A Warrior's Passion

“Did I tell you to sleep with the man?” her father retorted. “What have I asked of you except to see that my guest is made welcome?”

“I will see that his quarters are prepared as befits a valued ally,” she said firmly. “I will see that we have good food and drink to serve him—but no other needs will I fulfil.”

Her father shrugged his shoulders, and the scowl on his face was suspiciously like a pout. “You are not getting any younger, Seona,” he remarked, “and you’ve never been a beauty. You could do a lot worse than Griffydd DeLanyea. His father’s a powerful man, part Norman, too. Maybe if you—”

“Went to his bed, he would marry me?” She made no effort to hide her disgusted skepticism. “Father, who is it always says no man will buy what he can taste for free?” She wrapped her arms about herself. “Besides, I am not for sale, like furs or gold.”

Diarmad MacMurdoch regarded his only daughter coldly. “What is every marriage but a bargain? This would be no different. I’ve fed you and clothed you all these years, letting you live like a leech on my skin. It is time someone else took you.”

“You will offer me up like damaged goods?”

“If I must.”

“I am your daughter!”

“So what of that? I have sons to succeed me and fight for me. What will you ever do? Even if you marry, you will need a dowry—and where is that to come from, eh, but my purse?”

“I did not ask to be born!”

“No, and I did not ask for you, either!”

“I will not shame myself—”

Her father suddenly rose up like a wrathful spirit. “Do not speak of shame to me, girl! Have I not lived in shame these twenty years, aye, since the day you were born? Shame to have a daughter first! Shame that she was a weak, skinny thing! Shame that she was ugly! Shame that no man would have her, no matter how much I offered!”

Every word was like the sting of the lash to Seona, even if she had heard it all before.

Except the last. That was something new, and devastating.

“How much?” she asked in a whisper as cold as the wind from the hills in winter.

Now it was his turn to look startled. “Eh?”

“How much were you willing to pay someone to marry me?”

Scowling, he wrapped his robe about him and shrugged one shoulder morosely. “It matters not.”

“It does to me. I would know my worth.”

“Five hundred pieces of silver.”

And still no man wanted her! Dismay washed over her—and yet she would not give in to it, or to her father, either, just because no man of any wealth or consequence would take the bribe, for only to such would her father extend the offer. Otherwise, he would keep her by his side to run his household.

So it did not matter that a man of his choosing would not take her, she thought as she lifted her too-pointed chin.

“You should be glad I am here,” she said, “and that you have me to run your household. Am I not cheaper to keep than another wife would be? She might demand some notice from you, or lacking that, material goods to keep her happy.”

She ran a scornful gaze over her father, the chieftain of his clan, the leader of his people, the trader all men respected. Then she slowly and deliberately untied the ring of keys from her belt and held them straight out. “I learned better than to ask you for anything long ago. Would you have these back?”

“No!” her father growled.

“Then I will do my duty—but no more, not for you or any man!”

“Daughter—!”

“Servant,” she interrupted. “Little more than slave.”

“A servant would do her master’s bidding without an argument! A slave would know her place. By God, I should have drowned you like the runt of the litter.”

She regarded him steadily. “Aye, Father, perhaps you should have, but it is too late for that now. And alas for you, I am not a servant.”

With that, Seona turned on her heel and marched out.

Holding to the curved prow to steady himself in the bow of Diarmad MacMurdoch’s vessel, Griffydd DeLanyea drew in a deep breath of the salty air and gazed at the craggy hills of this godforsaken country. While Wales had hills and mountains aplenty, it also contained trees and lush valleys. All he could see here in the north was rock touched with a bit of green. Perhaps when the ship drew closer, the land would not look so barren.

Thank the Lord he didn’t have to live in the place, though. All he had to do was reach an agreement with Diarmad MacMurdoch, whose ships sailed all around Britain, the Isle of Man and Ireland, as well as north to the land of the Norsemen and Danes, and south to the Normans and even the Moors.

Griffydd’s father’s sheep produced some of the finest wool in Wales, and a lot of it. The baron’s tenants had also discovered silver in the hills near their castle of Craig Fawr. These two commodities would bring the family much wealth, if they could get it to several markets. Baron DeLanyea knew almost nothing about the sea and ships; better, he had told his son, to strike a bargain with a man who did and pay for his expertise.

“Yet have a care, my son,” his father had cautioned, “for a tricky man is Diarmad MacMurdoch. He will rant and rave and try to wear you down with his dramatics. That is why I send you, Griffydd. You have the patience to wear him down, with silence.”

As the ship turned toward the shore, Griffydd smiled sardonically at the memory of his father’s final words. Patience? Oh, yes, that he had—as well as the ability to overlook emotional outbursts, which he considered childish indulgence.

Indeed, he had always thought any display of extreme emotion rather distasteful and weak, even as a child. Like his mother, he could hide his feelings:

Not like his cousin and foster brother, Dylan. Dylan’s every emotion flew across his face and shone out of his eyes. There was nothing secretive about him, and no solemnity, either. He seemed to fall in love with a different woman every day of the week and clearly thought this something to brag about. He had already fathered three bastards that they knew of, and Dylan’s purse was perpetually empty supporting them and their mothers.

Being Welsh, of course, there was no shame to him or the women or the children—and yet no glory, either.

In Griffydd’s eyes, Dylan’s boisterous behavior was nothing more than rank foolishness and vanity. To be sure, Griffydd was no virgin, but he made no declarations of passionate, everlasting love to any woman. Why would he, when he never felt anything except the pleasure of physical union? No emotion had ever affected him the way the bards claimed love should. That such love existed he knew—his own parents were proof of that—but he mercifully had never felt the uncontrollable desire, the fierce longing that made all else unimportant, or the despair if the woman did not reciprocate.

The captain of the ship barked an order. Suddenly the crew jumped into motion.

They all had the look of the worst of Vikings about them, with long, tangled hair, thick, filthy beards and clothes that smelled as if their wearers had been living in them uninterrupted for the past ten years.

As the men lowered the square sail and prepared to out oars, the ship rounded a rocky point, exposing a sheltered bay. On one side of the bay on the top of a bluff stood a round stone tower that had obviously fallen into disrepair.

Inside the bay, several midsized vessels used for transport and trade sat at anchor. He could not see one longship, the low, dragon-prowed Norse warships all of Britain feared.

The captain pointed at the cluster of buildings now visible beyond the wharf at the edge of the bay. “Dunloch,” he called to Griffydd, who acknowledged his verification with a nod.

At the man’s next command, the oars slid out into the water. At his signal, the men began to pull in unison and, more surprisingly, sing.

At least Griffydd supposed that’s what they were supposed to be doing, for they started chanting rhythmically.

The reason became clear: it was to keep the men rowing in unison, the oars dipping and rising in time to the song.

As Griffydd hummed the tune, which was not difficult to learn, his shrewd, gray-eyed gaze swept over the village, noting the number of stone buildings, the wooden wall of the fortress on a slight rise beyond, the activity on the right side of the bay that bespoke both the building and repair of sailing vessels, the fish drying on the beach, and the women and children working and playing there. Smaller vessels were beside a wooden pier stretching out into the water, or drawn up on the rocky shore.