Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [89]
“No!”
“No what?”
She just stared at him, shaking her head back and forth. He supposed he was pleased that for once he’d taken her utterly aback, but more than that, now he wanted her to tell him that she wanted to wed with him, that she—
“I cannot wed you.”
“Oh? You cannot or you will not?”
“I cannot.”
“Are you already married? I don’t think it was Thrasco who was the hopeful husband, was it? Or perhaps before you were a slave you were married off as a child?”
“No, no, nothing like that.”
“No, of course you weren’t married. You were very much a virgin when I took you. Ah, I see. I am too beneath you to consider as a husband.”
“No, never.”
“More puzzles, more mysteries. Very well, Laren. Don’t forget you are my slave. Regardless of what you were before, now you are nothing more than a slave, one that many of my people believe also a murderess. I offer you the moon and the stars—at least that’s how a slave would see wedding the master of a large holding such as Malverne.”
She jumped to her feet and stared down at him. “You cannot keep Taby.”
“I can and I fully intend to.” He rose now, more slowly, to face her. He took her upper arms in his big hands. “Will you marry me or no?”
She looked into the fjord and saw a school of herring racing through the water, very close to the smooth surface, leaping above, like darts of silver. She felt she could reach into the water and catch one, so close they were. She looked up at him now. She wanted to smooth the frown from his forehead, as she said very calmly, “I cannot marry you because I was promised to Askhold, heir of Rognvald, king of the Danelaw.”
He jerked back as if she’d struck him. What she said was madness, surely . . . He stared at her, then at her loose-fitting gown and overtunic, not old or ragged, for it was Sarla’s, just very plain and too big for her, not garb the future queen of the Danelaw would wear. Something violent moved within him, something he didn’t understand, but accepted, just as he’d accepted her and he knew he’d accepted her for a very long time now, for probably longer than he realized. He believed her, tamped down on the fury raging deep within him, and said mildly, “The truth at last. Tell me the rest of it.”
“Taby is indeed a prince. He and I were abducted from my sleeping chamber two years ago, and sold to a slave trader in the Rhineland.”
“Who is your father?”
“Our father, Hallad, is dead. However, Taby is the second male in line to succeed his uncle.”
“His uncle, Laren?”
She drew in a deep breath. “I haven’t said his name aloud in two years. Our uncle is Rollo, called the first duke by the Frankish king, Charles the Simple. As you know, he ceded Normandy to Rollo so that he would defend France against the raids of other Vikings.”
This time he didn’t feel as if she’d struck him; he felt as if he’d been kicked by a horse. “The famous Rollo,” Merrik said more to himself than to her. “I was raised on tales about the brave and ferocious Rollo. He is truly your uncle?”
“Aye, my father was his older brother. Rollo was wedded to a girl from a royal family in Spain. He loved her, so I have been told. She bore him some six children, three of them boys. However, only the second son, William Longsword, lived to manhood. Thus, Taby is second in line after William. His older brother, Hallad, my father, had four children, three daughters and one son, Taby. Unfortunately our mother died when Taby was only a year old. Our sisters, by my father’s first wife, are much older. They are wed to men of high rank and all live in Rouen at my uncle’s palace. Someone betrayed us. One or both of my sisters, or their husbands. I don’t know who. William Longsword was out of Normandy at the time of our abduction, at the Frankish court in Paris. Also, I trust William. He would no more harm Taby or me than he would harm his own father. He realizes Taby’s importance in the scheme of things. He, too, has a wife, but she has borne him no children as yet and they’ve been wed