Chapter 9

CHAPTER NINE

" S o you are fucking the Saxon, then."

Ingrid didn't need to turn around to know who was behind her. Even if she had not recognized Ivar's voice, no one else would have talked to her so crudely. She threw a quick glance around to confirm that, though no one would be able to hear their conversation, she was in easy distance of help, if need be. Just beyond the fence, she spotted Bj?rn, talking to Magnar and Frida.

She relaxed, knowing nothing could happen to her today.

"Yes, I am," she said with a calm she didn't feel. But she was not about to humiliate herself by admitting that Caedmon was not, in fact, sharing her bed, and never had. As far as Ivar was concerned, the two of them were lovers and that was how it would remain. Her self-esteem demanded he believe it. He'd once told her no one would want her, she needed him to think someone did. And not just anyone. An honorable, dashing man.

"My, you weren't lying when you claimed you didn't want just anyone between your legs. You really do choose your men carefully. The hero of the village, the savior of women, no less!"

She tightened her hold on the leek in her hand. Forget the taunt about her supposed superior attitude, he made it sound as if having helped the women and saved them from rape was something shameful, or at the very least unworthy of praise. Well, she shouldn't be surprised, should she? For him, rape was a game, nothing more, certainly not something a man should feel any guilt over.

Instead of answering, she reached for another leek and pulled. He wanted to make a scene, but she was not going to indulge him. She just wanted him gone.

"A Saxon!" Ivar spat. Her lack of reaction seemed to infuriate him. While she worked hard at composure, he seemed to get himself closer and closer to an outburst. "Have you no dignity? Don't you think you should?—"

"Here's what I think," she snarled, finally standing up to face him, "I think that you should stop talking and leave. Now. I have nothing to say to you."

Why was he bothering with her all of a sudden? For five years they had not exchanged a single word in private. At first she had feared he would constantly seek her out, but to her great relief, he had left her alone. And now, because he thought she had found herself a lover, he was sniffing at her door. Why?

Was he jealous?

Anger seared her veins at the notion. How dare he be jealous, or anything, where she was concerned? Her fingers tightened into fists and she considered throwing the leek at him—or shoving it up a place where one did not usually store vegetables.

"I've missed you, you know, Ingrid," he said, taking a step toward her. If he took another, he would be too close for comfort. Then she would use whatever weapon she had. The mere idea of him putting his hands on her was enough to make her heave.

"You've missed me?" she repeated, incredulous.

"Yes. You were my first conquest and I've never been able to forget you. I still have feelings for you, I still want you in my bed. We never had time to see where things could go between us, all because of a stupid misunderstanding."

He still wanted her in his bed? Was that what he meant by having feelings for her? And he thought that what had happened was a misunderstanding? Was that really how he remembered it? This time anger caused her vision to blur.

"Go now, or I swear you won't leave in one piece," she hissed, pointing her leek at him as she would a dagger.

Ivar bared his teeth in a grimace, but she was too incensed to be afraid. Let him try to touch her if he dared! Then he would see how much she had missed him.

"I'll leave. Enjoy your Saxon while you can, but know that I'll be waiting for when you get fed up with him. I'll give you what you need then."

She didn't respond, didn't move one inch. Finally, he left.

For a long moment Ingrid stared at the vegetable patch without seeing anything.

"Are you all right?"

Caedmon approached. From a distance he'd seen Ingrid deep in conversation with a man. He'd recognized the tall Norseman who had accused him of stealing the horses the other day. That simple fact had set him on edge. He remembered how she had seemed to want to put him in his place. These two were not the best of friends, and no good could come from the confrontation. His instincts had been confirmed a moment later. Even from where he was, it had been obvious that the conversation was tense.

Before he'd known what he was doing, he'd gone to join her. By the time he'd drawn to her side the man, Ivar, if he remembered his name correctly, had left, but Ingrid still appeared riled up. She was holding a leek as she would a weapon, the gesture betraying her thoughts more efficiently than any explanation would have. What had happened? What had the man told her?

Slowly, she looked up at him and he saw that it was going to take her some effort to shake herself off from the emotion taking hold of her. It was fury, he realized, not fear, as he had first thought. It hardly reassured him. The man had no business making her angry any more than scared.

He fought the urge to draw her into his arms. They had not seen each other since the evening before. When he had finally made it back to the hut in the middle of the night after working on the necklace, she had been asleep. And when he'd woken up this morning, she'd already left.

"Let's go back home," she said, as if speaking to herself, before dropping the leek into her basket.

Caedmon had no choice but to follow her.

That night they ate in uncomfortable silence. The tense atmosphere was a far cry from the usual easy intimacy between them and he could not rid himself of the impression that Ivar was responsible for the change.

"What did the man tell you this afternoon?" he asked as they swapped their empty bowls for pastries filled with wild fruit. The meal had been sumptuous, as usual.

Ingrid bit into her pastry before answering. "What man?"

What man?

He started at her incredulously. As if she'd forgotten the incident, or how she had wanted to bludgeon him to death with a leek. It was obvious from the icy tone that she wouldn't welcome any more questions on the topic, however, so he remained silent.

"Tomorrow I'll leave," he announced once they had finished eating.

It was more than time. His injury was healing well and, in truth, he should probably have left days ago, only he had put off the inevitable for as long as he dared. But now, seeing how much it bothered him to see Ingrid upset, he understood that he had better leave before his feelings for her developed into something even more problematic. He had a history of falling for the wrong woman and suffering as a result. He was just about thinking he might survive the loss of Frigyth, now was not the time to get himself entangled in another web of his own making.

"You're leaving already?" She lifted wide, blue eyes to him. Would he ever be able to see sapphires without being reminded of her? He doubted it.

"I've been here for more than two weeks," he reminded her. It was a lot more time than he needed to recover, and she knew it. He'd been walking about for days and even old Helga had declared herself satisfied with his recovery.

"Yes." Ingrid gathered the last of the pastry crumbs up in her bowl and stood up. "I need more thread for my sewing, so I will go with you into town to buy some if you don't mind."

He nodded, glad of the reprieve. As soon as he had announced his intention to leave, he'd realized that he wasn't quite ready to say good bye, but he could not change his mind now without appearing like a fool.

Once she'd come back from washing the bowls, Ingrid seemed restored to her usual self and started to talk. It was as if she wanted to make the most of their last night together. He welcomed it, because he wanted the exact same thing.

"How old were you when you left town?"

"Twenty-four summers."

She seemed to mull on this, as if it were of great significance. "The same age I am now."

"Yes."

He smiled. Upon first meeting her, he'd thought her young but now that he knew her better, he found it hard to believe she was ten years younger than he was. In his mind they were of an age. She was so much more mature than he'd been then, and perhaps would ever be. Living on her own didn't seem to weigh her down, like it did him. She was happy with her own company, and obviously didn't need anyone to feel complete. He envied her this confidence.

"Tell me about London," she said, settling herself more comfortably in the chair.

"Why?"

She shrugged, as if not quite sure why she wanted to hear about it. "I know everyone in the village. I was born in this house, I grew up here, I have never traveled farther than the town or the coast, I hardly ever meet new people. Next to you, who's lived in a strange city and crossed the country many times, I feel ridiculous."

"You're not ridiculous!" Caedmon protested. Such a word applied to her was what was ridiculous.

"Well, maybe not ridiculous but you know what I mean. You have no idea how wonderful it is to talk to someone who doesn't know all there is to know about me already, who asks unexpected questions, who doesn't presume he can guess what my answers would be, who doesn't mind the eccentric side of me I never allow myself to show."

He could not help another smile and found himself thinking that he had smiled more in three weeks with her than he had in three years in London. "No, I don't mind your eccentric side at all." In fact he loved it.

"With you I feel at ease, without knowing quite why. Usually I don't trust strange men. Not that I meet many, as I just told you."

At the mention of strange men, he instantly sobered. "I cannot say I blame you, considering what the Saxons did the other day."

"Yes. It's not only Saxons, though," she said under her breath.

Everything within Caedmon tightened. There it was again, the allusion to some dark event in her past. This time he would not let it pass. He was leaving tomorrow, if he didn't ask now, he would never know. It shouldn't matter, but somehow it did. He needed to know exactly what had happened to this woman he'd come to care about or it would eat up at him.

"Why are you afraid of men? Did someone hurt you?" he asked gently.

For a moment he thought she wouldn't answer, which only confirmed his suspicions. Someone had hurt her, and she was finding it hard to talk about it. Blood boiling, he waited. If she didn't want to say anymore, then there was nothing he would be able to do. He would not force a confession out of her. But just when he'd lost hope that she would ever answer, she did.

"When I was eighteen I got involved with a boy from the village. For a while, everything was good. We shared a few kisses, and it was enough for me, but then he started to want more."

"Why am I not surprised?" Caedmon growled to himself. This was all too predictable.

She misunderstood his reaction for lack of interest. "I'm sorry, this is of no interest to you. If you'd rather not?—"

"No. Please carry on. I asked, so I might as well hear the rest of the story now." He had better not let her see how important her answer was to him. Far from being uninteresting, it was of utmost importance. There was a pause, too long for his liking so he asked: "Did you agree to the man's proposition?"

"Yes. It made me feel beautiful, desired, like a woman. I'd never been seen like a woman by anyone before, only a child."

Well. He was surprised by how readily she admitted to such feelings. But he should have known. The woman was anything but predictable. Her next sentence, however, shocked him.

"We started sleeping together. Then one evening he took me to his parents' hay loft and asked if he could blindfold me. I agreed."

Holy hell.

Blood shot straight to his groin.

"What happened?" he asked, more aroused than he had been in months. And this time it was not because Ingrid was bent over him. It was because of what she was saying, because she had revealed an adventurous, wild side to her that could not fail to rouse his interest. He was not very proud of this reaction, after all, they were discussing something painful to her, but he was a man, and imagining the beautiful Norsewoman naked with her eyes veiled with a cloth was an enticing image.

"We started to..." Her voice trailed and she flushed.

"Yes. I understand. No need to be more specific," Caedmon growled. It was one thing imagining her spread eagled on a bed of hay, quite another picturing a man laboring on top of her.

"It was fine but after a while I thought something was odd. It felt different, he moved differently, smelled differently." She shivered, like someone remembering something unpleasant. Ice spread through his veins and the pulsing in his groin instantly stopped. What would she reveal? "And no wonder. I removed the piece of cloth covering my eyes and saw…saw that it wasn't him inside me at all, but one of his friends."

Caedmon started when a rude word escaped his lips. He very rarely swore out loud but if ever an occasion warranted it, this was it. She'd been tricked into sleeping with a stranger by none other than her lover? This had to be the single most outrageous thing he'd ever heard.

"Where was the boy while this was happening?"

Had he let his friend into the loft and abandoned her to her fate, with no guarantee of how she would be treated? No, he had done even worse, as her answer revealed.

"He was on the side, watching us, and…touching himself." A pause. "Next to him was a third man, watching and touching himself, also. For a moment, I was too stunned to react. Then I pushed the boy off me and ran to the door."

This time Caedmon was too shocked to even swear. He just stared at Ingrid, who had not looked at him once since she'd started her tale. So not only had her lover offered her to two of his friends without her agreement but he'd found the idea of her being used against her knowledge so arousing that he'd masturbated to the scene. The whole thing was sickening and he wasn't sure what to say.

Eventually he cleared his throat to ask. "Did they…did they let you leave?"

He could not be sure they had. She'd been alone and in a state of shock. If the two friends had been promised they could enjoy her favors, then they would not have been best pleased to be denied their pleasure, and what could she have done against the three of them?

"Yes. I ran, and reached the hut before they could catch me. Fortunately, as I was naked, it was nighttime and no one saw me. My brother was away at the time, he'd gone to visit his wife's sister in Mercia. I bolted my door and spent the night crying over my stupidity."

"Stupidity?" he hissed. "You don't think this was in any way your fault?"

She bit her bottom lip. "I should have?—"

"You should nothing. How could you have imagined such a devious idea? The boys are all to blame for this, not you. Their youth was no excuse."

She was still staring at her hands. He waited. "The worst of it was..."

Caedmon braced himself to hear what she thought was worse than what she had just described because he sure as hell could not think of anything.

"I was raped but I didn't even know it until after it happened. All the while, I was being used against my will but I was not aware of it. I did not struggle, I did not protest. I even..." She closed her eyes. "I even enjoyed some of it. It's humiliating. It makes me feel like a…Do you have any idea how that makes me feel? They laughed as I ran, saying that I had not been so prudish a moment ago. And I had not!"

Oh, she was right. That made it all worse. Her body had welcomed her attacker in, her mind had not raised the alarm, her senses had been won over. As a result she was not able to rid herself of the notion that she had been complicit to the assault, even if she hadn't been. She had been tricked, not seduced. And her lover and his despicable friends had laughed at their own cleverness.

Caedmon wanted to howl.

"In the morning, I decided I would be better off on my own, that men could not be relied upon. In any case, there was no other choice, for who would want me after this?"

Not want her? Who on earth had put such ideas into her head? As if he needed to ask. The boys. As they'd laughed while she scrambled back to her feet, they would have told her she was now spoiled goods and would never find a decent man to have her. Now he knew where her ridiculous notion of women being unworthy after a rape came from. From the three bastards who had put it there.

"They said I had better keep my mouth shut about what happened because if anyone knew I'd already slept with two men and enjoyed every moment of it, they would never want to have anything to do with me." Ingrid sounded defeated, which was worse than angry. It was as if she didn't even question the truth of the statement.

"But, of course, they would tell you that!" Caedmon exploded. "Don't you see? They wanted you to keep silent to save their miserable hides! It was for their benefit, not yours. They knew that if people found out what they had done, they would have to pay for it. And they were right about that, at least. Wolf, your brother, or anyone would have taken them to task over it."

She shook her head as if she wasn't interested in establishing the truth. "It matters not, anyway. It's all in the past. But now you know why I think that men cannot be trusted. I was reminded of it only the other day with the Saxons."

"Yes." What could he say? "It is clear that some of them can't. But not everyone is like those bastards."

"I know," she sighed and finally looked at him. The pain he saw in her eyes almost floored him. "Deep down, I know it. Still, it's not worth the risk. I will never marry. Better to be on my own than to be used and disappointed, don't you think?"

Silence stretched in the hut.

How does one recover after such a confession? Caedmon had no idea.

"I don't trust women, either," he said after a while.

What had pushed him to say that he wasn't sure. But Ingrid had just confided her painful, very personal story to him, and he wanted to confide his with her, even if it was not as traumatic. He'd not told anyone about his humiliation, would most likely never tell anyone else but all of a sudden he wanted to tell Ingrid. It wasn't fair for her to be the only one feeling ill at ease because of something she'd revealed, especially when she was in no way to blame for what had happened. She'd not been stupid, contrary to what she thought, she had agreed to a little erotic game with someone she thought cared about her, and had then been taken advantage of, it was not the same at all. It was his role to make her see that she was not alone in having been made a fool.

She stared at him, as if she'd guessed all he was not saying. "Why don't you trust women? What happened to you?"

He ran a hand down the back of his head. "You wanted to know about London. Well. This is what happened in London. After years spent on my own, doing little else than honing my craft, I became betrothed to a woman called Mildred."

Why did that sound ominous, Ingrid wondered? Usually a betrothal was a good thing. So, had the woman died? Had Caedmon fled the town in grief? Was that why he had decided to go back to his hometown? She had not thought that could be the case before but, after all, why not? She looked at him more closely and decided that he seemed angry rather than heartbroken at the thought of this Mildred. In all probability, she was still alive. Besides, the death of someone dear wouldn't explain why he didn't trust women.

She waited for the rest of the explanation.

"It all happened very quickly between us. One day she came to the shop to have a ring repaired and she took a shine to me. She was beautiful, and not shy with her advances." He averted his gaze as if ashamed of his weakness. "I was only too happy to be seduced."

Ingrid's chest tightened. It was not hard to imagine that he attracted women and, as an unattached man at the height of his virility, he would have had no reason to refuse a beautiful woman coming on to him. There was no need to feel embarrassed about it, not in front of her, who had slept with Ivar, all the while knowing she would never marry him.

"About a week after we'd met she started talking of marriage."

At that, Ingrid couldn't hide her surprise. A week was no time at all to get to know someone, never mind agreeing to share the rest of their life with them. Why, Caedmon had been living under her roof for three weeks now, three times the length of his and Mildred's courtship, and she could not say she knew him well enough to decide whether they would suit as husband and wife.

She blinked.

Where had that thought come from? She'd just told him that she didn't trust men and never wanted to marry and she'd meant it. Now she was thinking about the best way to decide if someone was suited for marriage?

"Did you agree?" she asked more brusquely than she intended. They were talking about what had happened to him, not about her foolish ideas.

"Yes. When she came to live with me, she asked if her brother could join us. He didn't get on with their parents and she worried he would one day come to blows with his violent father, she explained, and get seriously injured, if not worse." When Caedmon met her gaze Ingrid saw that his irises, green a moment ago, had veered more toward brown, betraying an intense emotion. Disgust? Self-hatred? Shame? She couldn't tell. "I agreed, even if I wasn't thrilled by the prospect. But what could I do? She kept telling me I was her only hope. It would only be temporary, time for her bother to learn a trade to support himself. I could not see how I could refuse."

"No, of course not." No one would want to have a young man's death on their conscience.

Ingrid wasn't quite sure where this was going. She was grateful to Caedmon for trying to make her feel better by sharing his own embarrassing story but she had not yet heard anything that even started to compare with what had happened to her. So far he'd only proved that he had been hasty in his decision to marry and generous with his future wife's brother, hardly something anyone could criticize him for.

"The day before we were supposed to marry, I got home earlier than usual and found them in bed together."

A gasp escaped her lips. The tale had taken a sudden, shocking turn. "In bed ?" Did he mean what she thought he meant…The look he threw her confirmed that the pair had not been sleeping at the time. "Brother and sister? That's monstrous!"

Caedmon let out a brittle laugh. "It turns out that they weren't brother and sister after all, but lovers. Some time before we met, Mildred had fallen with his child but her parents didn't think the man would make a good husband, and I have to agree with them. He was as lazy as anyone I'd ever met." He shrugged, as if the man's character didn't matter. "But they didn't see a problem with her getting married to me, a respectable goldsmith, a good man. I never met them and I don't think they knew she had asked for her lover to live with us. In any case, I care not. That night I left London, never to come back."

"You left them the house, the shop?" Surely not?

He shrugged again. "They're welcome to it. The poor child will need somewhere to live and without me to operate it, the shop is worth nothing anyway. I took all that was important with me, my tools, the gems and precious metal. That's why I was able to repair Magnus' brooch so easily."

"So..." Ingrid was dumbfounded—and not a little bit outraged on his behalf. "If you'd not seen them together that night, you would have found yourself married to a woman involved with someone else and already with child?"

He would have found out a few weeks after their wedding, when it was too late, the depth of her deception. It hardly bore thinking about. Now she understood Mildred's haste to get married. She'd had to bind him to her before she started to show.

Caedmon nodded. "Eventually, I would have found out she never had any brothers, and only meant to use me. The baby would have been born full term only five or six months after we'd first slept together and I would have understood her real motives for marrying me. But it would have been too late."

Ingrid felt a surge of hatred toward this Mildred, whom she imagined as a sultry seductress. The unscrupulous woman had wanted to give her lazy lover a roof and her bastard child a name, and never once had she thought to the pain she was causing Caedmon.

"Why did you agree to the match with a near stranger?"

Seeing as they were being honest with each other, she might as well ask the question burning her lips. Caedmon was no idiot. He must have sensed there was something odd in Mildred's haste to be married. A woman as deceitful as she appeared to be should have roused his suspicion. Or…Perhaps he'd been head over heels in love with her. That would explain a lot. He'd just told her she was very beautiful and very free with her favors, and didn't people say that love was blind? But Ingrid couldn't hear any pain in Caedmon's voice when he spoke about what had happened. He had not been hurt by the betrayal, only angered.

No, she decided. He had not been in love with the woman.

So why had he agreed to marry her so quickly? And why had he still been unmarried two months ago, for that matter? Women would have fallen over themselves to lure such a handsome, personable man into marriage. Had he, like her, deliberately shunned all to do with marriage and family until that moment? But if he'd held out for so long, why then had he fallen so easily for someone as unsuitable as Mildred? No one renounced years of conviction in such a short time, unless they had fallen in love.

Try as she might, she could not make sense of it.

Why had he agreed to the match?

Caedmon sighed at Ingrid's question. What could he say? He could tell her he hadn't known the extent of Mildred's treachery, and that was true, but deep down he had always felt something was off. Mildred had treated him too casually for him to believe she was in love with him, but he had not let it bother him. After all, he had not been in love with her either so it mattered little. Theirs would not have been the first union contracted for reasons other than love and he didn't think Ingrid would judge him for agreeing to such a cold arrangement.

Still he hesitated in being honest because he was ashamed of his reasoning.

Mildred had wanted to use him, but he too had meant to use her, albeit in a different way. He'd thought that as a married man, he might spend less time obsessing over a woman who'd disappeared from his life. He'd hoped that having a lusty partner in his bed at night would allow him to ease some of his frustration and he was not proud of the idea.

In the end, he decided to be honest with Ingrid, withholding only the name of the woman who had hurt him. It would not be fair to Frigyth, who was one of her friends. What did he have to lose anyway? If Ingrid thought him a fool for remaining fixated on one woman for so long, it mattered little. Tomorrow he would be gone, and they would in all probability never see each other again.

"I never felt anything for Mildred, except lust, and I never placed any real hope in a marriage with her," he said bluntly.

There.

With luck, having admitted it out loud would stop him from making the same mistake the next time a woman he barely knew asked to wed him.

As for him, he knew he would never ask anyone to marry him again. He would never be able to handle another refusal.

"Ten years ago I asked a woman to marry me. Twice. She refused me. Twice. And then she married someone else. I thought I would eventually forget her and meet someone I wanted to be with, but it never happened." Now came the embarrassing part. "And I didn't want to be the only man I knew who lived on his own. Damn it all, I'm almost five and thirty, I should have a wife, a family by now! I'm a good man, everyone keeps telling me that, and yet I'm not good enough, apparently! But why should I not be considered as a potential husband just because I am not a big, hulking Norseman?"

He was getting himself into a lather and he could tell his vehemence was surprising Ingrid, if not worrying her. But he couldn't stop now that he had started. Frigyth had felt something for him once, he was certain of it, then she had rejected him in favor of that damned Sigurd and since then, he'd not been able to attract any woman worthy of attention. All they ever wanted from him was a tumble in bed. Or, he amended in an effort at honesty, perhaps that was not quite the truth. Perhaps some of them had been willing and ready for something more meaningful, but he had been unable to see it, too obsessed by memories of his childhood sweetheart and embittered by her refusal to marry him.

In any case, the result had been the same. He'd ended up alone.

And he was thoroughly sick of it.

"You think Norsemen are the only men women want?" Ingrid sounded nonplussed. But he knew that was the case. Hadn't he seen countless proof of it?

"Saxons apparently do!" he erupted. At least Frigyth did. And he had heard women gush about the tall, strapping warriors enough times to doubt she was the only one. Why was Ingrid even surprised? Wasn't the village full of Saxon women who'd fallen under the spell of the men living here? Merewen, Frigyth, Dunne, Agnes…Her own brother was married to one of them, surely she knew the appeal the blond giants exerted over the female population? And yet there wasn't a single Saxon man around. It seemed that even Norsewomen preferred men who towered over them with their damn beards and damn braids. "They trip over themselves to land in their arms."

There was a pause. "Some women don't think Norsemen particularly appealing, you know."

"No?" He smirked. "I'd like to meet one of these elusive women, and ask her..."

His voice trailed when he understood what Ingrid was saying. That he had already met one. Her. Hadn't she told him earlier she liked him because he was different from the people she had known all her life? In other words, Norsemen. Hadn't she just admitted to having suffered at the hands of three of the villagers? Yes. Perhaps he had met the one Norsewoman who would prefer to have any man but a blond giant in her bed.

Well, so what if he had? It could lead nowhere. He was leaving tomorrow, he was not willing or able to offer her anything while his mind was still confused, still full of Frigyth, and Ingrid had made it clear she was happy on her own.

In the circumstances, sleeping together would only be a mistake.

Yes, it would, he told himself sternly, as if to ward off temptation.

"Forgive me, I am rather tired and I would like to set off early tomorrow," he said brusquely. Too brusquely. But despite his resolve to do the right thing, he could feel his senses start a war with his reason and he could not let them win. "I'll go to bed now."

There was no answer.