Page 89 of The Viking’s Captive

Most surprising of all was the expertise Adam displayed as he hefted his sword and wielded it in smooth, fluid motions. The healer had told her that he had been a soldier betimes over the years, but she must not have believed him.

“He is a handsome devil, is he not?” Tykir asked as he came up to stand beside her.

“That he is,” she admitted. Despite the coolness of the air, Adam and Alrek had stripped off their tunics and were exercising bare-chested. Adam’s dark hair and Alrek’s blond hair were both tied back into queues at their napes with leather ties. Alrek would no doubt be a handsome man when he was grown … if he lived that long. Adam was already as handsome as a god.

“Who is he?” Tyra asked. The man was clearly full of contradictions. He could be a soldier, or a healer. He could be as crude as the most ignorant cotter, or sensitive to the needs of others. He claimed to want no family, and yet he threatened to take her child if it were ever born of his seed.

“Do not judge Adam too harshly,” Tykir said. “I’m not sure he knows, himself. He has lived a harsh life, and a privileged life. In the end, he is a survivor. But at a cost.”

“Have you known him long?”

“Since he was seven years old, and his sister Adela was four. A more foul-mouthed, enterprising, wild rascal you never met in all your life! My stepsister Rain and her husband Selik adopted the two orphans. Only the gods know what horrors the two experienced before that, living on the streets of Coppergate in Jorvik. I do know that the wildness never really left him. He tries to hide it under a veneer of civility, but on occasion it emerges. And always there is this invisible shield he has erected around himself. He lets people in only so far, even family and friends. There are wounds inside him that have never been healed … and not just the death of his sister.”

“You sound like an advocate for the man.”

“I’m being long-winded, am I not? Alinor would say ‘tis time to freeze my flapping tongue. But, really, my lady, Adam needs no advocate. If he wants something, he gets it himself.”

That is what I am afraid of.

“Still, you seem protective of him.”

“We all are. Me, Alinor, Eirik, Eadyth, Bolthor. His prolonged grief these past two years has alarmed us all.”

“That’s why you came to Stoneheim, then? Worry over Adam, not my father.”

He nodded.

She should not be asking these questions of Tykir. He would think she had a personal interest in the rogue. After tonight, he would be out of her life completely. Well, not tonight, she immediately amended. First she had to deliver him to his home in Northumbria. Then she would be off to Miklagard, the “Great City.” It was a rich, powerful, sophisticated city of gold and marble. She could scarce wait. Once there, she would have no cause to think of Adam again.

But first she had to get through tonight.