Dark, Devastating & Delicious!: The Marriage Medallion / Between Duty and Desire / Driven to Distraction

“No!” She jerked away and cradled her hand as if he’d injured it. “Uh-uh. Not. No way…”

Eric made no effort to recapture her hand.

No progress was being made here.

Her fine eyes were wild, her wide mouth set in a scowl. He would very much have enjoyed kissing that mouth. But he’d had several days—to watch, to assess and to learn to admire; to accept the fact that this woman was meant for him. She had only just been informed of her fate, and that made her far from ready for kissing. For now he’d said what needed saying—and more. It was enough. He went to the door and put on his shearling coat, then took down the rifle racked beneath his shotgun.

She spoke then. “Wait.”

He turned back to her slowly that time, holding the rifle with care, barrel to the floor.

She was guiding the silver chain over her head. “I’m not going to marry you, Eric.” She held out the gleaming disk, the heavy chain trickling over her hand, the links falling through her fingers. “I want you to take this. Give it to the right woman when she comes along.”

He felt again the urge to smile. This time he quelled it. “The right woman already has it.”

Her face was flushed, blue eyes flashing. “Eric—” There was nothing to be gained by staying to hear more. He pulled open the door and went out.

Brit was left standing in the longhouse alone, the marriage medallion shining in her outstretched hand.

No problem, she thought, her fist closing tight over the silver disk. He won’t take it. Doesn’t matter. He’s getting it back, anyway.

She marched over to his bed and dropped the medallion onto his furs, turning quickly away from it—from her own ridiculous reluctance to part with it. She righted the bench she’d kicked over and sat on it to put on her boots. Then she grabbed her jacket from its peg. She needed a long walk. A head-clearing dose of cold, fresh Vildelund air.

With her hand on the latch, she hesitated. No way strolling up and down the single village street, trying not to scowl at every friendly villager she happened to pass, was going to do the trick. She needed space and a total absence of other people. And if she was going to wander a little farther afield than the cluster of buildings that made up the tiny town, she’d be wise to do it armed. Renegades, apparently, were a problem around here. And from what she’d been told, there were bears. And wolves. And the legendary white Gullandrian mountain cats—and who knew what else?

Better armed than dead. She got her weapon from her pack, loaded it, put on her shoulder rig and holstered the SIG. Only then did she put on her coat and head for the door again.

Outside, it was in the high thirties. She felt in a pocket and came up with that bag of peanut M&M candies that she’d opened before she climbed from her wrecked plane. She took one out—a red one—and put it in her mouth to savor. Delicious. She might want more. Maybe she’d eat them all on her walk, indulge in an orgy of chocolate and peanuts to soothe her frayed nerves, ease her troubled mind. She emptied them into the pocket and then wadded the bag and stuck it in the front pocket of her jeans to throw in the fire later.

Another pocket of her jacket yielded a wool beanie. A third, a pair of red wool gloves. She was pulling them on as she turned away from the street toward the back of the house, the M&M sweet in her mouth, her spirits already lifting.

At the rear of the house, about ten yards beyond the game cage, she reached a small barn. To either side of it rough plank fencing bordered a narrow paddock where a few horses grazed. One—a gelding with a dove-gray blaze between his big dark eyes—turned to watch as she climbed the fence and dropped to her feet inside. Then, with a snort that showed as mist on the icy air and a toss of his snow-white mane, he went back to cropping the short grass. None of the other horses seemed the least interested in her.

It was good, she decided, to be outside again, on her own, with the sun a rim of gold just making its climb over the crests of the hills to her right, the brown grass crackling with frost beneath her boots, the cold air sharp and bracing in her lungs and the inviting shelter of tall evergreens ahead.

She reached the back fence and hoisted herself over it with minimal awkwardness, though her left shoulder was still tender and any pressure on the muscles near the wound caused a definite twinge. When she dropped to the grass on the other side, she was perhaps thirty feet from the thick, close-growing forest of spruce that surrounded the village on all sides and grew up the flanks of the hills.

She stopped to press the compass button on her watch. The trees ahead were due north, Asta’s house to the south. She should be safe to walk in the forest a little, as long as she was careful to keep her bearings and to watch out for predators—human or otherwise. She walked on into the shadows of the tall, proud trees, the thick blanket of short brown needles crunching underfoot.

The drop in temperature was immediate. Her breath came out as thick mist. She hunched down into the warmth of her jacket and picked up the pace a little—more exertion, more body heat.

A squirrel scolded her from a branch up ahead, tail twitching. She smiled as it jumped to the next tree, scampered inward to the rough red bark of the trunk and shot upward, vanishing from sight.

She felt better already. It was good, to be alone for a while, outside in the clean air, with only the sentinel trees and the chattering squirrels for company.

Her M&M was down to the peanut. Brit bit it good and hard and chewed it to a pulp. She swallowed. The situation stunk. There was Eric, who was too sexy and too tempting—and had some crazy idea that the two of them were meant for each other. And there were Asta and her daughters-in-law, sending Brit hopeful, dreamy-eyed looks every time Eric’s name was mentioned. Worst of all, there was her father, who had tricked her into thinking he believed in her quest—well, no. Worst of all was the quest itself, her search for her lost brother, which was going nowhere fast.

“Take ’em off, sweetling.”

Brit froze on the shadowed path. The voice, from up ahead, was male, unfamiliar—and full of youth and meanness.

“I am not your sweetling, lout.” A woman’s voice. Angry. Proud.

Someone laughed, low and harsh. And then came another voice, male and young, like the first, but more nasal. “We have you. Surrender.”

“Never.”

A silence. And then the unpleasant sound of a fist hitting flesh. A grunt. Scuffling.

“Hold her, Trigg…”

“Loki mock her, she’s slippery as an angry otter…”

The blows and grunts continued. Brit didn’t like to shoot with gloves on, but there was no time to remove them. She drew her SIG, levered back the safety. Carefully, gun at the ready, she crept forward toward the sound. At the next curve in the path, she came upon them. Two boys—renegades, no doubt.

And one young woman, dressed much like them, in rawhide leather, high lace-up moccasin-like boots on her feet. The woman struggled against the grip of the larger boy as the other tore at her clothes.

Rape in progress? Apparently.

Her pulse pounding in her throat, Brit acted. What else was there to do? She stepped out into the open, gun straight out, aiming steady with both hands. “Stop. Now.”

The boys froze and turned. “Balls of Balder, who are you?” demanded the one with the nasal voice.

Brit gestured, a twitch of the gun barrel. “Hands up. Now.”

The boys, looking sullen and snarly, did as instructed.

“On the ground,” Brit said. “Facedown.” The boys dropped to a sprawl. “Spread your arms wider. And your legs.” They complied.

The woman, whose blond hair had come loose from a thick braid, and half-covered her face, spared not more than a glance at Brit. She seemed totally unmoved by what had almost happened to her. “I’ll bind them.”

Brit didn’t argue. “Great idea.”

The woman, who was about Brit’s size, was already striding to a leather pack that waited on the ground a few feet away. She dropped to her haunches and took out several lengths of leather twine. Brit held her gun on the pair as the woman swiftly and expertly tied their hands and ankles.

When she finished, she stood tall and spat on the ground between the two would-be rapists. “There. That’ll hold ’em.” She raked her wild hair off her face and looked directly at Brit for the first time.

Brit gasped. “My God.”

The woman had an ugly cut on her full lower lip, a deep scratch on her cheek and an angry bruise rising at her jawline. But it wasn’t her injuries that had Brit staring, open mouthed. It was the woman herself.

Injuries aside, she was the image of Brit’s mother. She was Ingrid Freyasdahl Thorson, just as she looked in the old pictures in the family albums at home. Brit’s mother. Twenty-plus years ago.

How could that be?

“Princess Brit?” The woman smiled. It was Brit’s mother smiling, Brit’s mother in her midtwenties, with a cut lip and a naughty gleam in her sea-blue eyes. “Don’t answer,” she said. “There’s no need. I know you by the look of you. And isn’t this a story to be told around the tent fire on a cold winter’s night? The gods must be pleased with us. They have sent you out to meet us.”

Us?

Right then, from directly behind Brit, another woman said, “Drop your weapon, Your Highness. Or I’ll be forced to send my arrow flying straight to your heart.”

Chapter Six

One hand in the air, Brit knelt and carefully set the SIG on the ground. Still grinning, the woman who looked like her mother darted forward and snatched it up.

She pointed it at Brit. “Got her, Grid.”

The other woman—Grid?—came around in front of her, an arrow in her bow, but pointed at the ground. She was much older than the first woman, with graying brown hair, broad shoulders and thick legs. “By the wolves of Odin, Rinda,” she said. “I dare not leave you on your own for the span of a minute.”

Rinda shrugged. “No real harm done. And look who has come to my aid.”

“Of that,” said Grid, “I cannot complain.”

Brit cleared her throat. “Look. I’m on your side. There’s no need for you to take my—”

“Silence,” barked Grid.

“But I only—”

Three words. That was as far as she got. By then Grid had drawn her free hand across her barrel chest. Smack. The back of Grid’s hand caught Brit hard on her right cheek. Brit went spinning. She landed on her face in the dirt.

“Get up,” growled Grid. “And don’t speak again unless you are first spoken to.”

The whole right side of Brit’s face felt numb. Lovely. Brit brought her hands up to push herself to her knees. Her right hand brushed against a few hard little balls—M&Ms, fallen from her pocket as she dropped. She managed to drag them along with the back of her glove and to grab them in her fist before she scrambled upright. Neither of the women seemed to notice. Good. She really needed them. Nothing like a peanut M&M when a girl was under stress….

Eric checked his traps in the woods east of the village, finding one angry white fox. He released it, chiding himself for a too-soft heart.

Then, hoping the rage of his reluctant bride would have cooled somewhat by then, he returned to his aunt’s longhouse. The women were there, clustered near the fire, busy with their sewing, the children playing quietly around them. There was one woman missing.

The most important one.

The others looked up from their stitching and saw him. A small silence followed, one brimming with expectation.

Asta broke the silence. “Why, where’s Brit?”

“Bwit,” said little Mist, who was sitting on the floor near Eric’s sleeping bench. “Gone, gone, gone.”

Eric frowned. “She was here when I left.”

The women shared quick glances. Sif said, “And we assumed she was with you.”

He looked at the pegs by the door. Her big blue jacket wasn’t there. Her boots should have been waiting on the floor beneath the missing jacket. They weren’t there, either.

The women were shaking their heads.

Mist had gotten to her plump little feet beside his sleeping bench. She reached for something among the furs and then held up a silver chain. His marriage medallion turned at the end of it. “Ohh, pwetty, pwetty.”

Eric approached the child and knelt before her. “Mist. That is mine.”

Mist frowned, but then, with a long sigh, she offered the chain. “Ewic take.”

He plucked the dangling medallion from the air, winking at the winsome child as he rose. He slipped the chain over his neck and tucked the silver disk beneath his leather shirt. When Brit wanted it back, it would be waiting, warm from his body, charged with all the energy his strong heart could give it.

Right now, though, he had to find where the irksome woman had gotten herself off to.

Asta and his cousins’ wives were watching him.

“Asta,” he said. “Stay with the children. Sif. Sigrid. Come and help me find my runaway bride.”

Eric and his cousins’ wives searched the village, knocking on every door, looking through the bathhouse and the washhouse, the various small barns and other outbuildings. When they’d checked everywhere to no avail, he and the women returned to his aunt’s house, where they found the older children playing outside near the front step.

Asta signaled him inside—alone. “Word has come.”

Mist was sitting under the long deal table, cradling her yarn-haired doll. “Dawk Waiduh,” she said, with a happy little laugh.

Asta said, “In the woods just north of the back pasture you’ll find a pair of renegades. They are bound hand and foot—and they have quite a tale to tell.”

The two women had horses. They rode bareback. Brit, her hands tied before her, rode double with the one named Rinda. Grid took the lead.

There had been little explanation. They were taking her to their camp, they said. The news of Brit’s arrival over a week ago had spread through the Vildelund. The two women had been sent to the village in search of her.

It didn’t take a Mensa candidate to figure out what they were. Anyone who knew anything of Gullandria had heard the tales of the kvina soldars—the nomadic warrior women who lived in the Vildelund, who fought with great skill and lived free, never binding their lives to any man. As a child at her mother’s knee, Brit had loved to hear the tales of the kvina soldars. In her soft bed in her mother’s house in Sacramento, she used to dream of someday coming to her father’s land, of traveling to the wild north country, of meeting a kvina soldar face-to-face.

Well. Be careful what you dream of, as they say.

Brit had the front position on the sturdy mare, her “cousin’s” slim body pressed close at her back. They’d been on the trail, moving mostly northeast and climbing, for over an hour.

Brit was following Grid’s orders and staying quiet. She concentrated on the easy rhythm of the horse beneath her. Riding came natural as breathing to her, always had. Her legs did the work, so even with her hands tied, she had little trouble keeping her seat. For balance, she wrapped her fingers in the mare’s braided mane. She listened to the sound of the wind in the tall trees, felt the warmth of the woman who might be a lost cousin at her back—and she tried not to worry.

Strangely, it wasn’t so hard not to worry about herself. She’d looked into the eyes of both Rinda and Grid and seen no cruelty there. They were tough women, women who lived by their wits, their strength and their fighting skills. Her instinctive assessment of their basic decency had been bolstered by the way they ended up dealing with the two renegade boys.

To the kvina soldars, from what Brit had learned as she sought to understand the different peoples of her father’s land, rape was a crime punishable by death. And not only that. After killing a rapist, the warrior women frequently mutilated the man’s body, cutting off both his head and his offending male parts.

By their lights, Grid and Rinda had every right to kill the renegade pair. But they hadn’t. They’d decided to leave them to the mercy of chance. Whoever—or whatever—found them, would get to deal with them. To Brit this seemed more than reasonable, given the circumstances.

It was less reasonable of the women to carry Brit off. After all, she’d done nothing but come to the aid of one of them. They might have been a little grateful and let her head back to Asta’s place in peace.

But no. Their “leader” wished to speak with her. And their job was to make that happen. What Brit wanted counted for nothing with them.

From overhead came the cry of a hunting bird. Brit glanced up to see a hawk soaring in the clear blue, and she thought of that other hawk in Drakveden Fjord the day this big adventure had begun.

She thought of Eric’s face that first time she’d seen him in person, of the worry in his eyes as he’d looked down at her—injured, fading fast, on the rocky, cold ground. Now she was the one worrying. For him. Because Eric was going to blame himself when he found out she was missing.

Their disagreement back at the longhouse seemed of no importance now. So what if he thought they were getting married? It didn’t matter, let him think it. What mattered was that Eric Greyfell was the kind of man who took his responsibilities seriously. He would consider it his duty to keep her safe and he would torture himself for failing in his duty.

He was an exasperating man. But still, she didn’t want him torturing himself.

He would come after her, of course—at least, he would if he could figure out where to look. She was doing what she could to help him with that, though she doubted her little attempt to lead him along would work. But it seemed only right to at least give it a try.

She was thinking of it as the “Hansel and Gretel” technique. Instead of a trail of bread crumbs or pebbles to show the way, she was dropping peanut M&Ms. So far she’d dropped three. One in the clearing just as they were leaving. One about twenty minutes later. And one several minutes after that.

Okay, it was kind of pitiful if she gave it too much thought. What were three little M&Ms in an hour’s worth of traveling? Not a lot. But hey, she was doing the best she could with what she had.

And as of now, her hands were empty.

For the first time since Grid backhanded her for talking, she dared to speak. “Ahem. Sorry, but I really have to have a moment in the bushes.”

Neither Grid nor Rinda responded. The horses labored upward on the trail. Perhaps five minutes passed. Brit was debating how soon she dared to ask again, when Grid pulled to a stop. “Right there.” Grid pointed at a clump of bushes beside the trail. “Relieve yourself. Make no sudden movements. We will be watching.”

Terrific. Should she ask to have her hands untied? Uh-uh. If they did free her hands for the moment, they would only tie them again before she got back on the horse. And then they would be too likely to spot her trick.

Brit went into the bushes. It was quite the fun adventure, getting her pants down with her hands tied and the wool gloves making her fingers all fat and awkward. Lots of wiggling and squirming involved.

Which actually worked out fine. All the jerking around provided cover for that split second after she had her pants back up and zipped, when she shoved both hands in her jacket pocket and got what she needed.

Two minutes later she was back on the horse. She waited several minutes more before she let the next M&M roll from her fisted hand.

Twenty minutes after her break in the bushes, they reached the crest of the hill they’d been climbing. Below them the land fell away sharply into a deep tree-shrouded ravine. They started down, moving west, then switching back, going east, following the zigs and zags of the trail as it took them to the bottom.

At the bottom, they crossed a swift-running stream and started climbing again. At the top of that hill, they went down in a series of switchbacks, the same as before.

And so on, for hours.

Finally, in late afternoon, they descended another hill and began moving east along the narrow strip of relatively flat land at the bottom. They were deep in the trees. Brit hunched into her jacket and shivered and let go of another M&M. After that she had only one left.

It was perhaps ten minutes later—by then she was tired enough she hardly glanced at her watch anymore—that another woman, dressed much like Rinda and Grid but with skin the color of richest mahogany, materialized from the bushes at the side of the trail. The woman stood, hands on hips, dark eyes flashing, squarely in their path.

“Greetings, sisters.”

Grid reined in and saluted, the tips of her fingers to the center of her forehead. “Freyja guide your sword arm, Fulla guard your hearth.”

“You have her,” said the woman on the trail.

“We do.”

“Come, then. Ragnild awaits.”

The warrior on the trail turned and vanished into the trees. Grid—and Rinda and Brit—followed. Brit let go of the final piece of candy, right there, a few yards after they turned into the trees.

They all three had to duck low to the horses to keep from being unseated by the thick, low-hanging branches. They rode for five minutes or so, Grid and Brit with cheeks to the necks of their mounts, Rinda with her head pressed against Brit’s side.

At last, the trees opened up into a clearing: the camp of the kvina soldars.

Brit saw teepee-style tents arranged in a circle, smoke spiraling up through the tops of them. In addition to whatever fires burned within, there were open fires, rimmed by rocks, before the tents. Beyond the tent circle, hobbled horses nibbled the short grass. Warrior women of various ages moved in and out of the tents. Some of the women were black, some were of Asian descent, some Middle Eastern. There were dogs. And there were children, two of whom—at first glance, anyway—appeared to be little boys. In the center of the circle, someone had pounded in a tree trunk about a foot in diameter and around seven feet tall.

Grid dismounted.

“Get down,” said Rinda from behind her.

Stiffly—after all that time riding bareback with bound hands—Brit slid to the ground. Rinda dismounted last. The dark-skinned woman who had found them on the trail led the horses off.

“This way,” said Grid.

Brit fell in step behind her. Rinda took up the rear. Grid led them across the central area between the tents, to one slightly larger tent on the eastern side of the circle. As they passed, the children stopped their play to stare. The other women either ignored the newcomers or paused to salute, fingers to forehead, as Grid had done on the trail.

At the tent, they ducked inside.

A woman waited beyond the central fire, on the far side of the tent. She wore a white leather robe over her clothing. The robe was decorated with red runic-looking symbols. She sat cross-legged on a pallet of furs. Her hair was auburn, loose and full around her handsome face. Brit would have guessed her to be about forty.

“Unbind her,” the woman in the robe commanded.

Grid turned to Brit, a knife in her hand. One clean swipe and the leather thongs fell away. Brit slid off her gloves, stuck them in a pocket and rubbed her tender, leather-abraded wrists.

The woman in the robe saluted Grid and Rinda. “Thank you. You may leave her here with me.”

“But—” Rinda began.

The woman on the pallet cut her off with a slow shake of her head. “Discipline, my daughter. The first cornerstone of a life of power.”

Rinda said nothing more. She followed Grid out.

“Do you thirst?” asked the auburn-haired woman. “Do you have need to relieve yourself?”

Brit was not at her best by then. Her thighs ached and her shoulder throbbed and she hadn’t a clue where she was or what was going to happen next. Also, if she’d thought the Mystic villagers lived primitively, well, hel-lo. The kvina soldars had them beat by a mile. “Do I get to talk now?”