Page 46 of To Tame a Viking Warlord

"An old healer in Glenorchy gave them to me last winter. Before I ever set sail." His voice was rough. "She told me they were for my wedding. I told her there would be no wedding."

He took her hand and slid the rose ring onto her finger. It fitted as though it had been made for her.

Samira took the silver ring from his palm and slid it onto his. It fitted him just the same.

"She knew," Samira whispered.

"Aye." Torstein closed his hand over hers. "It seems she did."

Father Donnan cleared his throat, then blessed them in Latin with his eyes on the sky.

Then the priest wrote the charter. Their names, the date, the silver, the witnesses. Leif made his mark. Mathias made his. Njal made his.

When the quill came to her, Samira dipped it and wrote her name beneath the Latin in her own script, curling right to left across the bottom of the vellum.

"It is my name," she told the priest. "Now it is written in both our tongues."

***

Kirkwall, Orkney

FROM THE MOMENT THE snekkja pulled into the cover of the Orkney cliffs, Torstein sensed something was very wrong. He'd had a bad feeling the moment he spotted a welcoming party at the wharf, and Kolbein Ottarsson and his daughter Estrid among them.

The whole town seemed to be on the shore when the snekkja came in.

Samira saw Estrid before she knew who she was. A fair-haired young woman in a fine blue gown, standing beside a broad gray-bearded man in a fur-trimmed cloak. The crowd gave both of them room.

When Torstein stepped down onto the shingle, the young woman came straight to him and laid her hand on her belly. The swell of it was plain beneath the gown.

"You've come home in time," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Your son will be born before midwinter."

Samira felt the ground fall out from under her.

She looked at Torstein. She could not help it. She waited for him to deny it and in the space of that one breath, she could not be sure he would.

His face had gone white.

"Estrid." His voice was very quiet. "Take your hand off your belly and say that again. Slowly. So I can be sure I heard you."

"You heard me." The gray-bearded man stepped forward. "My daughter carries your child, Hagansson. The jarl favors you, and I have long wanted our houses joined. Now they will be. The wedding will be before the month is out."

"Kolbein." Torstein turned to face him. "I have never laid a hand on your daughter. Not once. Not ever."

A murmur ran through the crowd.

"You were seen together several times," Kolbein said.

"I spoke to her at different feasts. In front of the jarl's whole hall." Torstein raised his voice so the back of the crowd could hear. "I sailed for Fez in the spring. I have been gone since. Look at her, Kolbein. She's not more than four months gone. Count it. I was at the far end of the world."

"That is true." Leif came up beside him.

Estrid's face had gone red. "You cannot prove he never—"

"Before I sailed, I slept at my homestead, alone, or at my parents' hearth," Torstein said. "Ask anyone in Kirkwall. Ask my mother." He looked at Estrid, and there was no softness in it at all. "Whoever's child that is, they are not mine. And I will not raise another man's son foisted on me under false pretenses."

Estrid turned away. Her shoulders shook. Samira could not tell whether it was grief or fury.

Kolbein was not finished. "You made a promise to this house."