Surrender To the Highlander

She would never understand them.

Of course, part of her problem was a lack of experience and a dreadful lapse in judgment during her only experience! One aspect about herself that Margriet had discovered was her ability to learn quickly in new situations and circumstances. This journey would give her the opportunity to learn about men and how they acted with each other and toward women they were supposed to respect. She already knew how they treated the common woman without protection.

When those in front of her and Elspeth, who was at her side, moved faster, Margriet urged her horse to follow the pace. Adjusting herself carefully so as to not scare her mount and not fall to the ground, she lowered her head and concentrated on staying seated. Oh, she’d ridden a horse before, but not on such a journey as this, with experienced warriors who looked, from their easy manner, as though they lived on horses.

The afternoon passed at an agonizingly slow pace and soon she held on to the reins with every bit of her strength. Surely, he did not mean this as retribution for obstructing his plans? When it seemed like several hours had passed and still they rode on, Margriet was ready to consider that Rurik would show no mercy now that she was in his control. Soon, as her body tightened with pain, she was ready to beg for that which he seemed unwilling or unable to give.

“Sir!” she implored in as loud a voice as she could manage. “Sir!”

Various voices carried her message forward until she heard his order called out. Every muscle in her back and legs screamed as she tried to straighten up on the paltry cushion that was failing miserably in its attempt to protect her bottom from the abuse of the ride. Her previous practice on the nearly lame pony at the convent could never have prepared her for riding this mount at this gait. Mopping her brow once more of the sweat that gathered there, Margriet lifted her head and watched as he made his way back to her side.

“I confess, sir,” she began as she wiped her brow and face again with the edge of one sleeve, “I confess that I have no experience in traveling at such a pace and I beg you to allow me…us…a short respite.”

If she had been looking away at that moment, Margriet would never have seen the look of triumph on his face at her words. Then a moment of confusion followed and he simply nodded. What had he thought she was ready to confess? His words clarified it for her.

“Lady,” he said and then paused. Clearing his throat, he met her gaze and began anew. She could see his jaws clenching as he formulated his reply. “Sister, there is no need to beg. Simply ask for what you need and I will seek to fulfill your needs.”

Her lovely mouth dropped open a bit and her pale-as ice eyes widened at his words. Then he observed a revealing blush creep up onto her cheeks and felt his cock harden.

Sweet Freya’s tits! But she was gorgeous when agitated!

He should be asking for her forgiveness but instead his body continued to react to the momentary flash in her eyes that revealed so much to him. He’d learned to read a woman’s expression long ago and hers said that Sister Margriet had more knowledge of the arts of love than a nun should have.

He could swear that she understood all the meanings in his words, which definitely bore more than one. From the way his men shifted on their horses, trying not to look openly at either of them, he knew they had as well. Her mouth closed and she swallowed several times; his view of her lovely neck was unfortunately obscured by the religious garb she wore. Finally she pushed words out and he hoped for another confession from her lips.

“A short rest, if you please,” she said. “I can no longer feel my legs, sir,” she whispered so that only he could hear. Most likely, she had not noticed the other men practically falling off their mounts to listen.

Rurik surveyed their surroundings, and considered the distance traveled and still to go before they would camp for the night, and nodded. Safety was his concern, and with the loss of several hours already, he was not truly happy about stopping now. He glanced at the other young nun and noticed her pale complexion. They were not seasoned travelers at all.

He raised his arm, signaling the men to pause. He watched as several rode off ahead and behind, taking up positions meant to guard their party from any surprises approaching them on the road. Rurik slid off his horse and handed the reins to one of the other men so that he could assist the women from theirs. He reached up to lift her from her place on the horse’s back when she shook her head.

One thing he’d learned early in life was that some wanted or needed to make every situation more difficult than need be and that there was no way to change their predisposition to such an attitude. Margriet— Sister Margriet—seemed one of those very people. Rurik stepped back and crossed his arms over his chest, watching her antics as she tried to dismount on her own.

’Twas clear that her legs would not obey her commands to move. She shifted on top of the horse and he allowed her to try until her actions caused her mount to sidestep nervously. Rurik stepped closer, took hold of the reins and brought the horse under control.

Gunnar’s daughter had a stubborn streak. ’Twas clear from the way she struggled to move legs that were clearly not going to move on their own. Although she glanced at her companion once or twice, she would not look at him. Stubborn and prideful.

Neither attributes were what he would expect in a true woman of God. Mayhap that was why Gunnar had exiled her here…? Had he hoped the good sisters would work or pray or beat it out of her? From what he remembered of Gunnar’s daughter, and it was not much due to his age and interest in the pursuit of the fairer sex at the time, her mother had died soon after her birth or the birth of a sibling, and then she was gone.

Thinking back, the struggle for control of the Orkneys exploded about that same time and, with the uncertainty of loyalties and outcomes, Gunnar had been wise to send her south. Now with Caithness awarded to a Scottish earl’s control and Erengisl of Sweden firmly in place as Earl of the Orkneys, her father thought the timing good to bring her home. More likely than not, with an eye to marrying her off.

Hah! Watching her nearly topple to the ground and still not ask for help, Rurik suspected her father would be as surprised as he about Margriet’s vocation to religious life. He reached out as soon as he knew she would land on her arse in the dirt and took hold of her waist. Lifting her off the horse was no more trouble for him than if he was lifting a child. Lifting her was not the problem.

Letting go of her became the problem when he felt the narrowness of her waist and the flare of her hips in his grasp.

No, he thought a moment later, the true trouble was when she struggled against his hold and his hands slipped up high enough to feel the weight of her breasts against them. Margriet noticed; the flaring of her pale eyes revealed it, as did the way she stilled a moment later.

The best thing—well, the most polite thing—would be to release her immediately, but in that moment he did not want to be polite. His body reacted and his blood heated and surged through him, making him want to do that which his ancestors were known for— he wanted to take and pillage.

By Odin’s Seed, he understood the legends of old! His body understood them and stood ready. And when she placed her hands on his shoulders, he nearly forgot everything.

“My thanks for your assistance, sir.”

Her voice broke in to the maelstrom in his head and brought a halt to his wild thoughts. It did nothing for the heat that raged in his blood.

Rurik nodded and lowered Margriet to the ground. He felt the shakiness of her stance and waited a minute more for her to steady herself. Some distance was truly needed and he turned to help the younger woman. Unfortunately Magnus robbed him of his excuse to move from Margriet’s side.

Standing this close, he heard her labored breathing as she tried to take a step. Her stubbornness won out again, for she stumbled against him as her legs gave out.

“Thor’s Breath, la… Sister, let me help you,” he said as he grabbed her shoulders and held her still.

She lifted her head and nodded in agreement, but anger flashed in her eyes at his aid. He released her after a few minutes and placed his arm under her hand so he could walk at her side.

“My thanks, sir,” she said as she lifted her hand from his a few paces later.

Rurik watched as she waddled away from him, still unsteady but moving apurpose. He turned to find the men watching him with as much interest as he watched the woman. Not a good thing.

He nodded at one of the men to follow the women as they made their way off the path, obviously in need of privacy after several hours on the road. Never one to disregard or to ignore his own weaknesses, for they could be the death of him and those to whom he pledged loyalty, he considered why he reacted this way to a nun.

First, he did not expect Gunnar’s daughter to be as old as she was—from his father’s missives he thought her still a young lass.

Second, he did not expect her to be a nun—for the daughter of a man held in such high esteem and with such wealth as he knew Gunnar to have was a marriage prize and not a gift to the church. The sight of her in the religious habit stunned him.

But more than that, he never expected her to be the strong, organized, willful and beautiful woman that she was. From the first moment of resistance to her eventual surrender, Margriet proved herself a proud Daughter of the North. ’Twas obvious from their initial encounter to the last order she gave before she left it, that she ruled the convent. He counted at least fifty nuns and lay people living there and, from youngest bairn to oldest man, they all appeared well-fed and kept. Not an easy task for even the most experienced of stewards, let alone a nun.

Rurik swallowed against the tightness in his throat as he realized the basis for his weakness. Although he’d met her as a nun, his body and his senses saw only the woman under the garb. And the attraction he felt and the desire that filled his blood could only be dangerous.

As his eyes sought her figure as she disappeared behind some bushes, Rurik knew this was one weakness he could not afford.

Chapter Four

Elspeth’s soft snore simply reminded Margriet that she was not asleep. Turning to her side away from the woman next to her, she barely stifled a groan as the hard ground revealed another place injured by the hours on horseback. Her hip spasmed and she tried to stretch her leg to ease it. Tempted though she was to try to walk some of the cramping away, the loud snore just outside the small tent spoke of the impossibility of doing just that. When her back joined in with its own aches, Margriet decided to try.

Since the tent was meant to give them a small measure of privacy, it stood only a few feet tall and two paces wide. Trying not to disturb Elspeth, she crawled out from under the blankets they shared and shimmied to the flap of the tent. Since they slept in their clothes, dressing was not a problem, but her hair would be.

Margriet suspected that her vanity over her hair would unravel her disguise, especially since the men and their leader had seen it when she panicked and ran from the convent with it uncovered. Women taking their vows cut off their hair before donning the veils and the presence of hers raised a suspicion about her truthfulness. And that was dangerous. After she braided and wrapped her hair, she reached into her bag and took out a woolen shawl. Draping it over her head, she peeked outside.

The man guarding the tent slept so close that she would have to step over him to get out. His loud snore, now alternating with Elspeth’s gentler one, covered her movements. Her back and hips and legs screamed in pain as she crept over him and took a faltering step away…and into the one called Sven. Luckily, he grabbed her hands and helped her to stand up before she landed on the ground.

“Sister, are you well?” he asked in a soft voice. He glanced at the tent and then back to her. “It is the middle of the night and you should rest while you can.”

At least he seemed to understand how inexperienced and uncomfortable she was on this journey. Not like the brute that led their group. He drove them on and on with a single-mindedness that shocked her. She was used to being in charge and the change in her circumstances was most likely the cause for her troubled state of mind. It was also the condition that kept thoughts tumbling around inside her mind and kept any hope of sleep at bay.

Sven cleared his throat, catching her attention, or rather her inattention, and she nodded her head.

“I need to walk a bit to work out some of the stiffness in my legs, if that is permitted?” she whispered back, trying to assume a meekness she did not feel. Men, she’d learned, liked women to act as though they had not a thought or plan in their heads.

Sven glanced across the camp and then back again. Their leader, Rurik, slept sitting up, wrapped in a dark cloak with his back against a tree. If Sven had not looked in that direction, Margriet certainly would never have spied him there.

Probably his intention.

When Sven held out his hand, she suspected Rurik had given some unseen signal granting his permission. Margriet leaned on Sven’s muscular arm as she let him guide her away from the tent. At first, they said nothing, but as they walked a short distance from the sleeping men, she could not contain her curiosity.

“Your leader does not seem happy about taking me back to Kirkvaw,” she began.

Sven snorted and then answered. “Rurik is not happy about going back to Kirkvaw.”

“What do you mean, sir? Will he not be rewarded for carrying out this task for my father?”

“Aye, he will be rewarded, but not by your father.” Sven leaned in closer as though to share some confidence with her, but his disclosure was halted by a voice from the dark.

“Sven, you should not speak of such personal matters with Gunnar’s daughter.”

Margriet jumped at both the softness and the menace in his voice. Sven merely smiled and nodded at Rurik…and walked away as though silently ordered to do so.

Leaving Margriet in the company of the one person she would rather avoid.

He held out his arm and she placed her hand there. Without a word, he led her in a circle around their camp. Each step seemed easier than the last and finally the cramping in her back and hips ceased. Rurik did not stop guiding her until she drew to a halt when they passed her tent for the third time.

“My thanks, sir,” she offered quietly as they stood next to the sleeping guard. She wondered why he did not rouse or reprimand the man for sleeping through her “escape.” He must read thoughts, for he answered the question she did not speak aloud.

“He is there for your comfort, not your safety. If I thought there was true danger in this area, none would sleep.”

“My comfort?”

“Aye. If you have need of anything, you should tell him.” ’Twas then she noticed that the man did not sleep, but watched her and Rurik from his place on the ground. But the tone of his voice drew her gaze back up to Rurik’s face.

The moon’s light was bright that night, making it easy to see his expression, but that did not make it easy to understand it. Margriet would be willing to swear that he jested, but nothing she’d seen so far in his company spoke of a temperament familiar with anything less than complete seriousness.

“So, I should not step over him the next time I need to walk in the night?” The guard listened to their every word, but said nothing himself.

“Nay, Sister.” He shook his head. “The next time you should wake him to say farewell.” The guard now made a grunt that sounded much like a stifled laugh.

Perplexed by this change in his attitude and more curious than she’d like to admit, she decided to risk asking him the same question she’d ask Sven before he interrupted.

“So, ’tis true then? You do not wish to return to Kirkvaw?”

Actually, this was only her first question—she had many, many more about him and Kirkvaw and her father. This was only the beginning.

“I would ask you the same thing, Sister. Why do you not wish to return to Kirkvaw?”

She opened her mouth to argue, but the answer she would give and the one she should give were different and not something she wished to discuss with him. And her words would reveal, she worried, more than she wished anyone to know. Again, as though he read her thoughts, he replied before she could.

“Just so, Sister. Just so.”

All Margriet could do was grit her teeth to keep from saying something, and she knew that whatever she said, ’twould not be good. Accepting defeat for the moment, she skirted around the guard, who had not moved, and crept back into the tent. When she adjusted the flap, she could see Rurik still standing outside, arms crossed over his chest, with his long cloak flowing over his broad shoulders and nearly reaching the ground.

In a low voice—one too soft for her to hear all the words exchanged—he spoke to the guard, who now did more than grunt. He spoke in the Norn of the common folk of the Orkneys and she struggled to understand. Although the lands around the convent had come under the rule of the Scottish lord Alexander de L’Ard a few years ago, Earl Erengisl was the primary sponsor of this and several other convents in Caithness. And people at his court spoke in the formal Norse of the royal court. Mother Ingrid, herself with origins from some other part of Scotland, had instructed her in the Gaelic tongue spoken here, but Margriet’s talents lay in numbers and organization and not in skills with other tongues.

Rurik’s words were calm and without anger and ended with a short, shared laugh, which she suspected was at her expense. When she leaned forward enough that he noticed her, Rurik, with an upward nod of his head, directed her back inside the tent. She blamed on her weariness that she did not argue or hesitate, but slipped back inside and lay down. This time her bones creaked but did not scream and she settled under the blankets as Elspeth slept on.

The sun rose earlier than it should have the next morning, or so it seemed to her, for she had only just closed her eyes when the order to break camp was shouted outside. At least she’d had the presence of mind to take the herbs she needed in the morning from her bag and place them within reach before she’d fallen asleep. Chewing them and drinking a sip of water as soon as she awakened helped calm her stomach from the ills that struck in the morn.

With no time for a lay-a-bed, Margriet prayed her stomach would settle and wished that it not repeat the occurrence of yestermorn as she folded the blankets. Taking slow, deep breaths as Cook had advised, she focused on her task and on her steps as she fought the waves of sickness welling and ebbing inside of her. If Elspeth noticed, she said nothing as they watched their tent being dismantled and packed. When handed a bowl of some kind of porridge by the man who guarded them through the night, her stomach rebelled.

Elspeth stayed close behind, thankfully waving off the men who followed, and warning in stronger a manner than she expected of the girl of the sisters’ need to attend their personal needs. But when Margriet fell to her knees and emptied the meager contents of her stomach, she fell alone. The heaving continued even after its purpose was completed and it was several minutes before she sank back to sit on her heels and caught her breath.

Wiping her mouth, Margriet shuddered as the tremors calmed. The crackling of brush and leaves behind her alerted her to Elspeth’s approach. Pushing up onto her feet, she turned to thank the girl for her assistance and instead found Rurik watching her from a few paces away. The hard lines of his face could have been carved from stone as he stared at her. His gaze moved over her and she could not move under his scrutiny.

“Sir?” Elspeth’s voice shook, much as Margriet knew hers would if she attempted to speak at this moment.

She struggled against the strange hold she felt, one that made it difficult to breathe or to even look away from him. She reached up to make certain her wimple and veil were in place, for she feared she stood naked there in the light of day.

“Sir?” the girl asked again.

This time whatever spell had ensorcelled them dissipated and they both turned toward Elspeth…and Sven…and several of the others. Margriet took a deep breath and pulled her wits about her. Pushing past Rurik, she walked back toward the camp. When the others did not move to follow, she faced them and tried, with firm words, to distract them from the truth of the situation.

“Pray forgive my behavior, but I had great need of privacy.”

Believing that the less said, the less chance of being tripped by an untruth, she turned back to the path through the trees. Silence still reigned behind her, but she continued hoping that it would be forgotten.

“And pardon us for intruding on that privacy, Sister.”

Margriet nodded without turning, accepting his apology and trying to ignore the whispers that grew in loudness until she could make out a few of their words. ’Twas, however, Rurik’s voice again that stopped her in her place.

“Your retching could be heard back in the camp, Sister. We feared for your well-being.”

How should she handle this? His words gave her pause and the undercurrent of sarcasm confused her. Did she answer him now or should she wait until they could speak privately? Ignoring his challenge—and aye, it was one—could only cause more trouble. But what to say?

“My thanks, good sirs, for your concern and your assistance,” she said as she met each of their gazes, with his being last. “I fear I have not traveled often nor do I travel well and ’twould seem that my body rebels against it.”

He allowed her explanation to go without comment, for he was not yet certain what bothered him most about it—the need for it because of some condition of hers he knew not of, or that he thought it all a lie. Her hasty run from the camp, the sounds of retching that disturbed the quiet of the forest or the way her eyes took on a hazy look when she met his gaze. His gut liked none of those things, but the possibility that she lied intrigued him in a way he did not expect.

Rurik waved most of the men back to their duties, but he motioned to Sven and Magnus to remain. The lady’s well-being must be a concern and her illness two days in a row did not bode well for their journey. They—he—could not arrive at Gunnar’s house with his daughter in a cart, nearly dead from the trip. If she was to survive the journey and he to complete his task successfully, he must take her condition under consideration.

“Get your maps and meet me back in camp,” he said. “I think our plans are too ambitious for Gunnar’s daughter.”

“At least your boots were not the target this morn,” Magnus offered. “If Sister Margriet is this bad on land, how will she be during our sea voyage to the islands?”

Rurik looked one to the other and found the same grimace on both Sven and Magnus that he knew his own face wore. Still, he could recognize the problem here and forcing the woman at too quick a pace would simply lead to failure. In spite of his own delays at getting to this task, Rurik knew there was still plenty of good traveling weather before the winter’s winds and storms made the sea over which they would travel nearly impassible. So, a slower journey, a few more days on the road to accommodate the most important one in their group, would not be of significance.

“Get your maps.”

It took little time to review their planned path and decide how and where to break up their traveling. The convent was built at the southwestern edge of Caithness, in a place where the border shifted with each new lord. Initially, they were heading east to the coast, just south of where Caithness lands began, for the road, truly no more than a dirt path, would lead them past several small villages where they could replenish their provisions.