A Twist in Time

Chapter 16

Sunday

Lucy had lived through another rainy evening, trying to focus on the dog rather than the pull toward Galen that was becoming unbearable. Worse, it seemed that the attraction was as much emotional as physical. The man practically radiated the fact that he had a core of goodness and honor. But how could you reconcile that with the fact that he was a Viking, with his smug looks that said he knew he was attractive to women and used it to his advantage, or with that look of shame that crossed his face sometimes? What in God’s name would a Viking, who had probably done everything, be ashamed of? She resolved not to think about him. Again and again.

The dog was settling in nicely. Galen took him out before they went to bed last night and first thing this morning. A clever creature, young and playful, the dog threw himself into everything with total gusto. He nipped at your heels when he wanted to relate or nosed his way under your elbow for petting. Definitely a sheepdog. He was still worried, though. He would return anxiously and touch Galen’s thigh with his nose to reassure himself that Galen was still there. And if you made a sudden movement with your hand or your foot, he’d cringe away. Maybe someday that reaction would fade, but for now, it was a reminder of the kind of life he must have led. Lucy caught herself vowing that she’d make him forget that life. She was not in a position to make promises.

She’d lived through another morning sitting next to Galen as they studied, trying to control her responses. But her nerves were much the worse for wear. They’d walked up to the convenience store during a break in the weather. They bought overpriced dog food, though the dog was more than happy with the scraps of pork and gravy from last night. He gamboled beside them as if they’d always been a threesome. She’d picked up a can of tennis balls. Galen insisted on carrying the supplies home in his good arm and she let him. A Viking had his pride after all. The look of shame she’d grown to watch for had flickered across his face as she paid for their purchases. She’d have to teach him about money. He needn’t be ashamed he didn’t have any. She didn’t, either. They were both living off Jake at the moment.

On the way back to the boat, she threw a ball for the dog, who trotted after it, a little gingerly. He’d soon be racing after it when he felt better. Galen marveled that the ball bounced.

“Plastic inside,” she explained.

“Like the bowls?”

“Not really. I can’t explain. I don’t understand it.”

“You live in a world you do not understand?”

“Yeah. Get used to it, guy.” He might have to get used to it if she couldn’t get him back to his time. “And don’t believe everything people tell you.” She showed him the can the tennis balls had come in. “ ‘Miracle bounce,’ ” she read. That took some Latin to translate. “Not true. It’s not a miracle. Just plastic.”

“Men lie to you about your world?”

He was serious, as she had not been. “All the time. That hasn’t changed.”

“Men do not lie about balls in my time.”

“Only because they didn’t have tennis balls.” The dog brought it back, a little soggy. She threw it out again and the dog trotted into the green weeds blooming with small yellow flowers. “Men lie and trick and steal.” The man was a Viking, for goodness’ sake. Vikings weren’t naïve. “What do you call conquering the east of England but stealing?”

He looked indignant. “Mighty people are meant to spread over the world.”

She raised her brows. “Doctrine of manifest destiny if I ever heard it.” She sighed. “Not that America is any different. Bush doctrine of preventive wars and all. And the Mexican-American War. And the War of 1812, now that I think of it.” The dog brought back the ball.

“So, Lucy, your people are like Danir.” Galen’s voice was sly.

“Do not think that’s anything to brag about.” She threw the ball with two fingers. Yuck.

“Danir are a good people. They do not lie about what they want.”

“Of course they do,” she protested. “Look at Leif Eriksson.” His expression was puzzled. How does he not know one of the most famous Norsemen of all time? Oh. “You were before his time. But he is known by all. He discovered a great island west of Iceland and even colder. He named it Greenland so he could get settlers to go there. Real estate scam if I ever heard one.” Now how would she explain “real estate scam”?

But Galen didn’t ask what it was and indeed seemed unfazed by the accusation. “Who would take his woman and lytlings to ‘Ice and Snow Land’?” He watched the dog go after the ball. “This Leif Eriksson is a wise man.”

“What about Danegeld? Your people asked for payment to leave a kingdom in peace.”

“We took the silver. We went away.” He shrugged and looked his question.

“But you didn’t stay away. You came back the next year.”

“It was the choice of the king. Pay again, we go away again. Or we settle there.”

“So that’s what you call it.” She grinned. “Settling. I’d call it conquering.” A disturbing crinkle around his eyes made her sure there was no use arguing with him.

But he came back to being serious. “No land in Denmark for second sons. Only land in England, Iceland, Brittany, the lands around the Volga River. My father was second son. You think we are thieves? We do not take the land of the English. We make villages beside them. Often the land of our village is not so rich as their land. But we do not fear work.”

She sighed. “I guess it’s the way of the world, anyway. That’s how America was settled, too. We did take land from the people who were here.” Vikings had nearly been the ones to settle North America. Their settlements in Nova Scotia, way before Columbus, didn’t take. She had to admire that they’d crossed the North Atlantic in boats that couldn’t even tack before the wind. “Your people were good sailors.”

“We know the sea.”

Lucy noticed that he used present tense and she used past tense to talk of his time. Another signal of the barrier between them. They walked on in silence. Lucy was worn-out. Maybe it was all the lessons or the constant electric arc of attraction between them. He felt it, too, even if it was just desperation for a lay. But he didn’t act on it. Was the only reason because he had promised not to kiss her? He was an honorable man, but was that all?

She knew why she didn’t act on this growing urge. Because he didn’t. She wasn’t going to risk rejection. And because he was from another time and would soon go back.

God, how? How will I get him back? She tore her thoughts away. Don’t go there, Lucy.

If he couldn’t go back, he’d be devastated. Indeed, so much stood between them conversation was like shouting across a chasm that grew wider by the hour.

When they got back to the boat, she could see he was tired. She showed him how to work the DVD recorder, so he could listen to words, and she put in a copy of The Searchers from Jake’s collection. A cowboy movie wouldn’t overwhelm Galen with dialogue at least. The dog plopped down at his feet with a sigh. She went out to make dinner.

This was the most domestic she’d been for four days in a row in forever. At least since her father died. At home her fridge was filled with Lean Cuisine dinners and pre-washed vegetable packs. Why cook for one? But this . . . it seemed . . . peaceful. At least when she wasn’t thinking about Galen’s dilemma, or whether Brad and Casey would find them. That underlying core of . . . rightness was growing. Was she getting sentimental? Was she . . . ?

Hell, she didn’t know what was happening to her anymore.

She took a bowl in to Galen. It was a stew, but homemade this time.

“Right kind of you, little lady,” he said in a perfect John Wayne drawl. The guy did have an ear for accents. His accent had been growing less pronounced as he listened to her speak.

She laughed. “You are dangerous.”

“What means this?” He looked askance.

“Uh . . . something or someone who gives others fear that something bad will happen.”

“Ahhh. Plihtlic.”

She considered. It sounded like “plight.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“I am dangerous.” He looked up at her, his bowl forgotten. “You are dangerous.”

“Me?” she asked with a half laugh. “I am sooooo not dangerous.”

His gaze roved over her face. “I like laughter. Your laughter.”

He said it without an “f” sound in it and who knew how he thought it was spelled, but she knew what he meant. She felt herself blushing. “Laughter is always good.” She got her own bowl and sat beside him. The dog begged shamelessly, nosing her bowl and licking his lips. “You go away,” she ordered. Her words fell on oblivious ears. “You have food in the galley. Free feeding means your bowl, not mine. Now go away.” Nothing.

“Go.” Galen flicked a finger. To her astonishment, the dog went to the other side of the bed and lay down.

“Boy, you do have a way with dogs.”

He nodded. “It has always been so.” And then the look of shame flickered across his face. His expression went flat to hide it, and he turned to his stew. But he was still thinking about something. She could see a muscle work in his jaw.

How she wanted to know what caused that look. How she wanted to relieve whatever pained him so. She wanted to reach out to him, touch his shoulder. The feeling was almost overwhelming. It didn’t feel natural. She was losing herself. Or at least her self-control.

They grew silent, pretending to eat without thinking or feeling. What a lie. When she heard his spoon scrape against the bowl, she rose. He handed it to her and their eyes met and Lucy felt as though she were falling a long ways into icy blue waters that burned they were so cold. It took all she had to jerk away and hurry out the door.

Odin’s eye. What was he going to do?

She was a wicce and she had ensnared his soul. And it felt right. That was the worst of it. He wasn’t sure he cared to keep his soul, if giving it to her would make him feel thus. He was glad Egil’s axe had found his flesh, because only his wounds could possibly make her feel safe around him. And he wanted her around him. All the time.

So, what was he going to do?

He could feel she wanted him in spite of this Brad. But he couldn’t be her lapdog, dependent on her, answering to her beck and call, because she was more powerful than he in this time. He could have no value to her except what pleasure his body could provide her.

He grimaced to himself. When had that stopped his frolicking in bed with a winsome widow, or even a married woman whose husband was vikingr and who needed the services of a man? They took their pleasure of each other in bed and were done with it.

Mayhaps he could do the same with Lucy and be done with it. Once he had plunged himself inside her and loosed his seed, then she would not have this hold on him.

He knew then that she had been right. Danir did lie. He was lying to himself. If he bedded her, he would be lost. He began to throb as thoughts of bedding her had their usual effect.

He could hear her moving about in the little place for cooking food. He’d just shut the door. There was no use releasing his seed himself. He’d already proved that did not help. He’d have to just wait out his violent erection.

He felt the moon rise.

Could you feel the moon rise? But he did. Moonlight bathed the cabin through the small, high windows. It twisted inside him, a cold fire. His loins throbbed almost painfully inside his tight breeches. He rose from the bed against his will and went to the small passageway. A feeling of incredible urgency washed over him. Something was required of him. Something immediate and real. Things were wrong, somehow, and he had to set them right. He saw Lucy, standing in the moonlight, frozen, staring at the hatch. His gaze moved to the hatch and was caught, too.

The lights in the boat fizzled and went out. They were bathed in darkness. Galen’s gut trembled. Lucy must be trembling, too, because she dropped the pot she had been washing. It clattered to the floor. Galen knew that if he moved, he would race toward that hatch.

And his brain told him, whatever his heart and his loins were shouting, that he should not go out in the moonlight.

The lights in the cabin went out with a fizzle, leaving only the clear, pale moonlight streaming in through the ports. Lucy couldn’t get her breath. She was hurtling toward something that had been growing inside her, around her. It felt like destiny. She could refuse it. She had a choice. But she was standing on a precipice and everything would soon be very wrong if she made the wrong choice right here, right now. Her certainty was stark, as though illuminated by lightning.

But the sky had cleared. No storm, except the one inside her. So what had doused the lights? She felt Galen behind her. His physical presence overwhelmed the small space. Her thighs were wet and she throbbed, her pelvis aching. She didn’t know what to do. But she had to do something. She just stood there trembling until finally she couldn’t hold the pot in her hand.

It crashed. She held herself still for one long moment more. And then her head moved of its own accord. She turned to look at Galen. He shook, alternately flushing and going dead pale in the moonlight. His gaze jerked to hers.

Conflagration.

And she knew what she must do. It wasn’t what she’d thought.

She held out a hand. “Let’s go on deck.”

He looked alarmed, confused.

“You know it’s right.” She did. All would be well if they could but see the moon.

A taut invisible line stretched between them. She saw him struggle. She smiled, hand still extended. He closed his eyes, took a breath. She moved to touch him. He flinched under her hand. She didn’t flinch. She expected the firestorm of feeling that shot through her. It was just a more intense version of what she’d felt each time she touched him since he’d fallen against her on a battlefield in 912. His eyelids fluttered and opened.

“I fight no more,” he whispered.

She opened the hatch. They climbed the ladder single file, the dog wriggling out ahead of them. The moon was rising over the bay to the east. It had cleared the horizon, golden from the pollution in the air. It shone in eerie serenity. Clouds still laced the sky. The moon would be obscured soon, but just now it was sure of itself, eternal. It spread that sureness to her.

This moon had shone over Galen’s time, just as it shone now. He came up behind her.

“What month is it?” he whispered hoarsely.

She shivered, only half from cold. “We call it March. Third month.”

“What day? What day?” He sounded as if it was the most important thing in the world.

She had to think. What had the woman at the hospital said? The day before St. Patrick’s Day. Yeah. That would make this the . . . “Twenty-first.” She held up fingers.

He rolled his head as though in pain. “Ostara’s day. Change of season.”

“The . . . the vernal equinox . . .”

“Ja. Ja. Day same long as night.” His voice held half wonder, half fear.

The beginning of spring. The day that signaled a change in the world as it quickened toward the plenty of summer. “Who . . . who is Ostara?”

He seemed most agitated. “Norse goddess of . . . ,” he went to Latin, “fecundity. Like Saxon Eostre,” he added. “Very mighty day.”

So powerful that Christian priests had borrowed it, moved the date and made it the celebration of Christ’s resurrection to spread their faith among the pagans. Druids, who believed that the elements of the Earth, its plants and animals, all were incarnations of the gods or the force of the universe—they celebrated the first day of spring, too, didn’t they? But the moon couldn’t always be full exactly on the twentieth or twenty-first of March. That must be pretty rare. . . .

She turned to him under the full moon of the vernal equinox and knew in her bones and her belly that something special was supposed to happen here, something bigger than her or even bigger than her and Galen together. The full moon, the tides, the earth’s axis that rotated through space, all those could be explained. But in their confluence, they became something more. She ached for completion and she knew what would complete her. Could something be bad that feels so right? Yes, if the universe lied to you, as men lied.

God, she sounded like a loon, even to herself. The universe was not talking to her. Next she’d start believing in astrology or numerology, and she’d open up a shop that sold crystals and incense and tarot decks.

But Galen was here, big and real in the cold March air of the vernal equinox under a full moon. She felt his physical presence, the essence of him clearly. This was real. This was right.

“Lucy,” he whispered, and it was a plea or a prayer, maybe for deliverance. Whether from what would happen here or from the pain of resistance she didn’t know.

He reached out with his good arm and drew her tight against his body. His chest was hard, his biceps were hard, and the ridge under the zipper of his jeans was very, very hard. It made her dizzy. The ache inside her made it difficult to think.

“Lucy.” His lips had found her hair. Her frfeaxen hair. His hands ran over her back, down to cup her buttocks and lift her slightly against him, so her belly pressed against the ridge of his erection. She turned up her face and his mouth found hers, not gentle this time but hungry. She returned that kiss with all the need she’d been suppressing for the past days. His tongue searched her mouth, and she pressed her breasts into his chest as though they could get closer. Which they could. . . .

His thoughts must have been tending the same way. He broke away and held her by the shoulders. The moon was bright enough so she could see how blue his eyes were.

“You are cold. We go below.”

He pulled her toward the hatch and the warm cabin where they could get naked and closer still. She wanted to melt into him. The dog was ahead of them. At the bottom of the ladder Galen reached up and simply lifted her down. Was he hurting his shoulder? You’d never know it by his expression. How selfish she was to be using his small strength this way. Did she have a choice? No. She’d made her choice when she drew him out into the moonlight. She wasn’t sure she could be careful of his wounds. She’d try. She’d try.

He pushed her toward the aft cabin, leaving the dog staring after them. Galen turned and firmly shut the cabin door on him. Lucy heard him sigh and settle down in the passage. The only light in the room was the dim glow of the moon through the high ports on each side.

Lucy knew what she wanted. She grabbed the bottom of both layers of her tees and pulled them over her head. He pulled off his Henley, surprisingly deft with an injured shoulder. His stitches were black across it. His hair streamed over his shoulders. She unclasped her bra and tossed it to the floor. Galen groaned and reached for her breasts. She wanted that. More than she had ever wanted anything. She moved closer to slip her hands across the hard muscle of his belly and unbutton his jeans. His hands cupped her breasts and his palms rubbed the nipples lightly. Sensation ripped straight to her core. She lifted her face to give him access to her lips, and he took her mouth in a kiss as thorough as the one up on the deck. She worked his zipper as she moaned into his mouth. She wanted him naked. She wanted to touch all of him. She’d wanted that for days. By the time he broke away to kick off his boots and push down his jeans, her body was screaming for gratification. She fumbled at her own jeans as she watched his cock spring free. She sucked in a breath. It was big and straight and thick. She’d never had a man with equipment like this. Could she even do this? She pushed off her own Nikes and jeans. He kicked his clothes away and moved back toward her, a beast coiled to spring.

She reached for his erection, satisfied with his ragged breathing, and ran her hand along the shaft. It was rock hard under the silky skin and straining with need. He backed her the single step to the end of the bed. The edge pressed against the backs of her knees. He lowered her carefully onto it. He had that much control. But then he was on top of her, his body fitting over the length of hers as he braced above her on his elbows. His erection prodded at her entrance even as he kissed her thoroughly. The head of his cock must be drenched in her juices. But he didn’t thrust inside her. He raised himself on his good elbow and kneaded her breast gently with his other hand, leaning in to kiss her throat as softly as he could. But his breath was still ragged and his teeth nipped at her as though he could barely keep from devouring her. He made his way down to her breast. She thought she might burst. He was trying to make sure she was ready. But she didn’t want it gentle. She wanted it now, as fierce and demanding as she could get it.

So she spread her legs under him and thrust her hips up a little, undulating against the head of his cock, showing it the way in.

“Odin’s eye, Lucy,” he breathed, pulling his head up. He was throbbing at her entrance, still straining for control.

“Kiss me,” she whispered, whether entreaty or command she couldn’t tell.

He did. His lips were soft. The day’s stubble rasped against her chin. She opened to him, and he thrust his tongue inside her mouth in an echo of the thrusting they both wanted even more. He groaned again into her mouth, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She reached down, took the thick length of him in her hand, and pressed him down slightly to achieve the right angle.

“Lucy,” he said, and this time her name was a capitulation and he pushed inside her with one powerful thrust.

Filled. Right. True. Necessary.

She reached to clutch his buttocks as the muscles in them bunched with each thrust. She wanted him as she had never wanted a man before, as she had never wanted anything. Thrusting to meet him, the friction rubbing at her clitoris, his big cock touched places inside her she’d never felt before. He slipped an arm under her shoulders as they rocked together and clutched her to his chest, his tongue still thrusting and questing inside her, his cock impaling her. They seemed to be melting together in the heat they generated into something entirely new, separate from what they had been, not to be separate from each other ever again.

She felt it coming from a long way off, like a wave at sea, building momentum from somewhere deep and unseen, inexorable. Their bodies were slick with a light sheen of sweat, both of their chests heaving now as if there were not enough air in the world, let alone this tiny cabin. He withdrew until only the tip of his cock was inside her. He was trying to prolong it for her. Sweet. But wrong.

“Galen,” she moaned.

He pulled away from their kiss, his brows drawn together in concern. Could he possibly mistake that moan? How could she make him understand what she truly wanted? Needed.

“Fuck me, Galen.”

She’d never said that word in her life. But it must be Saxon all right. Because his eyes darkened and he thrust inside her, his eyes never leaving hers. And now they watched each other’s faces as the wave was there again, more urgent, more powerful for the pause. She saw his eyes glaze over.

And then the wave crashed over her, drawing her under. Every muscle in her body contracted. Her eyes squeezed shut and a shriek, coiling up from her loins, was squeezed from her by the weight and the power of the wave. Through it all she felt Galen’s own orgasm take him. He didn’t scream, but a series of grunts matched the spurting she felt inside her. They were under the wave, no breath, no air, just the immense sensation squeezing them, squeezing them . . . until they popped to the surface.

Bobbing on the subsiding sensation, she gasped for air, and Galen did the same. Galen looked into her eyes for a long moment, blinking, as she did the same. The moonlight through the line of ports near the ceiling was cool and kind, bathing them in a silver iridescence. There was a breeze inside the room, from somewhere, nowhere, because the ports and the doors were all shut. It cooled their sweat and felt . . . comforting. That’s what it was. The room was filled with comfort and rightness.

It was almost frightening.

“What the hell was that?” she whispered. She had never had an orgasm like that.

He gave a tiny, dazed shake of his head and swallowed, hard. “I know not, Lucy.” It had been different for him, too.

He was still inside her and that felt right as well. Her breathing began to steady, as did his. The moonlight was just . . . moonlight. What had she been thinking? And there was no breeze in the room. How silly was that? It must just be that orgasm had unhinged her there for a minute. What an orgasm. She hadn’t known it could be like that. And that spooky feeling of rightness . . . well, that is just the lovely afterglow of sex.

Isn’t it?

“Lucy,” he breathed, and kissed her head, cradling it against his shoulder.

Stitches! “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

“Nay, Lucy. I am okay. Very okay.” He lifted her chin. “Are you okay?” He looked contrite. “I was . . . I know not the word . . .” He switched to Latin. “Crude? Rough?”

“You were wonderful. Just what I wanted.”

“You are what I want also.” He kissed her hair again. “I like frfeaxen. You are beautiful.”

She looked away. She wasn’t beautiful. Red hair and freckles and way more curves than were fashionable. “I bet you say that to all the women.”

“Nay. The other women know they are beautiful. There is no need to say it.”

Great time to remind her about all the other women in his life. And that they were beautiful.

He must have felt her contract, in spirit if not in body. He put a finger under her chin and turned her face up to his so she could not help but look into his eyes. “You are the one for me. Do you not feel it? I want you, Lucy. The night wants us together. You know it is sooth.”

God, but she needed that to be true. The night might be the only thing that wanted them together. He was from another time. And both their former lives were lost to them. What were they doing here, waiting on this boat, for what they did not know? He rolled to the side, keeping her with him, still inside her. She scanned his face, her doubt in her eyes.

“This was always the thread of the Norns.” He said it solemnly. He meant their joining was preordained. That was his explanation for why it felt so right. Tragedy could be preordained, too, though. Maybe this was just the taste of what could be before it was all jerked away from her in some cruel twist of fate.

“Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

That look of shame flickered over his face, and the peace that had hung heavy in the air was torn a little more. What made him look like that? She wanted to help. Whatever he had done, he could get past it, and so could she. No matter how horrible. This was Eostre’s night. And wasn’t Easter all about forgiveness, at least for Christians? Lucy had felt the goodness in him. She wanted to be part of his healing. She knew very well that she wasn’t the most beautiful woman he’d ever been with. But she put her own feelings aside. She wanted to know all of him as she had known him physically in the last moments. She wanted to help him. Taking her courage in her hands as she took his face, she turned it up. A man like this would not give up the secrets of his soul easily.

“Why do you look like that?”

He shook his head. The look flashed across his face and was suppressed. “I do not understand you, Lucy.”

“Don’t give me that. You understand.”

He eased out of her. The peace in the room ebbed a little farther. He looked around, as though he felt it, too. He scooted up to sit against the teak headboard. “It is of no matter.”

She felt the loss of his body inside hers so acutely it was almost pain. She wanted to sidle up under his good arm and curl against him. But she didn’t. She wanted the peace, the feeling of rightness again, but it had to be about more than just fantastic sex. It had to be about who she was, not just that she was close at hand. That was the only thing that could make up for not being the most beautiful woman he knew. And that meant it had to be about who he was, too. She looked at him. He swallowed. Would he bare himself to her in more than body?

“Your will is as thick as a priest of the Christ Cult,” he complained.

“Is it bad to want to know you?”

He closed his eyes. “What is cannot be . . . otherwise.” His eyes opened. They were bleak.

She wanted to comfort him, but such a man couldn’t bear that. So she said, “But the burden can be shared. Burden?” she asked in Latin.

He looked away but not before she was sure he understood her.

Another time, without the waft of sureness still hanging in the moonlight, she would have backed down. But not now, not when she had a dreadful feeling that there was only this night to bind them together and that this night was one of few they might have together.

“Now or never, Galen Valgarssen. Whatever makes you look like that, I will always think you are mighty and smart and honorable. You might even have a sense of humor.” She didn’t stop to explain. He might not have gotten all of it. But he got the challenge and the gist. Pain flitted into his eyes again, and now she could not resist. She scooted up and curled beside him, head on his chest, listening to the thump of his heart and feeling the peace seep into her with his warmth. His arm slipped around her and held her tight against his side.

“My mother was a mighty wicce,” he said above her after a moment. She heard it as a rumble low in his chest. “She was from the Old Ones of the west, though she lived among the Saxons. She served the goddess of horses, Epona. She speaks to horses. Nay, spoke,” he corrected himself. “And other beasts. She is dead now. Her kind always had only daughters. But she loved my father, a Viking warrior, against the law of her kind. On Sahmain night in the circle of stones he got her with a lytling to be the priest of Epona after her. But it was a boy. My brother, Eric. The kin of my mother thought he was a sign from God and he would be a mighty priest, perhaps the most mighty, to lead them against their enemies. But Eric died. My mother cursed the goddess. My father mourned him. Later, I was born.”

He heaved in a breath. Lucy held hers. “My mother named me Galen in the words of my father. It means . . .” He searched for the English word, then said it in Latin.

“We would say ‘bespelled.’ ”

“Ja, bespelled. She hoped I would be mighty in drcræft like my brother.”

“Drycraft?”

He used the Latin.

“Oh, magic. Your mother thought you’d have magic powers and take your brother’s place.” Boy, is that a lot to put on a kid.

“But I have no magic. Beasts love me, but I do not speak to them as my mother did. I am not Eric. The magic died with him. Always I was not what they wanted. I saw it in their eyes. ”

“Your . . . your parents were disappointed in you?”

He heaved another breath. Her head rose on his chest and fell. “They loved me. They were good kin. But I knew. And wherever I went in the land around, all knew.”

“How did you bear it?”

“My father teached me to wield a weapon. I watched him bind the people together, Saxon and Danir, and learned from him. But I was unstill. When I had seventeen years, I went vikingr, first to trade up the Seine and then up the Volga to fight for the king there. In the language of the Volga, we are called Rus. The land we controlled, they called Russia. It was a hard time. I was put in a carcern in Kiev.”

Carcern. Incarcerated. “Prison.”

“Ja. I was gone many years. When I gewend to the Danelaw, my mother was dead, my father feeble. I labored for that part of the Danelaw that held my mother’s people and my father’s. At first Guthrum does not trust me. It is hard. I am half-Saxon. But I fight good. At last Guthrum takes my counsel. The scalds sing of my deeds. Yet still the songs tell of the one the Norns say will save his people, the one I am not. And will not be.”

What a thing to live with. Belonging to neither people, living in the shadow of a dead brother, knowing people expected you to be magic and you weren’t . . . Her heart went out to him. What could she say? She had expected him to be ashamed of some terrible act of carnage. The scars on his body said he’d lived through many. But he was a product of his time. He was proud of fighting and killing for the king of the Danelaw.

She had wanted to go back to a time when magic was possible. Galen certainly believed it was possible. He was ashamed he didn’t have any. Maybe there was no magic in the world, then or now. You couldn’t count on anything outside yourself to save you.

“Being a good man is enough,” she said quietly. “There are too few of those.”

“Nay, Lucy. Life is hard. Men need . . .” Here he had to ask in Latin the word for “hope.”

“Men looked to me to make life better. To protect them. I could only fight like other men or help in little ways: a bridge, a new saddle for horse.” He had to ask the word for “saddle.” She could feel him getting impatient with himself for not knowing all the words. “They ask me to say the right of the matters they bring to me. So I say which thing is right.” He held her more tightly to his side. She made the leap in her mind. He could not protect his people with magic, or a woman. Was that why he had leaped so blithely from bed to bed, lingering in none? He wanted no responsibility. Yet he fought for Guthrum to unite the kingdom against the invasion only he foresaw coming from the Normans. He struggled to do what he could do, far more than most men could, always believing he was not enough. Was that not the definition of courage?

She glanced up. His expression was so bleak. What comfort was there for such a man? And then she knew. “There are all kinds of magic, Galen Valgarssen. What we had here tonight is magic.” She scooted up to look him in the face, surer now. “You said the night wanted what happened here. Is that not magic? Is finding each other across a thousand years not magic?”

His eyes softened. Then the heat started in them. “You are magic, Lucy.” She realized her breasts were pressed against his side, his good arm around her shoulders. She breathed in the feeling of peace as it hovered in the room again. The light had dimmed in the cabin. Clouds must have obscured the moon. But she and Galen were still here. His gaze roved over her, hungry for her. And she felt . . . beautiful. Who cared if it was a lie?

“No.” She smiled. “But we can make magic together.”

“Now,” he rumbled, kissing her forehead. “More slow this time. I will show what I know of women.” His hand found her breast. “You will yell for me tonight many times.”

“You may yell yourself, big fella,” she murmured into his mouth as he kissed her. The throbbing had begun between her legs, insistent. She was suddenly very glad that the vernal equinox meant there were twelve whole hours of night.