The Viking’s Captive (Viking I #6)

386 Pages·2010·2.68 MB·english

by  Hill

The Viking’s Captive
Sandra Hill
This book is dedicated with much fondness and respect to Alicia Condon, who had been
my editor for seventeen novels and two anthologies.
We have both moved on, but the fact remains: Alicia is an editor extraordinaire. Better
yet, she shared my sense of humor. The only idea she ever nixed was my wanting to
make one of the Three Wise Men a romance novel hero. I’m still hoping to slip that one
by some editor someday.
Alicia made my books better. What else could any author want?
Seafarer, may the sweet
Songs of the god of verse
Drench your mind, and may your
Men’s lips be stilled by art.
For in the far and rich
Fields of Norway the seeds
My song sows will ripen,
so men may taste its fruit.
E S
GILS AGA
Circa tenth century
Reader, may the sweet words of my muse
Drench your mind, and may you stand in awe
Of my books. For in the far and rich fields
Of my imaginations, the seeds of ever more
stories do ripen, so that all of you may
taste of its fruit.
S 2002
ANDRA HILL,
A shameless play on Egils’s words
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER EIEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
EPILOGUE
GLOSSARY
READER LETTER
The Viking Takes a Knight
Viking in Love
The Reluctant Viking
The Outlaw Viking
The Tarnished Lady
The Bewitched Viking
The Blue Viking
The Viking’s Captive
A Tale of Two Vikings
The Last Viking
Truly, Madly Viking
The Very Virile Viking
Wet & Wild
Hot & Heavy
Frankly, My Dear …
Sweeter Savage Love
The Love Potion
Love Me Tender
Desperado
About the Author
Romances by Sandra Hill
Copyright
About the Publisher
PROLOGUE
J . 937
ORVIK, A.D
T
he way they were …
It was alms day in the market town, and hundreds of people, many of them children,
crowded the minster steps, screaming and pushing for the loaves of dark bread to be
handed out by the clerics.
Among the poor who lined up for their weekly pittance of food were seven-year-old
Adam and his four-year-old sister, Adela.
“Don’t be afeared, Adela,” Adam said. “No one can hurt ye … leastways, not whilst
I’m here to protect ye.”
Adela stared up at him adoringly, her thumb planted firmly in her mouth, as it always
was. Despite her being covered with filth from bare feet to lice-infested head, as he was,
too, Adam thought she was more comely than a harem princess … not that he’d ever
seen a harem princess, but he’d heard sailors speak of such as they strolled the city.
Adela was the only family he had since their mother had died a year past and left the
two of them to roam the wharfside streets on their own. Adela meant more to him than
anything. He promised himself in that instant that someday he would replace her
threadbare garments with jewel-studded silks. And she would take a bath sometimes,
too. Most of all, he would always, always be there to protect her.
“Now, ye mus’ stand right here, Adela, whilst I try to get us some bread. Do ye
promise not to move?”
“Yea, Adam.” She nodded her head up and down, eyes wide with fright as she watched
him make his way craftily to the front of the mob, pinching a buttock here, darting
between legs there, finally pulling a small loaf out of the priest’s fingers just as he was
about to hand it to an old woman in rags.
“Come back, ye bloody toad,” the woman screeched, to no avail. Many in the crowd
turned to watch his progress, some trying to snatch his precious booty. But there was no
way he would give up his hard-won food. He shoved it down the front of his dirty tunic
and ran for his life toward his sister.
Reaching Adela, Adam quickly broke the loaf in half, and the two of them gobbled the
moldy bread ravenously. It was the first they’d eaten in a day or more, but more
important, the food was safer in their stomachs than in their little hands where those
larger than they would think nothing of killing them for the crumbs.
While his mind had wandered, a lady had hunkered down on her haunches in front of
Adela. She was a tall lady, but not so big as the man who stood behind her … the size of
a warhorse, he was, and mean, would be Adam’s guess, by the scowl on his face. Both of
them had pale blond hair, which probably meant they were Vikings … not surprising,
since this was the Norse capital of Britain. The place was flooded with the bloody sea
pirates.
“What’s your name, little girl?” The woman reached out to brush some lank strands of
hair off Adela’s face as she spoke.
Although the woman looked harmless enough, there were evil folks lurking about the
city, and Adela recoiled. “Adam,” she whimpered, reaching for him with one hand, while
the thumb of the other shot immediately into her mouth.
“Why do ye want to know?” Adam demanded, narrowing his eyes and putting his
hands belligerently on his hips.
“You two shouldn’t be out on the streets like this. Where are your parents?”
“Got none.”
“Did they … die?”
“Yea, our mother died. What matters it to you?”
The lady inhaled sharply. “When was that?”
“Last winter.”
“A year! And who do you live with now? Your father?”
“Huh?”
“Rain, we have lingered here overlong,” the blond man interrupted, taking her arm.
Rain, he had called her. What an odd name.
“Just a moment, Selik,” the lady insisted.
“Remember the woman in childbirth,” Selik reminded her.
“Oh, I forgot,” she said, shooting a look of apology at another man standing beside
the Norseman. It was Uhtred, a resident of Jorvik that Adam had seen about on
occasion. His wife was big—very big—with child these days. She was nowhere around
now. No doubt she was off somewhere in a pile of straw, popping out her latest
bratling.
The lady Rain was addressing Adam again. “Who did you say was taking care of
you?”
He raised his head defiantly and snarled, “I take care of me sister and meself.”
“I just want to help—”
“Hah! Just like Aslam—”
“The slave trader?” Selik asked with surprise.
“Yea, the slave trader. Keeps tryin’ to ketch us, he does. But I be too fast fer the fat
old codsucker. Says he knows of a sultan in a faraway land that wants ter have us fer
his very own children, to give us a home and good food, but I know what he wants. Yea,
I know.”
“What?” Rain exclaimed, even as Selik said a foul word behind her.
“He wants to bugger us both, he does, to stick his cock up our arses,” he declared with
a streetwise explicitness that he hoped would shock the lady into going away. He spat at
her feet, grabbed Adela’s hand, and disappeared into the crowd.
“I only wanted to help you,” she called after them.
Those words rang in Adam’s ears, false as they must be, and he slowed his pace. For
some reason he could not explain, he decided to follow the blond giants hurrying to
keep pace with Uhtred, whose wife was apparently unable to pop out their latest babe
with her usual ease.
At one point, when he drew close to them in the crowded sector of Coppergate where
all the tradesmen had their stalls, he overheard Rain complain to Selik, “We should have
stayed and helped them.”
“You’re out of your bloody mind. I want no children of my own, and for certain I will
not care for anyone else’s bothersome brood. Get that through your thick head.”
“But, Selik, did you see that little girl’s eyes when she looked back at us over her
shoulder? They were pleading for help.”
“You see and hear only what you want, wench. Did you hear the coarse-mouthed,
filthy pup? He wants no help, and I daresay the tough little whelp could survive on a
battlefield, let alone the streets of a market city.”
It took Adam a few moments to realize that the “coarse-mouthed, filthy pup” Selik
referred to was him. He growled and would have pounced forward and taken a bite out
of the man’s leg, but Adela held him back. She did, indeed, have a pleading look in her
blue eyes.
“Please, please,” Uhtred was begging, pulling on Rain’s sleeve. “My wife is dying, and
you stand here prattling about worthless street children.”
Rain turned on Uhtred with anger. “And what makes you think your unborn child is
worth more than those two precious children?”
Precious? Who? Us? In that instant, Adam’s heart felt as if it were growing and
growing. He could love this woman, he decided … like a mother. Then he shook his head
fiercely to rid his brain of the witless notion.
A dream was born …
Hours later, Adam stood peering through a wide crack in Uhtred’s miserable hut.
Adela was asleep in the lap of Selik, who sat under a nearby tree, his long legs stretched
forward and crossed at the ankles. How that had come about, Adam wasn’t quite sure,
but he did know that there was no way he was leaving Uhtred’s home, despite Selik’s
harsh reprimands that birthing was no sight for a little boyling. If Selik called him a
“little boyling” one more time, Adam vowed he would give him a famous Anglo-Saxon