Meriel Fuller - Rescued By The Viking

* * *

Shock flooded through her, a chill shudder of foreboding. How could she have forgotten? Somehow she had given herself away out on the salt marsh. Ragnar had spoken to her in French, but she hadn’t responded. He hadn’t guessed her true identity, had he? For, as far as she could remember, she hadn’t uttered a word of her mother tongue in his presence.

Down on the ground, her father was trying to scrabble to his feet. To her surprise, the Dane leaned down, grabbing his upper arm to help him up. Gisela leapt to his other side, and together they brought the older man on to his feet.

‘Which way?’ Ragnar said companionably as he laced her father’s arm around the back of his neck.

Gisela, her arm supporting her father’s waist on the other side, peered around to Ragnar in astonishment. Suddenly, her father’s fragility was all too apparent, his gaunt frame hanging off the Dane’s broad shoulder. A wave of vulnerability washed through her. ‘We don’t need you,’ she replied resentfully. ‘Don’t you think you and your lot have done enough for this evening?’

A look of disdain crossed his lean features. ‘As you wish.’ He pulled away roughly so that her father’s full weight fell heavily against her. She staggered backwards, heels striking the wall as she fought to hold him upright. Her slight frame buckled beneath her father’s bulk and she wondered whether she was even capable of taking one step forward. She hated the fact that the Dane watched her, saw her weakness with his knowing eyes.

‘I can do it!’ she whispered fiercely as he came towards her.

Scooping the man’s arm around his neck, Ragnar regarded her coolly. ‘No, maid, you cannot. Even I am not so heartless as to leave you here, at the mercy of a town full of drunken Danes.’

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