Carol Townend - His Captive Lady

His cheeks had darkened and he was no longer meeting her gaze. Erica did not think it was shame that made him look away. He imagines he will see scorn and dismissal in my face . ‘Wulf?’ She made her voice as gentle as she could. ‘You could not help the circumstances of your birth.’

‘Lady, did you not hear me? My parents’ union was unsanctified. A bastard will share your sleeping quarters this night. That is why Thane Guthlac permitted you to choose me.’ He smiled, but his smile was bitter, and her heart ached.

‘Your birth does not trouble me,’ Erica said, frankly. ‘I chose you over…?’

‘Hrothgar.’

‘Yes, him. Of the two of you, I knew at once who was the man of honour.’

Wulf shook his head and his dark hair gleamed in the lamplight. ‘Lady, we are strangers.’

‘I know you,’ Erica said firmly. ‘And you, Wulf Brader, will not hurt me. That tells me all I need to know.’

With a sigh, he stooped for the pallet, dragged it to the space he had cleared and flung his cloak over it. ‘Lady, your bed.’ Drawing his own russet cloak from the bundle he had brought in with him, he handed it to her.

‘And you? Where will you sleep?’

‘Here, by the door.’

The spot he indicated was small for a man of his proportions. ‘There is little room.’ Immediately, Erica blushed, and wished the words unsaid. They sounded almost like an invitation.

‘There is room enough.’

Retreating to the pallet, she sank down on it and drew her cloak to her chin. She tried not to look his way. The cloak that she was lying on— his cloak—was thick and double lined, but there was no disguising that the mattress under it was thin and lumpy. For a moment Erica felt a longing for the fat, down-filled mattress of her box-bed at Whitecliffe, but she pushed the thought aside, and closed her ears to the harsh rustle of straw as she shifted on her crude bed.

It would be an uncomfortable night, Erica thought, recognising with something approaching astonishment that fear no longer gripped her. Her judgement of this man had been sound—she could trust him. He might be illegitimate, but there was no denying that Wulf Brader was an honourable man. Honour, she was fast learning, was not confined solely to the aristocracy.

She raised herself up on an elbow, bracelets jingling. ‘Wulf?’

‘Mmm?’

He was sitting on the floor, leaning against a barrel, pulling his boots off. Briskly he unbuckled his belt and set his sword close to hand. Erica’s stomach lurched as he began unwinding the blue cross-gartering. She had never slept alone with a man. And Wulf’s dark, almost sinful good looks, were having a strange effect on her; it would seem that they made improper thoughts leap into her head, unseemly thoughts that an unmarried Saxon lady had no business thinking, particularly since she had barely escaped ravishment at the hands of Hrothgar.

But Erica could not help herself, the thoughts kept coming. Thoughts about what it would be like to kiss such a man, one with penetrating blue eyes and a well-shaped mouth that had softened more than once when he had looked at her, a powerful man with a peculiar hint of sensitivity about him. Erica had never kissed a man, not intimately. Once, Ailric had attempted to steal a kiss in the Christmas before the Normans had come, but he had come to Erica with the reek of the ale-house on his breath and she had pushed him away very quickly. Her position as thane’s daughter had spared her other men’s attentions.

As Erica watched Wulf Brader prepare for sleep, the disconcerting intimacy of their situation stole her breath, and for a moment she forgot her question. Then she remembered. She was curious about him, his background, and not just what it might be like to share a kiss with him. It was quite ridiculous that she was having carnal thoughts and most unlike her. Still, it had to be better than dwelling on her current plight—hostage to the whim of Guthlac Stigandson.

‘Wulf, you say you are but newly recruited—how came you to join Thane Guthlac?’

For a moment it seemed he was not going to respond, then he shifted and said, ‘I was brought up in the port of London, near Earl Godwine’s house in Southwark. That was where, as a boy, I originally met Thane Guthlac.’

Erica’s eyes widened. ‘Did you meet King Harold, too?’

Again, Wulf took his time answering. In the hall, the noise was lessening, save for the clatter and bang of trestles and benches as they were pushed back to the wall to make room for sleeping.

‘Yes, but I do not like to talk of those days,’ he said in a closed voice, and bent over his cross-gartering.

Erica nodded. She understood; she felt the same way herself. She also had met King Harold, both when he was an earl and, later, when he had been king. And, yes, it was indeed painful to recall former times, when a Saxon king sat on the throne of England, and when William of Normandy was but a minor princeling on the other side of the Narrow Sea. ‘We all wish King William in hell,’ she said. ‘What loyal Saxon would not?’

Wulf shot her an impenetrable look and set the leg bindings aside. ‘Goodnight, my lady.’

‘Goodnight.’

Settling down once more on his cloak, Erica composed herself for sleep.

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