Debra Lee Brown - Ice Maiden

The Scot’s eyes popped wide. “Yer daft, woman.” He’d be on his way now, thank ye very much. “Besides, I have a bride.” George rose shakily to his feet. Rika rose with him. Sweet Jesus, the woman was nearly as tall as he. “Arranged,” he croaked, “by William the Lyon—my king.”

She flinched at his words. “It matters not.”

Oh, but it did. Women should be small and delicate. Submissive. Her brash demeanor repelled him…yet his body felt strangely stirred.

“Once we are divorced, you can go home and claim her. The dowry is all I want. It’s mine by right, and I will have it.”

What she proposed was unthinkable. Marriage was a sacrament. ’Twas not a pagan ritual to be done and undone on a whim, simply to gain the bride her coin.

“I willna do it.”

“Then I hope you enjoy our island, Scotsman, for you’ll be here a very long time.” She turned her back on him and marched away.

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Dear Reader,

Harlequin Historicals is putting on a fresh face! We hope you enjoyed our special inside front cover art from recent months. We plan to bring this “extra” to you every month! You may also have noticed our new look—a maroon stripe that runs along the right side of the front cover and an “HH” logo in the upper right corner. Hopefully, this will help you find our books more easily in the crowded marketplace. And thanks again to those of you who participated in our reader survey. Your feedback enables us to bring you more of the stories and authors that you like!

We have four incredible books for you this month. The talented Shari Anton returns with a new medieval novel. Knave of Hearts is a secret-child story about a knight who, in the midst of seeking the hand of a wealthy widow, is unexpectedly reunited with his first—and not forgotten—love. Cheryl St. John’s new Western, Sweet Annie, is full of her signature-style emotion and tenderness. Here, a hardworking horseman falls in love with a crippled young woman whose family refuses to see her as the capable beauty she is.

Ice Maiden, by award-winning author Debra Lee Brown, will grab you and not let go. When a Scottish clan laird washes ashore on a remote island, the price of his passage home is temporary marriage to a Viking hellion whose icy facade belies a burning passion…. And don’t miss The Ranger’s Bride, a terrific tale by Laurie Grant. Wounded on the trail of an infamous gang, a Texas Ranger with a past seeks solace in the arms of a beautiful “widow,” who has her own secrets to reveal….

Enjoy! And come back again next month for four more choices of the best in historical romance.

Sincerely,

Tracy Farrell, Senior Editor

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

The Virgin Spring #506

Ice Maiden #549

For James with love

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

The Shetland Islands, 1206

He was dreaming.

Aye, that explained everything.

Grit and salt stung his eyes. Icy water rushed over his body in a bone-chilling wave. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. If only he could move or cry out.

“He is perfect,” a feminine voice whispered close to his ear. A soft fingertip grazed his jawline.

“Perfectly dead, I’ll wager.” The rough voice was a man’s, the accent fair strange.

He cracked an eye to the flat, white light of dawn and tried to focus.

“You wager poorly, Lawmaker. Look, he wakes.”

Nay, he wasn’t dreaming at all.

He was dead.

The vision floating above him was enough to convince him. He’d heard of them, of course, in legends told around campfires late at night by seafaring Danes and Norwegians come to trade in Inverness. But he was a Christian and believed not in such tales.

Yet there she was, looming over him, waiting.

“Valkyrie,” he breathed.

The vision frowned, narrowing ice-blue eyes at him.

“You’re right,” the male voice said somewhere at the edge of his consciousness. “He’s not dead, just daft.”

Oh, he was dead, all right. How else could he explain such a creature?

Two thick, flaxen braids secured with rings of hammered bronze grazed his bare chest as she studied him. She wore a helm, as might a warrior, embossed with strange runes—the kind he’d seen on ancient standing stones near the Bay of Firth—and a light hauberk of finely crafted mail.

But she was a woman, of that there was no doubt. The blush of her cheek, the ripeness of her lips, belied her garments and her hard, calculating expression.

His gaze drifted lazily along the curve of her neck and the narrow set of her shoulders. Her arms were bare and sun bronzed, adorned with more of the same hammered metal. With each measured breath, her breasts strained ever so slightly against her hauberk.

“Am I—” he rasped. “Is this—” He coughed up another lungfull of seawater, then met the Valkyrie’s penetrating gaze. “Valhalla?”

Men’s laughter shattered the eerie harmony of cawing terns and cormorants.

“Likely the farthest place from it,” the Valkyrie said. “This is Frideray. Fair Isle.”

His head spun and a wave of nausea gripped him. “But then…” He tried to sit up. She pushed him firmly back down onto the sand. Another icy surge washed over his numb legs and he started to shiver. “Wh-who are ye?”

“I am Ulrika, daughter of Fritha.”

“Rika,” he breathed, fighting to stay conscious.

At her command, a half-dozen hands clutched him and hefted him from the beach. Pain shot through his limbs, and he bit back a groan.

“Thor’s blood, he’s heavy,” the man she’d called Lawmaker said. “We need another man.”

Instantly another set of hands supported his limp, sea-battered body. Her hands. They were small, softer than the others. His head lolled to the side and found her crystal gaze.

“My ship,” he mouthed, unable to make the sounds.

“Lost,” she said, “and every man with it.”

A searing pain twisted his gut, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “Nay, it canna be. My…my brother?”

“All.”

The backs of his eyelids blazed with horrific visions of the shipwreck. The storm had come upon them in the night without warning. Biting sleet and lightning, gale-force winds the like of which he’d ne’er known in the Highlands. The howling haunted him still—a high-pitched railing, the shriek of the devil himself. The hull of their ship had shattered like a child’s toy against rocks that had no reason to be there. At least not from the charts they’d carried.