Fear flickered in Ruby’s eyes for a moment, but she quickly masked it with lowered lashes. “Would you kill me, too?” she asked softly with strangely saddened eyes.
Thork’s heart hammered loudly in his chest. Could she hear it? He searched her face for answers she hid too well. Ruby was the accused, and yet he felt oddly guilty.
“Mayhap,” he finally admitted wearily. “Mayhap you would force me to do so.”
Ruby’s eyes filled with tears. She opened them wider to stem the flow. Devastation wracked the weepy wench, and tore at Thork as her fragile heart seemed to splinter at his cruel words. Like his own, damn her soul! What had she expected of him? Protection? Betrayal of his people? Bloody hell!
“I don’t know you, Thork,” she whispered bleakly.
” ‘Twould seem you never did.”
Chapter Ten
“Defend yourself, damn you,” Thork demanded, raising his voice in exasperation when Ruby stubbornly refused to answer questions hurled at her by Dar and Olaf. She stood defiantly before her accusers in the privacy of a small chamber off the great hall.
Ruby glared at him obstinately. “Why should I? Would any of you believe my innocence?”
The deep greenish-gray pools of her eyes clouded with tears, and Thork felt he could drown in their murky depths. Thor’s blood! He could not be so foolish as to allow himself to surrender to the sea witch’s seeming innocence!
“Never have I condemned a man—or woman—unjustly,” Dar fumed indignantly.
“And yet you would believe the lies that black-haired spider spins in her web—despite a lack of evidence?” Ruby jeered. “What proof has she that I carried poison?”
“Do you claim Linette missays the events of this morn?” Dar asked with narrowed eyes. He drummed his fingertips pensively on the arm of his chair.
“I say she is a bald-faced liar. I’m surprised she doesn’t have to pin her nose to her forehead with one of those infernal brooches you Vikings favor.”
“What is your meaning, wench?” Dar demanded to know.
Thork explained tonelessly, with no humor, Ruby’s story of Pinocchio.
Dar reddened and stood abruptly. In a fit of temper, he slapped her hard across the face, causing Ruby’s neck to snap back. She faltered and almost fell. Thork had to willfully restrain himself from going forward to help her.
“Your insolent remarks bode ill for your fate, wench,” Dar warned. “Lest you convince us otherwise, I see naught we can do but torture the information from you, then confine you bodily till the Althing meets.”
The unexpectedness of Dar’s slap after his earlier kindness seemed to have caught Ruby off-guard. She gazed at Thork’s grandfather with hurt confusion—those miserable, piercing doe eyes again!—probably trying to understand why her light remark about liars would provoke such strong reaction.
After witnessing her sympathy for the two men in the courtyard, however, Thork had to share his grandfather’s condemnation of Ruby. All facts pointed to her guilt.
Truly, he should not be surprised. Most women Thork had ever encountered proved deceitful, self-serving bitches in the end. ‘Twas the nature of the female breed. He had not really expected more from Ruby. Thork combed the splayed fingers of his right hand through his hair in self-disgust. In truth, though, he admitted with a sickening lurch in his stomach, he had expected more of Ruby.
Finally, unable to take any more self-recriminations, Thork lashed out, “Lies! All lies! Lay not your lying tongue on Linette again. Much has she suffered since her husband’s death. Naught does she have to gain in your disfavor, I assure you.”
“Perhaps that part of your body you cherish so well blinds you to Linette’s true character.” Ruby’s upper lip curled in contempt as she turned on him.
Thork lurched forward and almost backhanded Ruby across the other cheek for her insult. He halted abruptly at the sight of white fingermarks from Dar’s blow still highlighted against the flushed skin of her cheek. She’d expected his blow, as well, indeed had provoked it, but, instead of cowering, she held on to the back of a chair and glared back at him in challenge. Thork grabbed her by the upper arms and lifted her off the floor, shaking her until he heard her teeth chattering.