Read Online Viking's Prize by Tanya Anne Crosby - Free Book Online

cast
aside the lock of her hair as he surged to his feet.
    Hel and
damnation! It was lust and no more, he assured himself, and swore again, for
even as he made his way back to the helm, the lie followed him.

     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER
8

     
    The skies remained downcast the entire next day.
And the next, as well, though fortunately it didn’t rain.
    Late in the eve of the fourth day the wind
suddenly began to gale as they moved past a string of large islands. In the
rising tempest, the ship thrust forward so swiftly that the islands soon
vanished in their wake.
    Elienor had not eaten at all that first day. On
the second she’d been given measly portions of dried fish and water. Clarisse
had not eaten a bite, had grown progressively worse, though thankfully, she had
sipped some water. At the moment Elienor was not hungry, despite the fact that
she’d eaten nothing yet today. They’d given her more of the dried salmon an
hour past, but she’d not eaten it. Instead, she had saved it for Clarisse, in
hopes that the girl would try it when she awoke this time. Fervently, she
prayed that the storm would abate and the waters would calm, but to her dismay,
the storm only intensified.
    Willing away her fear, her thoughts focused upon a
happier time. The month she’d spent in her uncle’s court had been all too
brief. For the first time in her life she’d felt a part of something, even if
her relation to Robert, King of Francia, was known only by a select few.
    As she remembered, her fingers skimmed the ring
that lay hidden beneath the neckline of her bliaut. If her life before the
priory ever seemed unreal, distant, or if she ever doubted the vague memories
she had of her noble sire and gentle mother, she needed only to look upon the
ring that bore her family crest, the royal crest of Francia. Her uncle had
given it to her, the grandest of gifts, for the ring had once belonged to her
father.
    She cherished it.
    With bittersweet memories she recalled the moment
her uncle Robert had bestowed it upon her—the day he’d taken her from the
Abbey.
    Having been summoned to the chapel, she’d found
him humming softly, the Latin words too soft to make out. At the sound of her
footfalls upon the hollow wood floor, he’d turned from staring at the cross
above the altar, and the humming ceased abruptly. He cleared his throat.
“You’ve the look of your mother, child,” he’d said.
    “Aye,” Elienor answered. “So I have been told, my
lord.” She was helpless to keep the bitterness from her tone. “But as you can
see, I am a child no longer.”
    “Aye... truly... and your father would have been
proud.”
    He must have sensed her longing at his words, for
afterward, once they had talked awhile, he removed the ring from his finger.
“Take it, Elienor, for it belonged to your sire...”
    Elienor hesitated.
    “I understand should you choose not to... yet you
are as much entitled to it as I.”
    Still she hesitated.
    “Try not to condemn him, Elienor. Your father
was—as I have been—naught but a pawn in the politics of matrimony.”
    At last, she took the ring from his grasp. “As am
I,” she reminded him.
    He nodded gravely and sighed deeply. “As you are.
But you should know that he refused to repudiate her at first.”
    Her heart stumbled at his words, and she gazed at
him.
    “Alas… as you know... to no avail. I fear it
served my father well that your mother was known to bear the divine sight, for
it took very little goading on his part to rouse the common folk against her.”
He gazed at her pointedly. “At any rate, ’tis fortunate she did not bequeath to
you... her... inauspicious gift.”
    Elienor’s heart turned violently. She dared not meet
his gaze for fear he’d suspect. “Aye,” she croaked, “Fortunate, indeed.”
    He seemed not to note the alarm in her tone, for
he carried on. “Were it not for your father’s intercession with the church,” he
told her, “she might not even have been