“Wait,” Vagn called out, opening his eyes. They were as blue as the summer sky over a Norse fjord. A foolish maid, which she was not, could drown in their depths. “Untie me first.”
“Not till you agree to wed with my daughter.”
“Nay!” she said. If I did not love my father so much, I would hate him for this indignity.
“I already said mayhap.” Vagn did not even glance her way as he spoke, as if she were irrelevant in this discussion.
“Mayhap is not good enough. I know your kind, Ivarsson. The minute I release your bonds, you will run away,” Gorm said.
“I am hardly in a condition to do any running,” Vagn pointed out, still not looking her way.
“Will the two of you stop talking about me as if my opinion matters naught? I will not wed, and that is the end of it.”
“If I cut your ropes, will you agree to stay here for one month and court my daughter?” Gorm asked, tapping his forefinger against his chin.
“Nobody is going to court me,” Helga declared vehemently.
“Nobody?” their captive asked her, finally looking her way. “You have no suitors?”
She had been better off when he’d ignored her. He held her gaze, and she felt mesmerized by his attractiveness. She could not turn away.
“None to speak of,” her father answered for her. “She scares ’em all off.”
Vagn arched his eyebrows at her. “I am not easily scared.”
“Oh, spare me from the boasts of a self-important man!” Finally Helga had regained the use of her tongue.
“One month,” the Viking agreed, and a grinning Gorm rushed off to find a housecarl and the necessary items she’d demanded. Her father, rarely so compliant, probably rushed off to escape her wrath, which was going to be mighty, once she caught him alone.
She began to examine his injury more closely and while she did, she asked, “Where is your brother? As I recall, you two are rumored to be inseparable.”
He did not reply. When she glanced up from her work, she could not help noticing the agony in his eyes. Finally he said in a voice so low she barely heard, “Dead.”
She put a hand on his arm. “I am so sorry.”
He merely nodded.
There were no words she could offer that would console him, so she returned to the task before her. She’d exposed the wound, and it was grievous, indeed—a deep, seeping slash from nipple to navel.
Vagn glanced down and gasped. “I did not realize it was so bad. I should be dead. Surely the sword missed my heart and other vital organs by a hairsbreadth.”
“The gods are watching over you,” she opined.
“Or Satan.”
Apparently, he was not too happy about the fate the gods had dealt him. She decided to ignore the ungratefulness of his remark and examine him for other injuries. Blessed Freyja, give me strength. As lady of the keep, she had often tended the sick, and this man was no different. Keep telling myself that, and mayhap I will believe it. She would not feign modesty at this late date. Here I go. Flipping the bed coverlet aside, she exposed his nude body to full view… to his amusement, she could tell. Well, well, well! The fool thought she would be embarrassed to view him as he had been born. I am too stunned to be embarrassed.
First things first. Using the small knife she kept in a leather sheath on her belt, she cut away his ropes, then helped him up so that he could go behind the screen and relieve himself. It was an arduous process, because the man could barely stand. When he was done, he sank back down to the bed with a loud sigh of pain and exhaustion.
“You should have let me bring you a chamber pot,” she admonished him.
He scowled at her in silent reproval. The half-brain!
Her father came back into the chamber with a housecarl carrying two bowls of water and clean cloths. She immediately began washing Vagn’s face and neck and shoulders with a soapy cloth, leaving the wound area for last. He watched her like a hawk as she worked, probably enjoying her embarrassment in dealing with his naked flesh. She tried not to notice the muscles that bunched in his arms and chest. She especially tried not to notice the silkiness of the oddly appealing hairs in his armpits, visible now that he’d stacked his hands behind his neck, watch-watch-watching her.