She paced the deck, and when she came near Garik, he looked up at her. “Hulda? Are you well?”
She was not. Sick to the heart. Sick beyond the heart.
She perched beside him where he sat at the tiller. “Are we doing the right thing going home?” They could still turn back, even though out further among the islands they had picked up a fair wind and the men had shipped their oars.
“Ach, ja, without question.” He swept her with another glance before looking away. “You are not so sure?”
“I am not so sure.” Could she confide in him? No question but that she felt closest to Garik of all those here. And he already knew some of what she felt for Quarrie.
Quarrie.
Even Garik might not understand that she had pulled her bleeding heart from her chest and left it in the Scotsman’s hands.
“You have heard what the men are saying,” she said quietly. “Do they regret what happened back there? Standing with me against Ivor?”
He pursed his lips. “I do not know that they regret. You gave them a chance no one else would, and they are loyal hearts. Let us say the ramifications are setting in. Ivor—”
“He is not a man with whom anyone wishes to be at odds.”
“He is not. One way or another, he will make us pay.”
That statement hung between them.
“I am sorry,” Hulda said then.
“Do not be.” Garik shrugged. “You are an honest woman. One cannot deny one’s own heart.”
A longer silence ensued.
“I feel,” Hulda said then, “as if Loki has turned his eyes on me. A cruel joke, this is. An irony.”
Garik gave her a still more perceptive look. “You had better hope he has not. Do you remember when my sister, Astrid, lay down with that Irish slave to whom she took such a fancy?”
“How could I fail to remember?” A scandal, it had been, and Garik’s faðir had wound up ordering the slave killed.
“I remember how my sister looked that autumn, how ill she appeared when she was carrying her lover’s child.” Garik looked away from Hulda quite deliberately.
“Nei,” Hulda breathed. It could not be. Frantically she tried to tot up the days in her mind. When had been her last monthly? Ach, it could not have been that long ago.
Nei, and nei.
“I am only saying, are you sure?” Garik asked.
She could not go home to her faðir carrying potential disgrace and a Scottish child.
And yet how wondrous it would be. She thought of all she and Quarrie had shared together, how surely they had joined.
What if she took something away with her, in exchange for her heart?
*
By the timethey arrived in Avoldsborg, Hulda was certain she carried Quarrie’s child. She had all the signs that she—admittedly vaguely—recalled hearing about from married friends. Sickness in the morning, an aversion to even the smell of food, and bone-deep weariness such as she’d never known.
Loki had indeed turned his eyes upon her. Could there be a more ironic outcome? She, set upon living her life as a man, becoming a móðir. Móðir to a faðirless child.
Nei, but her babe was not faðirless. But so far as her own faðir would be concerned…
The crew was happy to see home, especially as there’d been no sign yet of Ivor or his fleet. They anchoredFreyain the main harbor and went off to their families, eager to boast of their season and try to smooth the waters ahead of the approaching storm.
