to struggle, or even protest. In a matter of seconds he lay naked before her, shivering uncontrollably. Her gaze roved over him coldly, eyeing a sheep for the slaughter. Aye, well, if he wasn’t already dead, he would be shortly. He mouthed a silent prayer.

“He’ll do,” Rika said, and sheathed her weapon. To his astonishment she covered him with a thick woolen blanket.

“Do for what?” A vision of pagan sacrifice flashed in his mind’s eye.

Lawmaker stood over him and arched a peppered brow. “For her husband.”

“H-husband?” His stomach did a slow roll, his head throbbed in time to the dull aching in his bones.

“Sleep now, and regain your strength,” Rika said.

“We’ve much to prepare before the wedding.”

He watched her as she turned and walked away, the short hauberk clinking with the gentle sway of her hips.

Her companions lifted him from the bench.

“Wh-what’s happening?” he breathed, and met Lawmaker’s stoic gaze.

“Something I never thought to see.” The older man smiled cryptically, then followed the woman warrior, Ulrika, daughter of Fritha, into the haze of the longhouse.

“Vikings,” he mouthed.

A band of bloody Vikings.

Rika sucked down the draught of mead and cast her drinking horn aside. “So, old friend, what think you of my plan?”

Lawmaker toyed with the end of his beard and looked at her for what seemed an eternity before answering. “You’re sure you wish to do this?”

“It’s the only way. You know that as well as I. The dowry my marriage brings with it will buy Gunnar’s release.”

“So it would. But we know not where your brother is held.”

“Dunnet Head,” Rika said. “On the mainland. I heard Brodir’s men speak of it.”

“You are certain?”

“Ja.”

Lawmaker nodded. “Brodir will not be pleased. He expects to come home to a bride—and a dowry that will buy him fine goods and timber for ships.”

Rika looked away and swallowed hard. She did not wish to think of Brodir. Not now, not ever. True, they were betrothed in the Christian way—her father had arranged it when she was a child—but Brodir had gone a-Viking months ago, and she prayed each day that some evil would befall him and he’d not return. Absently she twisted the bronze bracelets circling her wrists, and mustered her resolve.

“Brodir will return to a penniless divorcée who will no longer be of interest to him.” So she hoped.

“And her brother restored to his rightful place as jarl,” Lawmaker said, finishing the thought for her.

“Exactly. It will work. It must.” Her brother, Gunnar, meant the world to her. He was the only family she had left. Her estranged father didn’t count, of course. All she wanted from him was the dowry.

She’d do anything to free Gunnar. Anything.

Lawmaker eyed her again, silently, while she fidgeted on the bench, impatient. She must have the elder’s blessing and his help. The henchmen Brodir had left behind to watch her were dangerous men. Without Lawmaker’s consent, her plan was doomed.

Finally he said, “It will be dangerous—and complicated.”

Rika flew off the bench in elation, ignoring the warning in Lawmaker’s implied consent. “I’m prepared for danger. As for complications, I leave those to you.”

“Ja, well…” Lawmaker’s gaze drifted to the bed box at the end of the longhouse where the Scot had thrashed all day in a fitful sleep. “He might have something to say about it.”

Rika smirked, triumphant. The Scot had little choice but to comply. “He’ll do as I bid him.”

“He is a chieftain, a laird. Think you he’ll agree to wed you just like that?”

“Chieftain, indeed.” She made a derisory sound.

“He’s a weakling. Look at him.” Her gaze washed over George Grant’s unremarkable features. “Why, he doesn’t even have a beard.”

Lawmaker cast her one of his ever-patient smiles—the kind he reserved for children, and for her. “Don’t underestimate the man. A beard is not the quintessential mark of virility among all peoples, Rika—only ours. You’ve much to learn about the mainland and its folk, should you think to venture there.”

“Perhaps,” she said absently, and continued to study the Scot. He was more formidable than she’d first thought. Broad of shoulder and well muscled, though she hadn’t seen him on his feet yet, so it was hard to judge his height. Surely he wasn’t taller than she. Few men were.

Her gaze fixed on his long, tousled hair. Rich and tawny, it spilled across the pillow like a river of honeyed mead. Thin braids, like a woman’s, graced each temple. Never had she seen a man plait his hair so.

She smiled inwardly. Ja, this chieftain would be easy to control.

George woke with a start, fumbling for weapons that weren’t there. “What the devil—?” All at once he remembered—the voyage, the shipwreck, the Viking woman.

He blinked the sleep from his eyes as a barrage of peculiar sounds and smells assailed his senses. He lay in a strange sort of bed at one end of the longhouse. ’Twas more of a box, really, elevated off the hardened dirt floor.

In the center of the room a fire blazed, curls of smoke drifting lazily upward and out a hole in the roof. Strangely clad folk—men and women and children—gathered around a long table for what looked to be the evening meal.

His gut tightened as he recalled the last meal he’d eaten. A bit of bread and cheese shared with Sommerled, his younger brother.

Dead.

All of them dead.

Grief gnawed a hollow inside him. He pushed through it and, moving carefully, swiveled naked from the bed box, pulling the soft blanket with him. The sea had had her way with him. Every muscle cried out, and he grimaced against the pain.

Before his feet touched the ground, she was there. Rika, daughter of Fritha.

He stared at her, tongue-tied. She looked different without her warrior’s garb. Her hair shone white-gold in the firelight, falling loose about her shoulders. She was dressed simply in a gown of pale wool, girded with the same finely tooled belt she’d worn that morning. Her hand twitched on the hilt of her sheathed dagger.

“You must eat,” she said. “I’ll have something brought to you.”

“Nay, I willna lay here like a—” He grunted as he tried to rise. She instantly placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. ’Twas warm, surprisingly so, given the coldness of her eyes.

“Lay back,” she ordered, and pushed him down onto the soft pillows. “You’re hurt and must rest.”

She spoke matter-of-factly, with not a hint of compassion. Could he not see with his own eyes that she was a woman, he would not have believed it, so cool and authoritative was her demeanor.

He obeyed, and slid back into the bed box.

She called for a woman to bring food, then settled next to him on a bench, her back arrow-straight, her expression unreadable.

“You are Grant,” she said.

He nodded. “Aye, George of Clan Grant—of Scotland.”

“George?” She wrinkled her nose. “Not a manly name at all.”

Her impertinence stunned him. “’Tis a proper Christian name. But I expect ye wouldna know of such—”

“I shall call you Grant.” She turned to accept a trencher of food from a woman who bore a babe straddled across her hip.

’Twas then he noticed the scar. An angry, razor-sharp line running from her left ear under her chin. He’d not noticed it that morning on the beach. Someone had cut her throat—or had tried.

The tiny bairn squealed, his hands flailing madly. Rika reached out—on impulse, it seemed—and captured the infant’s chubby fist in her hand.

A warm, bittersweet smile blossomed against her cool features. The contrast startled him. ’Twas as if she were a different person altogether.

The moment was short-lived.

Rika caught him staring at her, and the smile vanished from her lips. She scowled at the babe and waved the woman off. “Take it away.”

Hmph. As he’d suspected, she had not a compassionate bone in her body. And yet…

“Here, eat.” Rika thrust the trencher toward him.

The woman shot him a cautionary glance, then hurried back to table. No one else seemed to pay them any mind—save Lawmaker, who watched his every move, and a sandy-haired youth whose twisted scowl and dark eyes were reserved entirely for George.

Nodding at them, George grasped the trencher and accidentally brushed her fingers. A shiver shot through him. She, too, felt something. He watched her eyes widen as she snatched her hand away.

He had no appetite, but forced himself to eat some of the food. ’Twas fish mostly, both salted and pickled, and a gruel of what smelled suspiciously like turnips. He picked at the meal while she studied him.

As his head cleared and his strength returned, he took stock of his situation. ’Twas not the best of circumstances he found himself in. Shipwrecked and alone, without a weapon to his name.

His hosts, if one could call them that, were folk the likes of which he’d ne’er seen. They spoke his tongue, but mixed it with strange words. Norse words. Though they were not like any Norsemen he knew. They were grittier, more primitive—as if time had passed them by.

He counted at least a dozen men in the smoky room, and half again that many women. Somehow, he knew this wasn’t all of them. This was but one house, and he seemed to recall others when they carried him up from the beach.

Fair Isle.

George knew not where it was. Only that he’d been bound for Wick from Inverness, and a winter gale had blown them off course, far to the north. Past the Orkneys, if he had to venture a guess. How would he ever get back?

“You wish to go home,” Rika said, reading his mind.

He dropped the bit of fish back into his trencher and met her gaze. “That I do.”

“You shall, as soon as you’re fit.”

“Ye have a ship then! Thank Christ.” His spirits soared. They would leave immediately, of course. “Who shall take me? Whoever it is shall be well paid for his trouble.”

“I shall take you, as soon as our business together is finished.”

“What business?” His brows collided in a frown. Something in her voice, and the way she seemed to look right through him, caused gooseflesh to rise on his skin.

“Simply this,” she said. “You wish to return home, and I can arrange that. But first, there is something you must do for me.”

George set the trencher aside and sat up in the bed. “What, pray tell?” He wasn’t used to dealing with women, and this one had rubbed him the wrong way from the start.

For a long moment she didn’t answer, just sat there staring at him. He could almost see her mind working. Once, she opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it.

His gaze lingered on her lips. They were lush, ripe, as they’d been on the beach that morning when she hovered over him, her breath hot on his face. He felt an unwelcome tightening in his loins and grasped the edges of the wool blanket that covered him.

Finally she spoke. “You and I shall marry.”

“What?” His eyes popped wide. He thought he’d dreamed that bit of conversation she and Lawmaker had had on the beach. God’s truth, it had seemed more nightmare than dream. “Say again?”

“You heard me. We shall marry.” Her eyes were inscrutable, yet her lower lip trembled, belying her confidence. “I need a husband to claim my dowry. Once I have it, you may go home.”

“Ye’re daft, woman.” He’d be on his way now, thank you very much. He glanced around the bed box for his plaid, but saw neither it, nor any kind of garment. Wrapping the blanket around his waist, he again tried to rise. This time, when Rika tried to stop him, he slapped her hand away.

“I have a bride,” he said, and rose shakily to his feet. “’Tis all a—” Rika rose with him. Sweet Jesus, the woman was nearly as tall as he. “Arranged,” he croaked. “By William the Lion, my king.”

Her eyes widened as she stared up at him, as if he’d said or done something unexpected. She eyed him up and down, then frowned. “You’re tall, Scotsman.”

“As are ye.” He raked his eyes over her body with a lack of tact that matched her own audacity. “Not like a woman at all.”

She flinched at his words. “It matters not.”

Oh, but it did. Women should be small and delicate. Submissive. A proper Christian woman wouldn’t dream of talking to a strange man. Her brash demeanor repelled him, yet his body felt strangely stirred.

“About your bride, I mean. Once we are divorced you may go home and claim her. The dowry is all I want. It’s mine by right, by law, and I will have it.”

He shook his head, not understanding her at all. What kind of scheme was this? “There can be no divorce. Ye are mistaken. A man weds for life.” He tried to move past her, but she stepped into his path.

The sandy-haired youth at table shot to his feet, eyes blazing. George had guessed the lad would be trouble. No matter. George was about to snatch the dirk from Rika’s belt when Lawmaker reached up and yanked the youth back down to the bench.

“Not always for life,” Rika said, ignoring the lad’s move. “Ask Lawmaker. He’ll tell you. Divorce is not common, but does occur among my people and suits my purpose well.”

The woman was clearly touched. “And what purpose is that?”

“I told you. I want my dowry—nothing more. Once we are wed, you shall acquire it for me from my father. When the silver is in my hands we’ll declare our divorce before the elders.” She shrugged. “After that, I care not what you do. Our ship will take you anywhere you wish.”

George opened and closed his mouth. Twice. He shook his head again, as if he didn’t understand her, but every word was clear despite her strange accent.

“Just like that,” he said.

“Ja, just like that.”

What she proposed was unthinkable. Outrageous. ’Twas a blasphemy against God. Did she think to use him to gain her fortune, let her think again.

Marriage was a sacrament and, at its best, an arrangement designed to secure an alliance between clans. ’Twas not a pagan ritual to be done and undone on a whim, simply to gain the bride her coin.

“I willna do it,” he said.

“Fine.” She stretched her lips into a thin, tight line. “I hope you enjoy our island, Scotsman, for you’ll be here a very long time.” She turned her back on him and marched toward the table, where all eyes were now trained on him.

“A lifetime, perhaps,” she called over her shoulder, and didn’t miss a step.

Chapter Two

The Scot was stubborn beyond belief.

For days Rika and her people watched, amused, as Grant worked in vain to build a seaworthy raft of driftwood and pitch and bits of rotten rope.

She stood on the cliff overlooking the beach, her cloak pulled tight about her, and observed him. The wind whipped at his hair and the loose-fitting tunic one of the men had given him to wear. His legs were bare though booted, and she knew not how he could stand for so long in the icy water, his gaze fixed on the southern horizon.

Winter was at its height. A thin crust of snow clung to the rocky outcrops and grass-covered moors of the island. Daylight was short, and no sooner did the sun rise each day then the wind waxed with a vengeance. She turned her face skyward and breathed of the salt and dampness.

All she knew was the sea, what it gave up and what it kept. As she fixed her eyes on Grant she found herself wondering what Scotland was like in the spring.

“He’s given up.”

Rika turned at the sound of Lawmaker’s voice. “Not yet, old man. Still he believes there must be a way. I see it in the set of his shoulders and in the way he clenches his fists at his sides.”

Lawmaker smiled and spared a backward glance to the sheep he tended on the moor.

Rika slipped her arm through his, as she often did, and huddled close. “You might have been right. This chieftain may not agree after all.”

“He’ll agree,” Lawmaker said, as they watched Grant in the surf. “In his own time.”

“Hmph.” They had precious little of that. Her patience wore thin. “He’s done naught but rage and pace the beach all this morn.”

“With you stood here openly watching?”

She nodded.

“Ha!” Lawmaker shook his head. “No wonder the man’s enraged.”

“What do you mean? I don’t understand his anger. The solution is a simple one. He has only to agree and we can move ahead with our plan.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It is.” It wasn’t, but she could see no other way.

“Have you thought what you will do after?”

She hadn’t, in fact. “I’ll do what I always have done—take care of you and Gunnar. Until my brother takes a wife, of course.”

Lawmaker flicked her a sideways glance. “And what of you, Rika. Have you not thought about a husband for yourself?”

She frowned at him. “You know well I have not. How can you suggest it knowing how my father treated my mother? And how Brodir—” she turned away and bit down hard on her lip “—what he did to me.” Her arm slid from his.

“Had I known of Brodir’s misuse of you—”

She raised a hand to silence him. “It’s of no import now. All is behind me. Gunnar’s freedom is what matters.”

“Not all men are like Brodir, you know. Or your father.”

That she could not believe. She sought Lawmaker’s eyes, prepared to make some retort, but caught him studying Grant. The Scotsman moved with purpose up the beach toward them, eyes fixed on her, his face a grim fusion of unconcealed hate and barely controlled rage.

“He is,” she said. “Just like them. I see it in the way he looks at me.”

Lawmaker shrugged. “The man’s out of his element, here in this place. Fair Isle is a world apart from his, and you a woman unlike any he has known, I’ll wager.”

“Ha! So he’s made it plain each time I’ve spoken with him. This wager I shan’t take.”

“Have you never thought to marry for love?” Lawmaker asked.

Thor’s blood, would the old man not let the subject go? “Love.” She snorted. “An emotion for the weak of spirit. Men use it to bend women to their will. Some, to crush them. And I won’t be crushed like an insect under a man’s boot.”

Lawmaker sighed.

He’d heard it all before, but she cared not, and continued. “You speak to me of love, and conveniently forget that you yourself never wed. You and I are alike, old man. We need not such weaknesses.”

“Ah, but there you are wrong. I have loved, more deeply and fiercely than you can know.” He looked into her eyes and smiled bitterly. “One day I shall tell you the story.”

She had never seen him like this, so direct and forthcoming with his feelings. “Tell me now.”

“Nay, for you are not ready to hear it. Besides, look—” He nodded toward the beach. “Your bridegroom comes.”

He did come, and at a pace that caused her to take two steps back. She met Grant’s gaze and saw his rage had subsided. She hardened her heart against what remained.

Hate. Disgust. For her.

She felt it as keenly as she’d felt Brodir’s fist on numerous occasions. Rika knew she was not like other women, and she certainly didn’t look like them. Nay, she was far from the ideal. Perhaps that was another reason she’d evaded marriage.

Who would have her?

Who, besides Brodir, who favored the arrangement only for the coin, and for the humiliation he could wreak on her?

Nay, wifery was not for her, and as Grant scaled the craggy hill before her, she took comfort in the fact that her marriage to the Scot would be mercifully short.

“Woman!” Grant called.

She did not answer.

Out of nowhere, Ottar appeared on the hill behind him, and moved with a speed Rika had not known the sandy-haired youth possessed.

“Ottar, no!” she cried.

Too late.

Grant turned on him, and Rika froze. “I must help him,” she said, and started forward.

“Nay. Be still.” Lawmaker grabbed her arm.

“But—”

“Quiet. I’m trying to hear what they say.” Lawmaker jerked her back, and she watched, her heart in her throat, as Ottar confronted Grant. The howling wind made it impossible to hear their conversation.

“He’s only ten and six,” she said. “Grant will kill him.”

Lawmaker shook his head. “I think not. For all his rage, methinks George Grant is not a man who’d harm a reckless youth.”

“How can you be certain?”

Ottar went for Grant, and Rika shot forward, prepared to intervene.

Lawmaker yanked her back. “I’m a good judge of character.”

One hand on Ottar’s shoulder, Grant held the youth at bay. Rika held her breath, her arm burning from Lawmaker’s steely grip, and watched as the two exchanged some unintelligible dialogue. Finally Grant released him, and Ottar scaled the cliff. Rika breathed.

“See?” Lawmaker said. “I thought as much.”

Ottar shot her a dark look as he brushed past her.

“The boy’s jealous,” Lawmaker said.

“Jealous? Of whom?”

“The Scot. I told Ottar about the marriage.”

“That’s preposterous,” Rika said. “Why would Ottar be jealous? He’s just a boy. Besides—”

“He’s smitten with you. Has been e’er since he was old enough to walk and you to lead him by the hand.”

“Nonsense. We’re friends.”

“He’s nearly a man. Take care to remember that, Rika.”

She had no time to reflect on Ottar’s peculiar behavior or Lawmaker’s explanation of it, because Grant had scaled the cliff and now stood before her.

Rika drew herself up, ignoring her fluttering pulse, and looked the Scot in the eye. “You will agree to my plan?” She pursed her lips and waited.

“I will not,” Grant said between clenched teeth.

She had expected him to yield. Could he not see that he’d lost? That she would prevail?

“In that case,” she said, “there’s more driftwood on the opposite side of the island. I’m certain some of the children would be pleased to help you gather it.”

The fire in his eyes—slate eyes, she noticed for the first time—nearly singed her, so close did he stand. She was uncomfortably aware of his size, his maleness, and let her gaze slide to the stubble of tawny beard on his chin and the pulse point throbbing in his corded neck. Perhaps she’d been wrong to so quickly dismiss his masculinity.

Yet there was something different about him. He was not like the men she knew. She had not the feeling of foreboding she did as when Brodir loomed over her in anger. After a long moment, she realized why.

Grant dared not lay a finger on her.

Likely because he knew Lawmaker would kill him if he did. Or mayhap, as Lawmaker had said, Grant wasn’t the kind of man who…Nay. They were all that kind. Besides, it didn’t matter the reason. The knowledge of his reserve gave her power, and power was something she’d had little of in Brodir’s world.

“How far is it?” Grant snapped, holding her gaze. “To the mainland.”

“Three days’ sail—by ship.” Lawmaker glanced pointedly at the makeshift raft on the beach. “In fair weather.”

Grant’s eyes never left hers. “Three days. No so far.” He brushed past her, deliberately, and stalked off onto the moor. Bleating sheep scattered before him.

Her skin prickled.

“You’ve not much time left,” Lawmaker said to her as they watched him go.

She knew well what the elder meant. Brodir was long past due and could return any day. When he did, Rika’s one chance to save Gunnar would be lost forever.

“This is one of the complications you mentioned,” she said as she watched Grant charge a ram in his path.

“Precisely.”

“Well, then, old man, I leave it to you to sort it out.”

George settled on a bench in a corner of the village brew house and wondered how the devil to go about getting a draught of ale to slake his thirst.

He’d been given free range of the island, much to his surprise, and since he’d been strong enough to walk he’d covered every desolate, wind-whipped inch of it. Save sprouting wings and flying off, for the life of him he couldn’t fathom any way of escape.

Damn the bloody woman and her clan.

All had been instructed—by her, no doubt, though she seemed to hold no great position in the eyes of her own folk—to speak nary a word to him save what was necessary to feed and shelter him.

What little he’d been able to learn about the place and its people, he did so from his own observation and from snatches of overheard conversations.

The village was small, housing less than a hundred folk, and sat atop a cliff on the south side of the island. Below it lay a thin strip of rocky beach, boasting a tiny inlet at one end that harbored the single craft Rika had called a ship.

’Twas not much of one in George’s estimation. There was no natural timber on the island. Clearly the byrthing, as the locals called it, was built of scrap wood gleaned from shipwrecks. The low-drafting vessel looked barely seaworthy, but was heavily guarded all the same—likely due to his presence. Right off he saw ’twas too large for one man to sail alone.

Though sleet and the occasional snow flurry pummeled the surrounding moors, George was comfortable enough in the furs and woolen garments the islanders had loaned him, and with the food and shelter he’d been offered. He was neither prisoner nor guest, and felt a precariousness about his situation that was intensified by the fact that he had no weapons.

’Twas not the first time he’d been forced to use his wits in place of his sword to get what he wanted, though he’d feel a damn sight better about his chances with a length of Spanish steel in his hand.

He supposed he could just wait it out. If it were spring, he’d do exactly that. But few ships dared negotiate even coastal waters in the dead of winter, let alone chanced an open sea voyage. It could be weeks, months even, before another craft lit in Fair Isle’s tiny harbor.

The memory of the shipwreck burned fresh in his mind, though no trace of it, save scattered bits of wood, was left along the rocky shore of the island. He’d hired the vessel and its crew out of Inverness, and had taken a dozen of his own men as escort, including his brother.

Oh, Sommerled.

He raked a hand through his hair and blinked away the sting of tears pooling unbidden in his eyes. What had he been thinking to let the youth talk him into such a daft scheme? They should have traveled up the coast by steed, as was expected.

Expected.

Sweet Jesus, the Sinclairs!

Even now, they must wonder what had become of him and his party. His wedding to Anne Sinclair, youngest daughter of their chieftain, was to take place—he mentally counted off the days—two days hence!

He’d never get back by then. He cursed, and a dozen sets of eyes turned in his direction. Not at this rate, he wouldn’t.

The door to the brew house banged opened, wrenching him from his thoughts. Needles of sleet blew across the threshold instantly chilling the room. On its heels drifted another frosty presence.

Rika.

She did not see him, half-hidden as he was in the shadowed corner, as she made her way to an empty table well within his own view. The youth, Ottar, who’d made it clear to George the previous day he styled himself Rika’s protector, settled beside her on a bench.

The woman needed no protector. She was half man herself. Just as he decided she was, indeed, some freak of nature, Rika threw off her heavy cloak and absently brushed the snow from her hair.

’Twas a decidedly feminine gesture, and George found himself fascinated by the dichotomy. In fact, he could not take his eyes from her. ’Twas his first opportunity to observe her undetected, and there was something about it he enjoyed.

She called for horns of mead and, once delivered, she chatted easily with the youth. Ottar looked on her with a kind of boyish awe. God knows why. The youth had actually warned him off her. What nonsense. He had no intention of touching her, though he didn’t like anyone—man or boy—telling him what he could or could not do.

No matter. The youth was harmless enough. Yesterday on the cliff, George could have snapped his neck with one hand, if he’d had a mind to. At the time, he’d been more concerned with throttling the woman. Even now, as he looked at her, he could feel his hands close over her throat. The scar she bore told him he was not the only man who would see her dead.

The brew house door swung wide again, and Lawmaker came in from the cold. He spied George immediately and nodded. Rika followed the elder’s gaze and, when her eyes found George’s, her fair brows knit in displeasure.

He read something else behind that perpetual mask of irritation she reserved for him, but what it was, he could not say—only that he felt strangely warmed by her cold scrutiny.

Lawmaker settled beside her. He was an unusual man—patient and clever, with an air of intellect about him that was refreshing in what was otherwise a barbaric wasteland of humanity.

Rika pulled her gaze from his and cocked her head to better hear Lawmaker’s conversation. She looked up to him, relied on him. George could see it in the way she seemed to consider the old man’s words before replying—as a daughter would reflect on a father’s advice.

Lawmaker was clearly not her father, though he figured all important in her scheme. The elder was, in fact, the man in charge at the moment. Their laird, or jarl, was away. Gone a-Viking, the children had told him.

What surprised George most was that Lawmaker apparently condoned this marriage scheme. Mayhap the man had not the sense he’d charged him with.

Regardless, ’twas time George learned more of this plan, exactly what would be expected of him. At the moment, he had no other option for quitting this godforsaken place. He rose and moved slowly toward their table.

Rika froze in midsentence, then drew herself up to acknowledge him. Christ, the woman was irritating. “Have you something you wish to discuss?”

“Aye,” he said.

She nodded for him to sit. Why he waited for her consent in the first place, he knew not. He took a place on the empty bench opposite her.

“I have questions about this proposed…marriage,” he said.

Her face brightened. ’Twas the first spark of cheer he’d seen from her, and it made him feel all the more strange.

Ottar snorted, and drained the cup before him. “I’ve work to do,” he said, and pushed himself to his feet, his eyes on George. “I’ll see you later, at table?” The question was for Rika.

“Of course,” she said.

Ottar quit the brew house like a young bull elk gone to sharpen his sheds against the nearest tree. The lad itched for battle, and George had the distinct impression he was the enemy.

“Now,” Rika said. “What would you know?”

“This…marriage,” he began.

She raised a hand to silence him. “’Twill be a marriage in name only, of course. And short-lived at that. You do take my meaning, Grant.”

’Twas not a question but an order, and George took orders from no one, least of all heathen women. Her confidence irked him. Yet a hint of color tinged her cheeks, and he could swear she was unnerved by the topic.

“I understand ye well.” Good luck to the poor sod who dared breach that icy exterior. George was happy to have none of it.

“In name only,” she repeated, louder this time.

“Name only?” A silver-haired man at the next table rose abruptly at Rika’s words. “Name only?” To George’s astonishment—and Rika’s, too, from the look on her face—in a voice both commanding and strangely melodic, the elder recited a snippet of verse:

“‘When a man is wed

Ere the moon is high

He shall bed his bride

Heed Frigga’s cry”’

Hmm. What the devil did that mea—?

“He shall not!” Rika slammed her fist on the table, and her drinking horn clattered to the floor.

Now here was something unexpected. George’s interest in the matter grew tenfold with her response. He watched as the silver-haired man exchanged a pregnant look with Lawmaker.

“Who is Frigga?” George asked, intrigued.

The silver-haired man smiled. “Goddess of love—and matrimony.”

Rika swore under her breath.

“And who are ye, if I may ask?” George said.

“Hannes,” the man said. “The skald.”

“Skald?” George frowned, trying to recall where he’d heard the word before.

“He’s a poet,” Lawmaker said.

Rika shot Hannes a nasty look. “Not much of one, in my opinion. There shall be no—” she crossed her arms in front of her, and George saw the heat rise in her face “—bedding.” She spat the word.

“Oh, but there must be,” Hannes said. “It’s the law.” He arched a snowy brow at Lawmaker, who sat, seemingly unmoved by both the skald’s declaration and Rika’s outrage.

“Hannes is right,” Lawmaker said finally. “It is the law. Without consummation, there is no marriage—and no dowry.”

Rika shot to her feet. “You said naught of this to me before.”

Lawmaker shrugged and affected an expression innocent as a babe’s. “I thought you knew.”

Until this moment, George had not seen her truly angry, and it fair amused him. The self-possessed vixen had finally lost control. Her cheeks blazed with color, setting off the cool blue of her eyes. Those lips he favored twisted into a scowl.

Somehow he must use this opportunity.

“If the coin is all ye want,” he said to her, even as the idea formed in his mind, “ye need not a marriage to get it.”

Her scowl deepened. “Explain.”

“I told ye,” George said. “I shall pay ye well for my transport home.”

“How much?” Her eyes narrowed.

He hesitated, wondering how little he could get away with offering. His clan was comfortable, but not wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. He had his own bride-price to pay for Anne Sinclair’s hand. That silver had gone down with their ship and would have to be raised anew.

Lawmaker cleared his throat. “It makes no difference, Rika, what the Scot offers. If your dowry remains intact, with your father…”

George watched as her mind worked.

“Ah, you’re right, of course,” she said. “It solves not my other problem.”

George had no idea of what they spoke, yet the matter intrigued him more than it should.

“So marriage it is,” Lawmaker said.

Hannes made for the bar. “And consummation,” he called back over his shoulder.

“I refuse to submit to such a thing! He’ll not touch me.” Rika fisted her hands at her sides and seized George’s gaze. He was certain, if she held it long enough, those crystalline eyes would burn holes right through him.

Her breathing grew labored, and George was all too aware of her breasts straining at her gown. ’Twas cold in the room, and before his very eyes her nipples hardened against the thick fabric. All at once, he felt something that startled and disturbed him.

Arousal.

He shifted on the bench and adjusted his tunic. The thought of bedding such an offensive woman—and one so tall at that—was repugnant. She was everything an alluring maiden should not be: domineering, opinionated, and with a roughness about her that was appalling in one of her sex.

Aye, should they do the deed, the hellion would likely wish to mount him.

His mouth went dry at the thought, and for the barest instant he recalled how her braids had grazed his chest the first moment he laid eyes on her.

Rika stiffened, as if she read his thoughts. Unconsciously she bit her lip, and George’s eyes were drawn to her mouth yet again.

An unsettling thought possessed him.

Mayhap heeding Frigga’s cry would be not so disagreeable after all.

Chapter Three

The woman disgusted him.

And intrigued him.

’Twas late and the fire in the longhouse waned, smoldering embers casting a reddish glow about the smoky room. George sat on the bench near his bed box and watched discreetly as Rika bested Ottar at some kind of board game.

She shot him an occasional glance, her eyes frosting as they met his, then warming again in the firelight as she laughed at one of Ottar’s jokes.

Lawmaker sat with Hannes in whispered conversation, seemingly oblivious to everything around them. But George knew better. The old man didn’t miss a trick.

Rika had avoided all of them, save Ottar, since the incident in the brew house the afternoon before. At table she’d been silent, and when George caught her staring at him, he’d read something new in her eyes.

Apprehension.

It should have pleased him. After all, decent women should fear him. Respect him. But all he felt was surprise, and a mild disappointment he was at a loss to explain.

’Twas the talk of consummation that had changed her. Of that George was certain. Her entire demeanor seemed altered since the skald’s matter-of-fact proclamation.

George ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. It wasn’t his idea, this bloody marriage. ’Twas hers. He wanted no part of it. He was daft to even consider such a proposal. Nay, he wouldn’t do it. There must be another way.

He scanned the faces of the men still at table, and those seated around the fire on crudely hewn benches. Blowing snow whistled across the moors outside and flapped at the sealskin coverings draping the windows.

A young woman rose from the central table and caught his eye. She was small and blond, exuding a delicate beauty and an air of sensuality that George found rather appealing.

She held his gaze while she poured a draught of mead into a horn, then moved toward him with a feline grace. “Are you thirsty?” she asked, and offered him the drink.

“Aye,” he said, and took it. Were he on his own shores, he’d consider flirting with this one. “My thanks.” He drained the horn and grimaced at the sweetness of the libation.

“You don’t like it?” The woman pouted prettily.

“I prefer a stout ale.”

“My name is Lina,” she said. “Perhaps I can find you some.”

His gaze slid unchecked over her body, and she giggled. A chill snaked its way up his spine.

Rika.

George glanced toward the gaming table and, sure enough, found Rika’s icy stare. Her hand closed over one of the carved stone pieces and squeezed. The message was not lost on Lina, who slipped quietly back to her place at table. Rika released the game piece.

George marveled at the subtlety of this power play. Aye, all had been told not to speak with him, but the islanders had grown lax on that account these past two days, and Rika had seemed not to care. Until now.

The uneasiness he’d read in her eyes just moments before had vanished. The old Rika was back. Frigid. Authoritative. Mercenary.

All a man could want in a bride.

George snorted and looked away. What in God’s name had he gotten himself into? He had to find a way off the island. Lina had been friendly enough. Mayhap there were others who would help him.

He studied the small groups of men and women lounging by the fire and settled on the benches hugging the walls of the longhouse. Some smiled at him cautiously. Others scowled. He was an oddity to them. ’Twas clear the folk of Fair Isle didn’t get much company.

George had lived among them nearly a sennight now, and one fact rang clear from the snippets of conversation he’d been privy to. Some sort of dissention was at work. Not all of the islanders spoke highly of their absent jarl.

Brodir was his name.

Even now, in the dim firelight, George saw two camps taking shape—those who were loyal to Brodir, and those who were not. Two of the loyalists sat watching him from their bench by the fire.

The rougher of the two, Ingolf they called him, honed his knife on a whetstone, turning the blade slowly so that it caught the reddish light.

The other man smiled wide, revealing a nearly toothless mouth, though by the look of him he could not have been much older than George. Thirty at most. Nay, not even.

“Whatcha lookin’ at, Scotsman?” the toothless one said.

George shrugged.

Ingolf continued to eye him silently, then rose and moved toward him, pocketing the stone but not the knife. The toothless one dogged his steps.

“Methinks we should join him,” Ingolf said to his friend. “What say you, Scotsman? Might Rasmus and I have a few words?” They did not wait for his reply, and sat one on each side of him on the bench.

Rasmus, the toothless one, stank of seal oil and mead. George could see immediately that he was Ingolf’s puppet, and would do whatever the man bid him.

Ingolf wiped his knife on his leather tunic, then held it up to the light. “Think you to wed the tall one?” he said, examining the blade.

The question caught George off guard. No one had yet spoken to him of this ill-conceived match between Rika and him, but they all knew. ’Twas the talk of the island.

Mayhap these two, unsavory though they seemed, might help him find an alternative to this sham of a wedding. George searched for the right words.

“Well?” Rasmus said, sliding closer. “Think you to wed her?”

Under any other circumstance, George would have wasted no time in teaching these two heathens a few Scottish manners. He could disarm them both in an instant and have them whimpering for mercy at his feet—and he would have done so had he not been outnumbered nearly twenty to one by their kinsmen.

“Mayhap,” he said, controlling his instincts. “What of it?”

Ingolf eyed him, and his half smile turned to something more dangerous. “I wouldn’t even dream it, Scotsman, were I in your shoes.”

Rasmus fidgeted beside him, and let out a depraved little chuckle.

“But ye’re no in my shoes, now are ye?” George said, and straightened his spine.

“We ain’t,” Rasmus said. “’Cause if we was, we’d be dead men, just like you.”

George studied his fingernails for a moment, then shot them each a steely glance. “Are ye threatening me, lads?”

Neither replied.

The room felt suddenly over warm, the air close and rank with the stink of them. George was aware of other eyes on him.

Lawmaker’s.

Was this another test then? Like that morning on the beach with young Ottar? The old man watched George closely, as he had that day, waiting to see what he would do.

Lawmaker’s was not the only gaze trained to him. Two others—young men he’d overheard speaking ill of their jarl—watched him, as well.

Hang the lot of them. No one threatened him.

No one.

“The tall one belongs to Brodir,” Ingolf said finally.

George narrowed his eyes at the man. “What d’ye mean?” He couldn’t fathom Rika belonging to anyone.

“If you touch her…” Ingolf slid a dirty finger along the blade of his knife, leaving a crimson smear of blood on the hammered metal. “Be warned,” he said, and stood.

Rasmus grinned over his shoulder as the two of them snaked their way to the door of the longhouse and disappeared into the night.

Lawmaker resumed his conversation with Hannes. The two young dissidents returned their attention to their mead horns, and the mood lightened.

George glanced at Rika and saw that her game with Ottar was finished. She sat rigid, her expression cool, her eyes unreadable.

What in bloody hell was going on here?

Rika poured a thin stream of seal oil onto a rag and worked it into the chain mail of her brother’s hauberk. The armory had been quiet since Brodir went a-Viking last summer. Rika enjoyed the solitude, the smells of leather and burnt metal, the icy kiss of the mail where it rested against her knee.

Ottar worked beside her, carving an ancient design into a shield he had fashioned from a timber hatch that had washed ashore after a shipwreck last year.

The day was clear and cold, and Ottar had built a small fire in the smith’s brazier in the corner of the small hut. Rika set the hauberk aside and warmed her hands.

“Why do you marry the Scot?” Ottar said abruptly.

She turned to him, prepared with an answer, knowing he’d ask her sooner or later. “There are things I must—”

“If you’ve need of a husband, why not me?” He paused and met her eyes, which widened before she could disguise her shock.

“Ottar, you don’t understand.”

“I do. You need protection—from Brodir.” He gouged a knot in the wood, abandoning the delicate skill required for such art. “I will safeguard you. You think of me as a child, I know. But I’m not.”

Rika smiled and placed a hand over his to quell his attack on the ruined shield. “Nay. I have eyes, and I see you are a man.”

He smiled, and in that moment she thought he looked more boyish than ever. One day the dark down on his chin would sprout into a man’s beard, but not this year.

“Then marry me, instead,” Ottar said, and set the shield and the awl aside. “We’re well suited to each other. You cannot argue that.”

Nay, she could not, for they spent a good part of every day together and had been naught but the best of friends for as long as she could remember.

“It’s what Gunnar would have wanted were he here.”

Rika arched a brow at him. Gunnar would not have wanted it, nor would he have condoned the scheme she was about to launch in order to buy his freedom.

No one knew of her plan, save Lawmaker and two of Gunnar’s closest friends. All thought she was merely after her dowry as a way to thwart Brodir. She’d been careful never to speak of her plans for the silver in front of Ottar and the others. Regardless of his loyalty to her brother, Ottar’s tongue was far too loose. She’d tell him when the time was right.

Ottar had worshiped Gunnar until the day her brother was taken from them—carried off in the night and sold into slavery on a ship bound for the mainland. Few believed Brodir was to blame, but Rika knew the truth each time the huge warrior looked into her eyes and grinned. The memory of him evoked a shudder.

Ottar continued to look at her, waiting for her answer. She must think of a way to crush this foolish idea without harming the youth’s feelings. Lawmaker had been right, after all.

“I’m not a suitable bride for you,” she said finally.

“I’m not—” How could she tell him? “Brodir has already—” She fisted her hands in her lap and searched for the right words.

“I know what he’s done, and had I known sooner I’d have killed him.” Ottar knelt before her. “I would…marry you anyway.”

A bittersweet chord tugged at her heart. “I know you would, and I’m grateful to you for the offer.” But were Ottar her only choice, she would never allow such a thing. It was unthinkable. Brodir would kill him, as he would any man of her clan who dared such a bold move in his absence.

As for the Scot, who cared what happened to him? Besides, if they moved quickly, both she and Grant would be long gone by the time Brodir returned.

“Come,” she said, and rose from her stool. “We’ve worked long enough this day. Let us take our evening meal with the others.” Ottar opened his mouth to speak, and she put a finger to his lips to quiet him.

“We will speak no more of this,” she said, and stepped outside into what promised to be a brilliant sunset.

Ottar followed, dragging his feet in the crusty snow. Rika smiled inwardly. Honor and chivalry were rare among her folk. One day, Ottar would make a woman a happy wife. But not this year, and not this woman.

“Ho!” a voice boomed behind them.

Rika turned to see Lawmaker jogging toward them from the bathhouse, his breath frosting his peppered beard.

“I’ll see you inside,” Ottar said to her, and continued toward the longhouse.

She nodded, then smiled at Lawmaker.

Strange that the old man would bathe midweek. She glanced at the small hut on the opposite side of the courtyard and saw that, indeed, a whisper of steam puffed from the hole in its roof.

“It is but Thursday,” she said as he approached her.

Lawmaker took her arm and led her toward the cliff overlooking the water. The sun was nearly spent. “Ja,” he said, “but my old bones cannot seem to get warm. I thought a good long soak would do me good.”

Rika shivered and pulled her cloak more tightly around her. “And me.”

“I shall leave the fire lit when I’m finished, if you like.”

She nodded, and stepped closer to him. The wind whipped at her unbound hair and chilled her to the bone, but she would not miss a winter sunset on so clear a day.

They often stood like this together, she and Lawmaker, watching as Odin’s fiery orb kissed the sea. Someone else watched, as well, below them on the beach.

Grant.

He sat alone with his back to them, unaware of their presence. Rika felt a sudden stab of pity for the lone Scotsman, but quickly pushed the unbidden emotion away. Compassion, like love, was for the weak.

“Once you start down this path,” Lawmaker said, his eyes trained on the Scot, “there can be no turning back.”

Rika had no intention of turning back. Gunnar must be freed. She would free him, and this was the only way she could conceive of to do it.

“You think it will not change you, this marriage.” Lawmaker looked at her, and in his eyes she saw the experience of a thousand lifetimes. “But it shall.”

A shiver coursed through her. “Nay, it shan’t.” The subject unnerved her, and she grasped at the first unrelated thought that crossed her mind. “Ingolf warned him off, you know. Last night, in the longhouse.”

“Ja, but the Scot was not afraid. Far from it. Did you not see the fire in his eyes? I swear his hand itched to rip the blade from Ingolf’s grip and slit both their throats. A lesser man would have tried.”

Rika had seen, and was impressed by Grant’s judgment and control. “Perhaps you should speak with him,” she said as she watched Grant rise from the rocks and walk along the surf line.

“Tonight,” Lawmaker said. “He’s had time enough to think on it.”

George pushed back from the supper table, sated, and made for the door. The two young dissidents who’d watched him all week offered him a horn of mead and a seat by the fire. He declined, wanting some air and a bit of solitude before bed.

The time had come to make a decision.

Today was his wedding day.

In Wick, Anne Sinclair and her family waited for a bridegroom who would not come. George closed the longhouse door behind him and sucked in a draught of wintry air.

The king and the Sinclairs would have his head. There was no way to send word to them or to his own clan about what had befallen him and his men. Mayhap they’d think him dead. Nay, no one knew they’d gone by ship. It had been a last-minute decision, made on the docks at Inverness.

He remembered the look of wonder on young Sommerled’s face when his brother had first spied the bonny ship in the harbor. Stupid, stupid decision. George would never forgive himself.

All lost.

Rika’s dispassionate words echoed in his mind. What kind of woman could be so callous? A woman who dressed like a warrior, who drank and gamed with men, and showed not a whit of the softness and grace expected of her sex.

He’d never agree to her plan. Never. Not if he lived a hundred years on this godless island.

“You’ve made up your mind,” a voice called out in the dark.

George whirled toward the sound, his hand moving instinctively to the place at his waist where a dirk should rest. Damn! This lack of weaponry grew tiresome.

“Who’s there?” he called back, ready for a fight, and walked toward the dark shape lurking in the shadow of the longhouse eaves.

“Lawmaker.”

He relaxed. In the past week he’d formed a cautious association with the old man. He reminded George a bit of his dead uncle, a man who had shaped his thinking as a youth.

“It’s a fair night,” Lawmaker said. “Come and sit.” He gestured to the bench hugging the wall, and George obeyed.

There was no moon, and the stars hammered a brilliant path of light across the midnight sky. The wind had died, as was its wont after dark, and the sound of the sea filled his ears.

Lawmaker sat silent beside him, and he knew the old man waited for him to speak first. George had a dozen questions, and began with one that had been on his mind from the start. “What is your true name?”

The old man chuckled. “Now there’s a question I’ve not been asked in years. You likely couldn’t pronounce it.”

“Why, then, are ye called Lawmaker?”

“It’s an ancient custom we still abide. There must always be one who speaks the law, one who remembers.”

“And ye are that one,” he said.

“I am. Since I was a very young man.”

George could well believe it. The elder had a patience and temperament well suited to such a position. ’Twas not unlike the role of the elders of his own clan.

“And Rika,” he said. “In her father’s absence ye are her guardian?”

“I suppose I am, as much as any man could be, given her nature.”

George laughed. “She is unlike any woman I have known.”

“That is not surprising.”

He recalled the first moment he saw her, there on the beach looming over him. “Explain to me why a woman would don a helm and a suit of mail—here of all places, on an island where there is little threat of danger.”

Lawmaker sighed. “There is more danger than you know—for Rika, in particular. Her life has not been easy. She’s fought her own battles and bears the scars of such experience.”

He remembered one such scar, and imagined tracing it along the curve of her neck.

“And we did not know, when first we saw you lying still on the beach, were you friend or foe, if you lived or nay. Rika is hotheaded, reckless even—save where men are concerned. There she tends to be overcautious.”

He looked at the old man’s face in the dark.

“And with good reason,” Lawmaker said.

George would know that reason, and that unsettled him. Why should he care?

“It’s her brother’s battle gear, not hers.”

“Brother?” No one had said anything about a brother. “Where is he? Why have I no met him?”

Lawmaker didn’t respond.

“Will he no have something to say about—”

“He is gone,” Lawmaker snapped. “No one knows where.”

The old man was irritated, but why? There was more to all of this than he let on. An estranged father. A lost brother. An absent jarl. Whisperings among the women, and tension among the men.

There was a mystery here, and Lawmaker held the answers. George knew the elder would not reveal all to him in this night. Still he pressed for more.

“This Brodir, your jarl,” he began. “Rika is…” How had Ingolf put it? “She belongs to him?”

“Who told you that?”

George shrugged. Lawmaker knew exactly who had told him.

“Rika belongs to no man. Not yet,” the old man added, and shot him a wry look.

He took Lawmaker’s meaning, and the presumption annoyed him. “Why me? There are plenty of men here. If all she wants is her coin, why no wed one of her own? Someone who’s willing?”

“Nay, that would be too…complicated. You are the perfect choice. You have no interest in the dowry or her. Am I right?”

He snorted. “Too right.”

“Well then. What say you?”

George rose from the bench and kicked at the thin veil of snow under his boots. What choice did he have? He shook his head, unwilling to give in. There must be another way.

“Do not answer yet,” Lawmaker said, and stood.

“You’re tense, and still angered over your situation. Angry men make poor choices.”

The old man had a point.

“Go,” Lawmaker said. “Have a soak in the bathhouse.” He pushed George toward the small hut at the end of the courtyard. A fire was lit within, and a warm glow spilled from under the closed door.

Aye, mayhap a hot soak would do him some good. At least ’twould warm his icy flesh. “Ye shall have my answer later,” he called back over his shoulder, and tripped the bathhouse door latch.

’Twas hot and close inside. Steam curled from under the inner door leading to what the islanders called a sauna. George had never seen such a thing before. He noticed that the bathing tubs in the outer chamber were empty. Strange. Lawmaker had said a soak would be good for him.

No matter. He would try this sauna. George peeled off his garments and laid them on a bench next to a coarsely woven cloak. Someone else was within. One of the other men, by the 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 that day she’d thought of him so. Last night in the heat and close air Rika had felt something so overpowering, so foreign, it frightened her.

Desire.

“It’s time,” a voice called from the other side of the door. “Your bridegroom waits.”

George paced the dirt floor of Lawmaker’s cottage and shook his head. “She must be mad if she thinks I’ll recite such pagan words.”

Lawmaker arched a brow in what George knew was exasperation. They’d been over the details of the ceremony a dozen times that day. “It’s not up to her. It’s the law. You have your rituals, and we have ours.”

“But it’s…heathen.” He didn’t want to offend the old man, but there it was.

“It’s a Christian ceremony for the most part.”

“Oh, aye? Well where’s the priest then?”

Lawmaker shrugged. “The only one we had died years ago. Besides, the people like the old ways. There is little left to remind us of our ancestry. The wedding rites are something we all enjoy.”

“Hmm.” Well he wasn’t enjoying it one bit. He supposed he should be relieved there was no priest. ’Twas not a proper Christian wedding and, therefore, ’twould not be recognized by God or king. That was some consolation. No one would have to know about it once he was home.

Home.

Again, he thought of Sommerled.

“Take this,” Lawmaker said. To George’s astonishment, the old man offered him the hilt of a sword.

His fingers closed instinctively over the finely crafted weapon. The weight of it felt good in his hand.

Lawmaker grinned. “It suits you.”

“Why now? And why a weapon so fair?” He ran his hand along the rune-covered blade.

“Oh, it’s not for you to keep. The ceremony requires that you bestow on your bride your family’s sword—as a vow of protection.”

George frowned.

“You have no family here, so I offer you my weapon.” Lawmaker looked at him, waiting for his acceptance, and George knew from the elder’s expression that the gesture was no small honor.

He was moved by the man’s trust in him. “Thank ye,” he said.

“Rika, in turn, will offer you her family’s sword. Her brother’s.”

“As a sign of…?”

“Obedience.”

“Ha!”

“And loyalty,” Lawmaker said. “Do not scoff. I told Rika this, and I shall tell you—” Lawmaker snatched the sword from him and sheathed it. “This marriage will change you both—for the better, methinks.”

He snorted. “The only thing ’twill change is my location. For if I do this thing, I expect to see the bonny shores of Scotland posthaste.”

“Hmm, Latin. You are as I thought—an educated man. It will be a fine match.”

“Stop saying that.” The old man annoyed him to no end. He’d sent George into that sauna deliberately, knowing Rika was there. George knew it, and Lawmaker knew he knew it. Damn him.

He’d not been in his right mind when he agreed to the wedding, but by the time he’d come to his senses, the news was all over the village. He’d given his word, and he was not a man to go back on it. Lawmaker knew that, the canny sod.

“Take this, as well.”

“Huh?” He hadn’t been listening.

Lawmaker handed him a small, devilishly heavy tool—a hammer.

“What’s this for?”

“Put it in your belt. It’s a symbol of Thor’s hammer. For the ritual.”

He looked at it skeptically before tucking it under his belt. “What does it signify?”

Lawmaker smiled. “Your mastery in the union. And a fruitful marriage, if you take my meaning.”

“Oh, aye.” George shot him a nasty look, and the old man laughed. What fruit ’twould bear would be bitter at best.

“Bear with me, son. We are nearly ready.”

’Twas a good thing, too. He didn’t know how much more of this pagan nonsense he could stand.

“Now, about the bride-price. I expect—”

“Bride-price? Surely ye dinna expect me to pay for her? And with what, pray tell?” This was too much.

“Calm down.” Lawmaker placed a steadying hand on his shoulder. “I was about to say, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. When you meet Rika’s father.”

“Fine.”

“For now, all that’s needed is for you to present her with a morgen gifu—a morning gift, after the, uh…consummation.”

George felt his eyes widen of their own accord.

“Well, on the morrow sometime.” Lawmaker fished something out of a chest behind him. “Here, give her this,” he said, and dropped it into his hand.

“What is it?” He examined the delicately crafted silver brooch and marveled at the workmanship. For all their roughness, these islanders were excellent craftsmen.

“Something I’ve had for years. It was Rika’s mother’s, in fact. It’s time she had it.”

George slipped the brooch into the small pouch at his waist and nodded.

“Well, are you ready?”

“As ready as any man who faces the hangman’s noose.”

Lawmaker smiled like a cat who’d cornered a tasty field mouse. “Come, your bride awaits you.”

Rika turned into the courtyard and was not prepared for what she saw there.

The whole of the village was assembled and fell silent when she appeared. Hushed whispers and children’s laughter rose around her, threatening to swallow her up as she walked slowly along the path that opened before her. A sullen Ottar followed in her wake, bearing her brother’s sword.

She was not used to such attention, and her kinsmen’s stares unnerved her. Lawmaker stood with Grant by the well at the courtyard’s center. Mustering her resolve, she fixed her gaze on the old man’s calming features, and moved one foot ahead of the other until she was there.

For a long moment, no one spoke. The weather was blustery, the sky white, and her thin woolen gown afforded her little protection from the chill air.

Sitryg stepped forward, and Rika stooped so the small woman could remove the bronze kransen from her head. It was a symbol of virginity, and after today Rika would wear it no more. Few knew why she’d ceased to do so months ago. Most of the islanders thought her strange anyway and paid her actions no mind.

Lina held the bridal crown. Fashioned from straw and last year’s wheat, it was garlanded with dried flowers, and set with a few precious pieces of rock-crystal gathered from the beach.

Sitryg seated the crown, and Rika stood tall, turning her gaze for the first time on her husband.

Grant’s expression was stone, his eyes cool steel. Attired in rare leather and borrowed fur, he looked every bit a Viking bridegroom. To her surprise, he wore Lawmaker’s broadsword. She glanced quickly at the old man and caught him smiling.

Lawmaker cleared his throat, then nodded at the Scot. Grant stepped forward, and she fought the ridiculous urge to step back. He looked pointedly at her as he unsheathed the sword. His eyes were so cold, for a moment she thought he might use the weapon to slay her.

What did she expect?

This wedding was forced on him. The Scot hated her, and she knew he’d use that hate tonight in their bridal bed, much as Brodir had on many occasions. So be it. She was prepared. Rika swallowed hard and forced herself to hold his gaze.

Grant presented her with the weapon’s hilt and she took it from his hand. Hers was shaking. She motioned for Ottar, but he did not step forward. When Rika turned to prompt him, she saw that his dark eyes were fixed on Grant and that his face twitched with what she knew was pent-up rage.

“Ottar,” she whispered. “The sword.”

The youth thrust it toward her. She nearly dropped it when he let it go and stormed off into the surrounding crowd. Later she would find him and again try to make him understand.

Lawmaker nodded at her to proceed.

She studied Gunnar’s sword. Though it had been their father’s, she had always thought of it as Gunnar’s, and was now loath to part with it. She had little left of her brother, and the weapon had been one of his most treasured things.

“Rika,” Lawmaker said.

She met Grant’s eyes, and read something new in them. Amusement? Ja, the corner of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. Lawmaker must have explained the significance of the ritual. Her hackles rose.

She gritted her teeth behind tightly sealed lips and thrust the sword toward him. Grant’s hand closed over it, and for a moment she hesitated. He jerked the weapon from her hand and smiled.

Thor’s blood, she hated him. That hate fed her resolve, and her confidence. She knew men, and the Scot was no different. They fed on power and domination. Tonight’s victory would be his, but she would win the war.

Lawmaker fished something out of the pouch at his waist, and Rika’s eyes widened as she recognized what he held.

Wedding rings.

No one had said anything about rings.

She narrowed her eyes at him, and he merely shrugged. Hannes stood behind him, grinning.

Grant had obviously been well instructed, for he proffered the hilt of her family’s sword while Lawmaker set the smaller ring upon it. She pursed her lips, and did the same with the weapon Grant had given her.

They exchanged the rings, each on the hilt of their newly accepted swords. Without flourish Rika jammed the silver circle on her finger. Grant followed suit.

There. It was done.

Save for the speaking of vows—a Christian custom Rika never much cared for. Grant raced through the lines he’d been taught, and Rika mumbled her response.

A shout went up in the crowd, and others echoed it. Lawmaker grunted, satisfied, and Rika supposed she should be happy, as well. It was, after all, what she’d wanted—the first step in her carefully crafted plan.

She turned to the crowd of onlookers and searched for the two faces she knew would be there. Erik and Leif. Her brother’s closest friends. They nodded soberly when she met their eyes. The two young men shared her secret, and their stalwart faces buoyed her confidence.

“Wife,” Grant’s voice boomed behind her.

Her head snapped around.

The Scot had the nerve to offer her his arm. “Come, there is a celebration, is there no?”

She scowled. “I don’t wish to celebrate.”

“Ja, she does,” Lawmaker said, and pushed her toward the path opening before them.

Her temper flared. She shot both of them murderous glances, then stormed toward the longhouse.

“Wait!” Lawmaker called after her.

She looked back, but kept walking.

“Rika, watch—”

“Unh!” She tripped over the threshold and hit the packed dirt floor with a thud. Thor’s blood!

A collective gasp escaped the mouths of the onlookers.

Grant was there in an instant, looming over her but offering no help. Lawmaker pushed him aside and pulled Rika to her feet.

“What’s wrong?” Grant said, obviously bewildered by the shocked expressions all around him.

“You should have been here waiting, as I instructed you,” Lawmaker scolded.

“Aye, but she beat me to it. So what?” Grant shrugged.

“It’s an ill omen, you fool.” Lawmaker shook his head at Grant. “You were to carry her across, remember?”

Grant snorted. “She’s so big, I wasna certain I could manage it.”

Of all the—

Her kinsmen roared, and Rika felt the heat rise in her face. She tested the weight of the sword Grant had given her, and was sorely tempted to unman him on the spot.

Instead, she glared at him until the smile slid from his face, then she blew across the threshold into the midst of the celebration.

George followed her into the longhouse, which was already packed with people. Tables were jammed into every available space, and laden with fare—roasted mutton, bread, and a half-dozen kinds of cheese. Flagons of honeyed mead were placed within easy reach of every diner.

The air, as always, was thick and smoky. The central fire blazed. George welcomed the heat, for the weather had turned. By nightfall snow was expected and, from what the elders predicted, in no small measure.

“Ho, Scotsman!” A burly islander slapped George on the back. “Have a go at this rooftree, man, so we can see of what you’re made.” The man pointed at one of the thick timber pillars supporting the low longhouse roof.

George had no idea what the man wanted him to do.

Rika beckoned him to the high-placed table where she sat with Lawmaker. “Nay, you need not partake of such foolishness.”

“Come on, man,” the islander said. “Draw that fine sword she’s given you and see how far you can sink it into the wood.”

George followed the man’s gaze to the timber pillar, which he now noticed was riddled with scars. Still he did not understand. Men crowded around him, spurring him on.

“’Twill predict the luck of the marriage,” one of them said.

“Oh, I see.” George nodded his head, but he didn’t see at all.

“It’s a test of virility, of manhood.” The burly islander slapped his back again. “The deeper you sink your weapon…” He cast a lusty smile toward Rika, who blushed crimson with rage. “Well, you…understand, do you not?”

George understood, all right. “Why not?” he said, enjoying Rika’s discomfort. He drew the sword and raised it double-fisted over his head as instructed by the men. The room went deadly quiet.

Rika glared at him, her eyes twin daggers. He grinned at her, drew a breath and, with all his might, plunged the sword into the wood.

“Hurrah!” The shout went up as a dozen beefy hands slapped him on the back, a few reaching up to rumple his hair. ’Twas all fair amusing.

The burly islander grunted as he pulled the sword from the timber, carefully measuring off the length that had been embedded. Apparently, George had done quite a good job of it, for the men howled as the burly one held the weapon aloft for all to see. After George had been congratulated a dozen times over, the crowd pushed him toward the table where his bride waited, her face the color of ripe cherries.

“You did not have to do that,” she seethed.

“I know, but I enjoyed it.” He smiled again, just to taunt her. He had enjoyed it, but reminded himself that his brother was dead, and that he was far from home.

Too far. ’Twas easy to forget amidst such revelry who he was and why he participated in such pagan rites.

He scanned the faces in the room, and nodded at those he recognized. Most of the men seemed to accept him, which he thought odd. Others—Ingolf, in particular—spared him naught but menacing glances.

“Here,” Rika said, and pushed a strange-looking vessel toward him. “The bridal cup. You must drink from it, and I will do the same.”

The handles were carved into the likeness of a fantastical sea creature. Never had he seen such a thing. George grasped the handles, brought the cup to his lips, and drank. What else? Honeyed mead. Another cheer went up. He screwed his face up as the sweet liquor hit his senses. Nay, there was no hope of a decent ale for fifty leagues.

Three days’ sail.

He passed the cup to Rika and she drained it.

“There,” she said to Lawmaker. “It’s done. All rituals complete.”

“All but one,” Hannes said, and rose from his seat on the opposite side of the table. “Grant,” he said,

“your hammer.”

“Nay.” Rika visibly stiffened beside him. “I won’t have it.”

“It’s custom,” Hannes said, and the crowd cheered him on.

George wondered what, exactly, this custom signified, to cause her such distress. He rose at their beckoning, slipped the hammer from his belt and handed it to the skald.

“It’s ridiculous,” Rika hissed, and turned to Lawmaker as if he would put a stop to Hannes’s antics.

George had no idea what was about to happen, but ’twas clear Lawmaker had no intention of stopping it.

Hannes moved behind Rika, whose fists were balled on the table. So profound was her anger, it radiated from her like an icy heat.

“Get it over with, poet,” she said to the skald.

Hannes placed the hammer in her lap, and every man, woman and child in the tightly packed room let out a howl.

Lawmaker smiled.

“What does it mean?” George leaned behind the fuming Rika to ask him.

“Hannes invokes Frigga, who is also the goddess of childbearing.”

George could not stop his eyes from widening.

“The gesture is meant to bless the bride’s…er, womb.” Lawmaker arched a brow at him.

“I see,” George said, and decided he’d best have another cup of that insufferable mead, after all.

Hours of feasting and drinking ensued, during which Hannes recited a host of verses—many of them love poems, to Rika’s enormous displeasure.

George relaxed for the first time since he’d arrived on Fair Isle, and decided, after all, that this marriage was no great burden. ’Twas harmless, really. A pagan rite, nothing more. Had he agreed to it immediately, he might have been home by now.

His obligations to king and clan, and to the families of his men who’d perished at sea, weighed heavy on his mind. Surely they’d sail on the morrow. His bride was as anxious to secure her dowry as he was to return home.

As for tonight…he’d make the best of it.

Rika sat not inches from him, but had barely glanced in his direction all evening. He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “This was no my idea, ye know.”

His closeness startled her, and she drew back. “I know. It will all be over soon.” Her expression was cool, but her eyes were troubled.

“No soon enough,” he said, and wondered why this much celebrating was really necessary.

She whispered something in Lawmaker’s ear, and the elder rose. “It’s time!” he shouted over the din. “The night is on us.”

“Time for what?” George asked to no one in particular.

Rika’s grim, pale expression gave him his answer.

“Oh, the—”

“Ja,” Rika said, cutting him off. “We will retire now to our…” She drew a breath, and if George didn’t know her for the icy thing she was, he’d think it was for courage. “To the cottage,” she finished weakly.

Without preamble, he and Rika were whisked from the bench and carried outside on the shoulders of a small throng of drunken islanders.

’Twas snowing. Billowy white flakes blustered down on him, clinging to his hair and garments. He sucked in a breath and realized, too late, that he’d had far too much mead. His head began to spin.

Moments later, the door to a small cottage at the other end of the courtyard was kicked open, and Rika was dropped unceremoniously onto the bed within. George was set on his feet in front of her.

Before he knew what was happening, three men relieved him of his weapons, his boots, and his tunic, leaving him next to naked in naught but his leggings. He snatched a fur from the bed and held it in front of him. He wasn’t usually this modest, but the strangeness of the situation unnerved him.

Two women hovered over Rika, and when they drew back he saw that she, too, had been stripped of her outer garments. Her undershift was thin, nearly transparent. In his mind’s eye he saw her as she’d been in the sauna last eve—her skin pearled with sweat, her hair damp and clinging to the curves of her body.

He drew a sobering breath.

One of the women, an elder, said, “Remember what I told you, girl.”

Rika did not respond, nor did she move a muscle. Hannes and Lawmaker and the few others packed into the tiny cottage fell silent. Finally she tipped her chin at George and said, “Do it then. Get it over with.”

He looked at her, uncertain of her meaning.

She set her jaw and eased back onto the bed. “I’m ready, Scotsman. Finish it.”

“What?” he croaked. Truth dawned, and his mouth gaped. “Ye mean…” He glanced at the others in the room, and shook his head. “She canna mean what I think she means?”

“Ah, what’s that?” Lawmaker said, his face as innocent as a babe’s.

Oh, nay. Surely they didn’t expect…

“It must be witnessed,” Hannes said. “It’s the law.”

George stood speechless, clutching the fur.

“Go on then,” the burly islander said, and slapped him on the back for what had to be the hundredth time that night.

“With all of ye here? Ye’re daft.” In truth, since the third or fourth flagon of mead he’d been thinking he wouldn’t mind it so very much. And why not? Any port in a storm, so the Inverness sailors were fond of saying.

But this, this was unthinkable.

Rika sat up in the bed. “You must, or it won’t be legal. Am I right?” She looked to Lawmaker for confirmation. “Unless of course, we don’t have to do it at all?” Her face lit with hope.

“We’ve been all through this,” Hannes said. “Have we not?”

“Ja, we have,” Lawmaker said. “But it need not be witnessed. That’s an ancient custom we rarely practice. I, myself, shall attest to the legality of the marriage when the time comes. Now, let us away.”

“But—” Rika flew from the bed as Lawmaker herded the onlookers from the room. “Nay, you must stay!” Her eyes widened in what George could swear was fear. “Sitryg, Lawmaker, do not leave me here alone with him.”

Lawmaker paused in the doorway and cast her a hard look. “He’s your husband now. You must trust him, as he has trusted you in agreeing to this bargain.”

She started toward the door, and on impulse George reached out and grabbed her braceleted wrist. Her whole body went rigid at his touch.

“Remember, too, what I have told you,” Lawmaker said to her. “Not all men are the same.”

George looked into the blanched face of his bride and, as Lawmaker closed the door on them, wondered what the devil the old man meant.

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