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“I must think,” he said, and fled the longhouse. No one said anything until they no longer heard his retreating footsteps.
Chessa just stood there after he was gone, just stood there seeing nothing really, hearing the voices around her becoming thick now, louder, for now everything must be discussed and argued about. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone would be heard.
She heard Rorik say to Mirana, “You should have told her it wouldn’t work. To claim a man like that with no warning, especially a man like Cleve, who doesn’t really know who or what he is, a man who doesn’t want a wife, and that’s understandable given what was done to him.”
“Why doesn’t Papa want a wife?”
“Oh, dear,” Laren said as she scooped Kiri up in her arms. “Your papa, sweeting—well, it isn’t that he doesn’t want a wife, he just—”
She stalled and Merrik said, patting Kiri’s golden hair, “Your papa has much to do, Kiri. You know that. We are going to Scotland to return to where he was born. All this is uncertain, thus he can’t have a wife right now.”
“Why not? She could help him just like Aunt Laren helps you. She could tell him the right of things when he gets confused, just like Aunt Lar—”
“I know, Kiri,” Merrik said quickly, trying not to laugh. “It’s just that things are, well, very difficult right now.”
Chessa said, “Kiri’s right. Why can’t he marry me?”
“Chessa,” Rorik said, “be quiet.”
“No, I won’t. Kiri, your papa can have me for a wife right now, this afternoon if he wishes it. This evening if Mirana must have time to prepare for a celebration. I would help your papa learn about where he came from and why he was left to die as a small boy, then sold as a slave like your Aunt Laren.”
“I don’t know if you should marry Papa,” Kiri said, looking at Chessa. “You look just like my Aunt Mirana.”
“That just makes her very lucky, Kiri,” Mirana said and grinned.
“Maybe my papa doesn’t want a wife because he loved my mama so much. Maybe my papa just doesn’t like you. I don’t know.”
She wiggled out of Merrik’s hold and ran to the doorway.
“Sweeting,” Laren called after her, “just play outside with your cousins. Don’t go beyond the palisade.”
Cleve returned in early evening, a sleeping Kiri in his arms. “We spent the afternoon on the eastern cliff, watching the dunlin and oystercatchers.” He said nothing more, paid no attention at all to Chessa until late that night when everyone was preparing to sleep. He walked to her, just stared down at her, but said nothing for a very long time. There was a food stain on her bosom, her hair was loose, her face flushed from the heat of the fire pit.
“Look at my face,” he said.
She looked at his face.
“What do you see?”
She smiled up at him. Slowly, she raised her hand and traced her finger over his mouth, his nose, his eyebrows, smoothing them, then at last, she lightly traced her fingertip down the curved scar. “I see you,” she said. “I see the man I want, the only man I will ever want. I see you and I want to smile and laugh and perhaps do a little dance. I want to kiss you and touch you. What I see is the man the gods fashioned just for me. Now, Cleve, look at my face.”
He looked at her face.
“What do you see?”
He didn’t touch her as she had him. He said, “I have never seen eyes the color of yours. I had thought your eyes like Mirana’s, but it isn’t true. The green of your eyes is different, darker, nearly black in this dim light, and there is a slight tilt to the corners of your eyes that makes you look like you’re keeping secrets, that you know things that other people don’t know. Is that true, Chessa?”
“Nay.”
She wanted very much to kiss him. She’d kissed Ragnor several times and thought it strange, this touching of mouths.
“Cleve,” she said, standing on her tiptoes. Her heart was pounding so loudly she was certain he must hear it. She spread her palms on his chest, feeling the heat of his body, feeling the steady pounding of his own heart.
“Do you see anything else, Cleve?”
“I see a woman who will not do as she’s bid.”
“That’s all you see? Strange eyes and a woman who won’t be led about by the nose? I feel your heart, Cleve. It’s beating very fast now.”
