Page 11 of Haakon's Fate
“Tell me all.”
Haakon had difficulty concentrating.
Though the information he was hearing was undeniably important, he could not believe who was delivering it. Gytha, of all people.
The woman he was supposedly betrothed to.
When he had seen her on his doorstep, looking even more stunning than in his memory, he had not been able to believe it. In the last week, he had reasoned that her eyes couldn’t be as bright as he remembered or her mouth as beguiling. But they were.
That and more.
Because all that didn’t even begin to compare to what she could do with those eyes and that mouth. Send thunder and lightning his way and kiss him with such passion that it left him breathless.
Yes, when he had seen the woman who could do all that on his doorstep, his heart had leaped at the same time as his cock. But it had quickly become clear that she hadn’t come for him. She had come to tell him that the little girl they had spent months trying to locate was gone.
It was a blow.
“I’m torn between relief and despair,” she was saying, looking at her hands. “I’m glad she managed to escape her tormentor obviously, but the problem is, now we don’t have the first idea where she could be. We are back to the beginning.”
He could only agree. On the one hand, the news that Osberga had escaped the man who’d bought her was reassuring, as it meant that she was no longer at the hands of a captor who could potentially hurt her. But on the other hand, it didn’t mean that she was safe. No longer a slave, she was still a girl of eleven summers alone in a dangerous world. And they had no idea where she had gone. She could be anywhere. She could also, though it did not bear thinking about, be dead in a ditch somewhere. How would Matilda welcome this terrible setback?
“I will tell Wolf when he comes back tomorrow,” was all he said.
Gytha stood back up, agreeing with him that it was the best thing to do for now. “I guess I should leave now.”
“Yes.”
He had no reason to keep her any longer so he agreed. But he found that he didn’t really want her to go. Why? He had no idea. They had nothing to tell one another.
Except perhaps…
“I hope your friend’s father never found out she had lied to him?” Had either of them been hurt as a consequence?
“No, thank you for asking. And she’s come with me to the village today. She will now live with Halfdan. It’s for the best.”
Probably, if she was living with a father who was not above manhandling her.
Gytha walked out of the hut on shaky legs. This had been a hard day. Between the shock of seeing that Wolf’s friend was none other than the man who had haunted her thoughts for more than a week, the disappointment of seeing him with a lover, the unpleasantness of their conversation, when she’d had to imagine a little girl at the hands of a cruel man, then at the mercy of ill-intentioned people, the reliving of the loss she had recently been through, and the knowledge that her father was having to face his angry brother-in-law when he was already crippled with grief, she felt utterly drained.
She turned to the door but Haakon stopped her with a hand at her elbow.
“Gytha, wait. I…I meant to tell you. We heard about your mother. I’m sorry. I cannot imagine what you must be going through.”
“No. My father is devastated,” she told him, fighting a sob. “Which is no surprise. It was such a shock. And he and my mother were very happy.”
She didn’t know anyone else whose parents were so in love, least of all Eadhild, who’d had to deal with a tyrant of a father all her life, and a mother who took out her misery on her at every turn.
When the sob finally escaped her lips. Haakon did a shocking thing. He drew her into his arms. It was not the embrace of a lover intent on seducing, or the hug of a friend intent on comforting, since he was neither. It was…something else. Just what she needed.
She melted into the solid chest offering the first moment of peace she’d had in days.
“My parents are a perfect match too, you know,” he said after a while, his voice rumbling against her ear. It was a soothing sound and she wished he would hold her and keep talking forever, allowing her to forget the pain gnawing at her insides. “My father is the goldsmith here, and also the only Saxon man living in the village. I have never seen him and my mother argue.”
Who would have thought this fierce Norseman would be the first person she had this in common with? It had always made her feel inadequate at best, guilty at worst when her friends had complained about the atmosphere at home and wished they could have parents who actually got on with one another? Her childhood had been so free of woe that she had often felt ostracised.
“I hope my parents die at the same time.”
The shocking statement shook Gytha out of the contentment she was drowning in. She stiffened then pushed herself away from him, her sense of peace shattered.
