Lord of Raven's Peak - Catherine Coulter [90]
He said nothing for a very long time. Then, “At least they didn’t murder you out of hand.”
“No, that is why I believe it must be one of my sisters, or both of them, or their husbands. It would salve their consciences were Taby and I only to be sold as slaves, not killed outright. They surely must believe that they have won, Merrik. They haven’t, unless William Longsword has died leaving no son, but I have heard naught about it. If there is no direct heir, why, then one of the husbands would become the heir to Rollo.”
“That is what you meant when you told me you understood vengeance.”
“Aye, I have lived with the thought of it strong and sweet in my mind. Aye, and on my tongue. I can nearly taste it. As long as I’m alive they haven’t won.”
“No, they haven’t. You have spent the last two years surviving, keeping Taby with you, keeping him alive.” He looked back up the winding path to Malverne, now his farmstead, enclosed within its mighty wooden palisade. He saw smoke rising from the hole in the roof of the longhouse. Then the barley, hay, and rye fields, surrounding the palisade, the crops nearly ready for harvest. An endless cycle. “Life is not at all what a man expects it to be. I suppose it is better that way. My parents are struck down by a plague, my brother is murdered, the assassin still unknown, and now the child I want as my son is in line to the great Rollo.” He paused a moment, looking down at his brown feet. “It is almost more than I can accept.”
“And I am his niece. It is all true, Merrik.”
“Aye, I do not doubt you. But I do doubt myself. I went to the slave market in Kiev to find a comely female slave for my mother. Instead I found you and Taby. As I told you, you have made my life a confusion. And now I learn you are Rollo’s niece. I am impressed with your lineage. Who you are will convince my people that you could not have murdered Erik. Your blood is too purified, too noble, to stain your hands on a man of Erik’s station.”
“You will now return me to Normandy? With Taby?”
He became very still. He looked down at her, at the shifting expressions on her face, his own face unreadable to her. Finally, he said, with no emotion in his voice, his eyes flat, not meeting hers, “If it is your wish.”
He watched her scuff the toes of her leather shoes against the pier. They were an old pair belonging to Sarla. He could see a hole along the side of her foot. “Ah, then you don’t wish to wed me now.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then what do you want, Merrik?”
He clasped her left hand in his and flattened her palm over his chest, laying his hand over hers. “I won’t return Taby to your uncle Rollo until I have found out who betrayed you. The danger is still there. To return both you and Taby there now would simply result in your deaths this time, doubt it not. I will not take that chance.”
“Perhaps, but still, I must go back. I will find out. Uncle Rollo will punish my sisters, if it is they who had us abducted. If it is their husbands, they will be killed. I would protect Taby as would Uncle Rollo. Taby could be the future duke of Normandy, if something happens to my cousin before he breeds an heir. He must go back. My uncle grows no younger. He must train Taby, teach him, just as he did William.”
“I had not expected this,” Merrik said slowly, now looking beyond at the distant sheer cliffs, her hand now clasped in his at his side. “I hadn’t expected you to be an innkeeper’s daughter, however. I just didn’t imagine that you would be royalty. I imagine that your Danelaw prince, Askhold, believes you long dead. I imagine he is wed to another by now.”
“Aye, it is possible. He needed a wife to bear him children.”
“What is he like?”
“I don’t know. I never met him, but I heard my sisters talking about him. They said he was thirty and his first wife had died, and she had given him five daughters. He