The clerk just laughed. “Lady, if you think that is going to make him look less scary . . .”
“If you only knew how kind he is,” she said as though sharing a secret.
“Don’t worry, miss. I’ll let everyone know you’re newlyweds. The last thing any of those crazies holed up on their boats want is to put up with some cooing turtledoves.”
She gave him one more smile she hoped looked innocent. “Thanks.”
As she ran to her car, it began to pour.
Galen peered out the thin horizontal port holes into the rain. He should have forbidden her to leave. Why go when she had just returned? Where had she gone? Had she left him forever?
Or she might betray their location to her lover and his warriors, either willfully, because she had a change of heart about disobeying her man, or in innocence. Who would not recognize that red hair? Even now it was all he could do to stand and watch for her. He was dependent on her. She brought food and clothing when it was a man’s place to provide for his woman. . . .
Of course, she wasn’t his woman. She was just a woman. Any woman. Any woman who was a sorceress in a time of magic. When he bedded her she would belong to him, at least until he left for his own time. He must bed her soon in order to bind her to him. His thoughts were scattered by fatigue. He wanted to return to his soft bed. But he held himself on watch for her.
There! She scurried down the little dock through the pouring rain, her coat pulled over her head. He went to stand at the bottom of the ladder. Her hasty steps thudded across the deck. The hatch above him opened, letting in spray and wind. She came down the ladder, dripping and breathless, and turned to latch the hatch.
“Oh, my, but it is wet out there,” she panted. When she turned at the bottom of the ladder, she was very close to him. She was so tiny, so delicate. She wore small gold rings pierced through her ears as though she came from the lands east of the Danube River. Her head came only to his chest. Her eyes were that clear green again. Her face was sprinkled with drops of rain. The red wisps, damp and dark, clung to her cheeks, her forehead. She had a dusting of freckles across her fine, pale skin. He felt a pull in his loins in spite of his exhaustion. It would not be a trial to bed her. She looked up at him and stilled. He imagined her naked body writhing under him, thrusting up to meet him as he plunged inside her. Did she feel that same tightness in her woman’s core? Her eyes grew big.
“Hwer wert thu?” he growled, not bothering with Latin.
She pulled back. But she understood him. “I saw your little man.” She pushed past him. “You frightened him.” She caught herself and repeated in her halting and badly pronounced Latin. “He must not tell all of a fierce Viking.”
“Hwæt spekest thu to him?” Galen couldn’t seem to muster Latin. But she understood.
She blushed. “That we were new wed. He will tell others. No one will come here.”
Galen caught himself imagining the first night after plighting their troth. Would she blush all over her milk white body? Would she be shy and try to cover herself, even though she routinely flaunted her body in skimpy clothing? Mayhaps, at least until he made her moan when he suckled her breast.
Where was his mind? He set his jaw. She had taken care of him yet again by lying to the soft man. That made Galen angry. She should have left it to him to confront the soft man.
“Go to the bed. You are sick.”
He wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled for giving him orders, for being right, for his dependence on her, for being so sure of herself. He wanted to make her lie that she belonged to him into a truth. But as he glared at her his vision swam. He felt his knees wobble.
“Don’t you dare collapse,” she muttered. He didn’t understand. But he understood the blackness in his field of vision. She grabbed his arm and half-hauled him, staggering, through the passageway until he collapsed upon the bed on his good side. She pulled the bedding out from under him, lifted his legs, and covered him. He lay gasping like a hooked fish. She brought him more of her vile tablets. He wanted to sweep away her tablets and her flagon of water, along with the concerned look on her face. But only his wounded shoulder was outside the blankets, and almost any movement made pain wash over him. He could do nothing as she sat beside him and rolled him gently to his back.
“Leave me, woman,” he ordered, mustering Latin to be sure she obeyed. But she didn’t. She lifted him and presented the pills. All fight went out of him. What choice did he have but to obey her? Disgusted with himself, he took the tablets (there were many this time) and gulped water from the flagon she held to his lips. He could not even turn away from her.
Chapter 10
The man was certifiable. Why did he fight her even when he was ashen and wavering on his feet? She stood, glaring down at him. He turned his head away. Just great.
Well, she had other things to do.
Lucy left him in the dim cabin. The Camelot rocked more than usual in the water. Rain beat down in waves across the deck above. Rivulets obscured the windows. A worry intruded to crease her brows. The bandages on both his shoulder and his thigh were pink and yellow and wet again. Was that a bad sign? He’d certainly looked ill.
She sheathed his sword and laid it on the sofa. It wouldn’t do any good to hide it from him. He’d find it if he had to tear the boat apart. Was he dangerous? Maybe when he got his strength back. He’d been angry with her for some reason just now. The man was incomprehensible. She rummaged in her shoulder bag under Leonardo’s book and pulled out the pepper spray. Too big for her jeans pocket. In the end, she put it in the spice rack bolted to the galley cupboards, where it was accessible from the table or the galley itself. She’d have to remember to take the spray with her when she changed bandages or used the head.
Leonardo’s book.
She flipped on a cabin light. The day was dim. She went to her shoulder bag and pulled the book out. The leather with its tooled image of angels ascending to heaven gleamed in the light of the lamp swinging over the table. That book had exerted a power over her for months and now . . .
Now, nothing. It was just a marvelous book, a precious historical object written in the hand of a great man long dead. But she hadn’t thought about it since she’d shown it to Jake night before last. When had she ever, in the time she’d owned it, not thought about it for even an hour? It had owned her more than she owned it.
She felt like a jilted lover. Whatever had been between them, her and the book, was over, a memory of passion that seemed incomprehensible, even amusing, now that she’d moved on.
Or it had moved on.
What a thing to think! She must be losing it. She put the book in a cupboard above the sofa. That was the first time Leonardo’s book had been out of her shoulder bag, except when she handled it, in several months. There was a time when she would have felt anxious. But not now. Now she felt . . . right. Things were as they should be. How odd. The feeling this morning at Target of not being panicked about anything had grown even more intense.
She snorted and closed the cupboard. Who was she kidding? She was hiding out with a probably murderous Viking from her own friend. She’d probably changed history. And some CIA type was maybe after her. Things were way not right.