Dark, Devastating & Delicious!: The Marriage Medallion / Between Duty and Desire / Driven to Distraction

Brit was left standing in the longhouse alone, the marriage medallion shining in her outstretched hand.

No problem, she thought, her fist closing tight over the silver disk. He won’t take it. Doesn’t matter. He’s getting it back, anyway.

She marched over to his bed and dropped the medallion onto his furs, turning quickly away from it—from her own ridiculous reluctance to part with it. She righted the bench she’d kicked over and sat on it to put on her boots. Then she grabbed her jacket from its peg. She needed a long walk. A head-clearing dose of cold, fresh Vildelund air.

With her hand on the latch, she hesitated. No way strolling up and down the single village street, trying not to scowl at every friendly villager she happened to pass, was going to do the trick. She needed space and a total absence of other people. And if she was going to wander a little farther afield than the cluster of buildings that made up the tiny town, she’d be wise to do it armed. Renegades, apparently, were a problem around here. And from what she’d been told, there were bears. And wolves. And the legendary white Gullandrian mountain cats—and who knew what else?

Better armed than dead. She got her weapon from her pack, loaded it, put on her shoulder rig and holstered the SIG. Only then did she put on her coat and head for the door again.

Outside, it was in the high thirties. She felt in a pocket and came up with that bag of peanut M&M candies that she’d opened before she climbed from her wrecked plane. She took one out—a red one—and put it in her mouth to savor. Delicious. She might want more. Maybe she’d eat them all on her walk, indulge in an orgy of chocolate and peanuts to soothe her frayed nerves, ease her troubled mind. She emptied them into the pocket and then wadded the bag and stuck it in the front pocket of her jeans to throw in the fire later.

Another pocket of her jacket yielded a wool beanie. A third, a pair of red wool gloves. She was pulling them on as she turned away from the street toward the back of the house, the M&M sweet in her mouth, her spirits already lifting.

At the rear of the house, about ten yards beyond the game cage, she reached a small barn. To either side of it rough plank fencing bordered a narrow paddock where a few horses grazed. One—a gelding with a dove-gray blaze between his big dark eyes—turned to watch as she climbed the fence and dropped to her feet inside. Then, with a snort that showed as mist on the icy air and a toss of his snow-white mane, he went back to cropping the short grass. None of the other horses seemed the least interested in her.

It was good, she decided, to be outside again, on her own, with the sun a rim of gold just making its climb over the crests of the hills to her right, the brown grass crackling with frost beneath her boots, the cold air sharp and bracing in her lungs and the inviting shelter of tall evergreens ahead.

She reached the back fence and hoisted herself over it with minimal awkwardness, though her left shoulder was still tender and any pressure on the muscles near the wound caused a definite twinge. When she dropped to the grass on the other side, she was perhaps thirty feet from the thick, close-growing forest of spruce that surrounded the village on all sides and grew up the flanks of the hills.

She stopped to press the compass button on her watch. The trees ahead were due north, Asta’s house to the south. She should be safe to walk in the forest a little, as long as she was careful to keep her bearings and to watch out for predators—human or otherwise. She walked on into the shadows of the tall, proud trees, the thick blanket of short brown needles crunching underfoot.

The drop in temperature was immediate. Her breath came out as thick mist. She hunched down into the warmth of her jacket and picked up the pace a little—more exertion, more body heat.

A squirrel scolded her from a branch up ahead, tail twitching. She smiled as it jumped to the next tree, scampered inward to the rough red bark of the trunk and shot upward, vanishing from sight.

She felt better already. It was good, to be alone for a while, outside in the clean air, with only the sentinel trees and the chattering squirrels for company.

Her M&M was down to the peanut. Brit bit it good and hard and chewed it to a pulp. She swallowed. The situation stunk. There was Eric, who was too sexy and too tempting—and had some crazy idea that the two of them were meant for each other. And there were Asta and her daughters-in-law, sending Brit hopeful, dreamy-eyed looks every time Eric’s name was mentioned. Worst of all, there was her father, who had tricked her into thinking he believed in her quest—well, no. Worst of all was the quest itself, her search for her lost brother, which was going nowhere fast.

“Take ’em off, sweetling.”

Brit froze on the shadowed path. The voice, from up ahead, was male, unfamiliar—and full of youth and meanness.

“I am not your sweetling, lout.” A woman’s voice. Angry. Proud.

Someone laughed, low and harsh. And then came another voice, male and young, like the first, but more nasal. “We have you. Surrender.”

“Never.”

A silence. And then the unpleasant sound of a fist hitting flesh. A grunt. Scuffling.

“Hold her, Trigg…”

“Loki mock her, she’s slippery as an angry otter…”

The blows and grunts continued. Brit didn’t like to shoot with gloves on, but there was no time to remove them. She drew her SIG, levered back the safety. Carefully, gun at the ready, she crept forward toward the sound. At the next curve in the path, she came upon them. Two boys—renegades, no doubt.

And one young woman, dressed much like them, in rawhide leather, high lace-up moccasin-like boots on her feet. The woman struggled against the grip of the larger boy as the other tore at her clothes.

Rape in progress? Apparently.

Her pulse pounding in her throat, Brit acted. What else was there to do? She stepped out into the open, gun straight out, aiming steady with both hands. “Stop. Now.”

The boys froze and turned. “Balls of Balder, who are you?” demanded the one with the nasal voice.

Brit gestured, a twitch of the gun barrel. “Hands up. Now.”

The boys, looking sullen and snarly, did as instructed.

“On the ground,” Brit said. “Facedown.” The boys dropped to a sprawl. “Spread your arms wider. And your legs.” They complied.

The woman, whose blond hair had come loose from a thick braid, and half-covered her face, spared not more than a glance at Brit. She seemed totally unmoved by what had almost happened to her. “I’ll bind them.”

Brit didn’t argue. “Great idea.”

The woman, who was about Brit’s size, was already striding to a leather pack that waited on the ground a few feet away. She dropped to her haunches and took out several lengths of leather twine. Brit held her gun on the pair as the woman swiftly and expertly tied their hands and ankles.

When she finished, she stood tall and spat on the ground between the two would-be rapists. “There. That’ll hold ’em.” She raked her wild hair off her face and looked directly at Brit for the first time.

Brit gasped. “My God.”

The woman had an ugly cut on her full lower lip, a deep scratch on her cheek and an angry bruise rising at her jawline. But it wasn’t her injuries that had Brit staring, open mouthed. It was the woman herself.

Injuries aside, she was the image of Brit’s mother. She was Ingrid Freyasdahl Thorson, just as she looked in the old pictures in the family albums at home. Brit’s mother. Twenty-plus years ago.

How could that be?

“Princess Brit?” The woman smiled. It was Brit’s mother smiling, Brit’s mother in her midtwenties, with a cut lip and a naughty gleam in her sea-blue eyes. “Don’t answer,” she said. “There’s no need. I know you by the look of you. And isn’t this a story to be told around the tent fire on a cold winter’s night? The gods must be pleased with us. They have sent you out to meet us.”

Us?

Right then, from directly behind Brit, another woman said, “Drop your weapon, Your Highness. Or I’ll be forced to send my arrow flying straight to your heart.”

Chapter Six

One hand in the air, Brit knelt and carefully set the SIG on the ground. Still grinning, the woman who looked like her mother darted forward and snatched it up.

She pointed it at Brit. “Got her, Grid.”

The other woman—Grid?—came around in front of her, an arrow in her bow, but pointed at the ground. She was much older than the first woman, with graying brown hair, broad shoulders and thick legs. “By the wolves of Odin, Rinda,” she said. “I dare not leave you on your own for the span of a minute.”

Rinda shrugged. “No real harm done. And look who has come to my aid.”

“Of that,” said Grid, “I cannot complain.”

Brit cleared her throat. “Look. I’m on your side. There’s no need for you to take my—”

“Silence,” barked Grid.