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She crossed her arms and tried to ignore the sudden heaviness in her breasts. How dare he imply she’d attempt to seduce him to get her own way. As if that would work!
‘You are making a mistake! A serious mistake!’
‘I think not.’ He gestured towards the practice area. ‘Now, unless you wish to join me in testing my sword arm, I will return to my task with my men.’
He turned his back on her and picked up his wooden sword, calling to his men to start the bout again, effectively dismissing her and her arguments.
‘Won’t you even listen?’ she whispered, balling her fists. ‘I’m trying to help you. To keep you from making mistakes and harming these people.’
The set of his shoulders spoke volumes.
* * *
Brand scowled and picked up his opponent’s sword. Six men he’d faced since Edith stomped off in a huff and each time they had been painfully easy to disarm.
‘Shall we try again, Starkad? This time, attack like you mean it. You make things too easy. I expected more from a warrior of your experience.’
‘You have been knocking lumps out of us all morning,’ the grizzled veteran said. ‘Hrearek never worked us this hard, even when we knew we were going into battle. What is the purpose if we are not going to fight?’
‘Hrearek has no part in this. We need to be ready in case of trouble.’
‘I’m aware of that. You and I have fought shoulder to shoulder for too many years. You should know my worth.’
Brand narrowed his gaze. ‘I will not have either of our skills getting rusty, just because we are looking after the land now.’
‘But does it need this fierceness?’ Sigmund stuck his sword down in the ground. ‘I swear, Brand Bjornson, you should just bed the woman. It would save everyone a great deal of bother. Get on with it. What are you waiting for?’
‘You trespass, Sigmund.’
‘You are worse than a bear who has been woken from his winter’s nap. Snapping here and there and demanding these endless hours in the exercise yard.’
‘Only because we need it. Remnants of the rebels remain. They might try to return here.’ Brand shook his head. Was his lust for Edith that obvious? ‘I refuse to have my relations with Lady Edith used as a cover for sloth and indolence.’
‘We have been through too much, you and I.’ Sigmund clapped Brand on his shoulder, rather than backing down. ‘I was with you in Norway before Byzantium. I saw you kill your first man.’
Not his first man. That had happened when he escaped from his father’s farm. It had been a case of kill or be killed, but Brand had been physically ill in a ditch afterwards. The second had happened on the battlefield and he’d managed to retain the contents of his stomach. ‘What of it?’
‘You need to bed that woman. It is a pleasanter way to pass the time, rather than seeking to knock our heads off.’
‘When I require advice, I will ask for it.’ Brand bent down, picked up the wooden sword and tossed it to Sigmund, hitting him squarely in the chest. ‘In the meantime, shall we have at it?’
* * *
Edith sat in the hall, trying to spin but inwardly fuming. Brand had dismissed her without listening to her arguments. What was worse was the horrible look he gave her.
‘You worry too much, Edith,’ Hilda declared, neatly finishing one distaff of wool as she grabbed more wool with her other hand. Edith watched the process with envy. Hilda seemed to excel at all womanly tasks, whereas Edith had managed to break her thread three times this morning and lost her spindle whorl once, only finding it when one of Brand’s dogs snuffled it out from under a bench.
‘On the contrary, corn is hugely important to this estate.’ Edith leant forwards, eager to explain her reasoning, everything she should have said to Brand but which she had thought of far too late. ‘What do you think you will be eating next winter if the corn isn’t planted at the right time with due consideration given to the local saints? And you don’t want the farmers muttering against you. That is when trouble happens. My father used to say that all the time. And he might not have always agreed with the old priest, but he never mocked him.’
‘Does the planting of the corn matter that much? A day here or there?’ Hilda snapped her fingers. ‘You should allow the men to do their job and get on with yours. Do you think they will dare complain, knowing Brand Bjornson’s reputation? Brand and his warriors are more than a match for any farmer who fails to comply and they know it. And that priest should never have made those remarks. He enjoys making people feel small. He’ll be the one stirring up trouble, rather than our new earl.’
