Page 35 of Lord of Fire and Ice

Though love had little to do with their passionate tryst, he’d learned in the end.

As it turned out, Brandr needn’t have worried about how Katla would account for their time away. Finn was too full of his own news to ask after theirs.

“We’ve found another suitor for you, sister.”

Brandr made himself busy, coiling the rope and stowing the climbing tackle. His ears pricked with interest though his head warned him not to care about what he heard.

“Oh, Finn, what nonsense is this? I thought you were going to mend the fence around the cattle byre today.” Katla shook her head in disappointment. “You promised you would.”

“And so I did. That fence is better than new. You can see for yourself when you get there,” he said with an injured sniff. “I didn’t have anything to do with this new suitor. Finding another fellow for you was Einar’s and Haukon’s doing.”

“You really mended the fence? I’m surpri—” She caught herself before she insulted her brother. “That’s good, Finn. I’m…pleased,” she finished primly. “But where did Einar and Haukon find another suitor in such short order? At the mead house?”

“Well…”

“Oh, Finn!”

“You didn’t say anything about where we had to find the men to court you,” her brother complained. “You only said they mustn’t be fools.”

“How can Einar and Haukon tell the man isn’t a fool, if they’ve got their noses in a mead pot?”

Brandr had to admit she had a point. He’d certainly been a fool the last time he was in a mead house. And he was still paying for that folly.

Finn rubbed the back of his neck in obvious frustration. “Katla, we had an agreement. The son of Ulf as your thrall in exchange for your acceptance of another husband. Will you give this new man a fair hearing?”

“Fine.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “When?”

“On the morrow.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, at least it will give him time to sober up.”

Then she stomped away from both of them. Brandr and Finn watched her determined stride up the steep path.

“Has she always been like this?” Brandr asked.

“No,” Finn said absently. It didn’t seem to occur to him it wasn’t proper for a thrall to ask such a thing about his mistress. “Only since our mother died. She’s the eldest of us. When Haukon was born and we lost Mother, Katla had seen only eight winters or so herself. But she took it into her head that she had to stand in our mother’s stead, and she never got over the notion.”

So the mantle of responsibility had fallen on Katla early and heavily. Brandr began to understand a little of how that weight had shaped her.

“I suppose she’ll always think we can’t wipe our own backsides,” Finn said. “Nothing will get done unless she’s there to supervise. I blame Osvald.”

“Why? A man can’t help dying.” Especially in a world where men like Brandr’s father were happy to help them do it.

“No, but he might have had the decency to give her a child before he picked that fight with Ulf Skallagrimsson,” Finn said. “If she had a bairn of her own to tend, mayhap she wouldn’t need to mother the rest of us all the time.”

Brandr raised his brows in surprise. So his father hadn’t murdered Katla’s husband. It might even have been self-defense. He wondered if she knew Osvald had started the row that ended his life.

Finn was probably on the mark about the bairn too. Brandr recalled the look of yearning he’d caught on her face when she was surrounded by children that first morning of his enthrallment. She was warm and nurturing with the offspring of others, but a woman who was hungry for a child of her own wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less.

Having her own bairn would have changed matters for Katla.

Her burdens had made her hard. Had she also become so brittle she’d break?

Brandr wondered what would happen if he shouldered some of her duties and let her breathe. Would the smiling, laughing Katla he’d seen in the coracle return to stay?

Would the heart-stopping vixen on the cliff top welcome him to her bed again? She was young enough for childbearing yet. Perhaps he could give her a child where her husband failed.

He damn sure wouldn’t mind trying.