Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [38]
He didn’t touch her. If anything, he stiffened. His arms remained at his sides. He said nothing. Finally, Laren realized that he was still as a stone. She had shamed him with her actions. She was nothing but a slave even though he had protected her. She was nothing at all to him. She quickly released him and stepped back, her head down.
But Taby wasn’t aware that anything was amiss. Cleve put him down and he took Laren’s place quickly enough, tugging on Merrik’s tunic until he leaned down and picked him up. The child hugged his thin arms around Merrik’s neck, squeezing him as hard as he could, laughing and laughing. “I’m a prince,” Taby said. “You bought clothes for a prince. Someday I will reward you.”
Merrik felt something sharp and sweet unfold deep inside him. He held the child close, smelling his child’s sweet scent, loving the sound of his laughter. He wanted this child and he would never let him go, never.
“I thank you, Prince Taby,” he said against the child’s soft cheek, a cheek not so thin now.
He looked at Laren. She was standing there, Cleve beside her, and she was just looking at him and at Taby and he saw something on her face that he didn’t understand. It was fear, he realized at last. Was she afraid of him? Surely not. She had thrown herself at him, no fear there. Or did she realize that Taby was his? What he had felt when she had pressed herself so willingly and completely against him, he discounted. It didn’t matter. He’d felt a shock of lust only because he hadn’t had a woman in a very long time. He looked away from her and caressed Taby. He kissed his cheek, felt him with his big hands and frowned because he was still too thin, his small bones still too prominent, his ribs too sharp.
He closed his eyes a moment, just feeling the warmth of the child seep into him, filling him with a sense of rightness, a sense that this small human being had been born for his care, for his guardianship. As for Laren, she was naught more than Taby’s sister. He wondered yet again who Laren and Taby were.
Vestfold was a huge land. Steep cliffs hugged the fjord, soaring upward, drowned many times with low-lying clouds. The hills and mountains were covered with firs and oak, many so steep and sharp that she couldn’t imagine ever making her way to the top of some of those tall peaks. The fjord was like smooth glass, but the current was with them and the men spoke and jested whilst they rowed.
The air was warm and smooth, the sun high and brilliant. It was an incredible land. She’d never imagined anything like this. She couldn’t look away from the endless stretch of cliffs, seemingly larger with the rounding of each turn in the fjord.
“This is my home,” Merrik said. “Soon we will pass Gravak Valley. I have many cousins who live there.”
He fell silent, but she saw a smile tug at his mouth, and he shook his head.
“Will we stop?”
He shook his head. “Nay, I wish to return home. It is odd but I’ve felt something, a strange feeling that gnaws at me when my thoughts aren’t focused. I don’t like it.”
Laren had learned not to discount such feelings when they came. “What are these feelings?”
“They make my flesh itch. They make me want to hurry faster, for there is something not right at home.” He shook his head. “It is nothing, surely nothing. I grow as foolish as a female.”
“I am not foolish.”
“Very well. I grow as foolish as a female who is not you.”
“Has your home a name?”
“Aye, for generation upon generation my father’s farmstead has been called Malverne. The name is older than these mountains on either side of us, and none know what it means or from what language it comes.”
“Malverne,” she said. “ ’Tis an odd word and not one I recognize