Dream of Me/Believe in Me

hard people. No man holds power who does not show himself willing to use it.”
    “And now you will show your power over your Saxon wife by imprisoning her?”
    He made an impatient gesture. “Don't exaggerate, our lodge is hardly a prison. The jarls will understand what I do. They have heard the stories of your beauty and they will respect my prudence in guarding my property. They will take lesson from it and recognize that I will do the same for all that is mine. As for the rest, they will be left with no doubt where I stand.”
    Where he stood.
She had believed she was coming to know this man, this
husband
, to know and to trust him. Yet she was not a wife he would have others see at his side, honored and respected. Instead, he meant to make an object lesson of her, to use her to display his power and ruthlessness.
    Why was she so surprised? Why did her throat suddenly hurt so much with tears she would die before she shed? Had he not used her from the very beginning—forvengeance, for alliance … and for pleasure? She must not allow herself to forget that last part for all that it was a knife stabbing into her.
    “I have been so foolish,” she said faintly, her voice little more than a thin wisp of sound. It was all she could muster. “So foolish as to forget …” Her gaze turned inward toward a landscape both real and nightmarish, the beach beyond the berm, the bloodred sand, the savage promise he had made to her on their wedding day.
    “You stand against the Saxon and for the Norse.
That
is where you stand, isn't it?” Despair threatened to choke her but she managed to speak her deepest fear. “Is that the real reason you've called the jarls here? To plan yet more attacks against helpless people, to plot my brother's death, to sate your bloodthirsty gods?”
    A dark flush of color stained his high-boned cheeks. His eyes glinted dangerously. “I
am
Norse. If that displeases you, it is unfortunate for it is also unchangeable. And you know I want peace, elsewise none of what has passed between us would ever have occurred.”
    He cast a swift, hard look over her, lingering at her breasts and hips until it was all she could do not to squirm with self-consciousness. His mouth tightened. “I took you captive but made you wife. You have known only gentleness from me. Remember that and think well how different your fate could have been.”
    Before she could reply, he looked over her shoulder, saw the watch guard on the berm signaling urgently, and gestured to his brother. “Escort
my wife
to her quarters.” To Cymbra he said, “You will have to bear your anger alone, lady, I have no time for it now.”
    Without another word, he turned and walked away.
    C YMBRA FROWNED AT THE BRIGHT RED DROP OF blood on her skin. For a moment, it appeared to haveblossomed all by itself. Only belatedly did she realize that she had pricked her fingertip. That small sensation of pain was scarcely noticeable beneath the far keener ache of the past three days.
    Slowly she lowered the length of finely spun blue wool she was fashioning into a tunic for her husband and stared at the opposite wall. She guessed the day to be very fair but she couldn't be sure. Nor could she know how the two days previous had been except that it had not rained, for she would have heard and smelled that.
    The shutters had remained closed all that time, permitting only what sunlight could enter through the narrow slats. To see well enough to sew without tiring her eyes she needed the added light of braziers, but they also added heat to the chamber, which warmed enough as it was as the summer day passed. The air was very still, she could hear the hum of bees just beyond the windows. When the door opened to admit Brita with a tray of food, the sudden bolt of bright light was so intense that Cymbra had to look away from it. But not before she caught a glimpse of the guard standing just outside.
    Brita set the tray on the table, glanced a little anxiously at her mistress, and smiled. “I've brought some of the cardamom rolls, my lady, your favorites, and there's a wonderful stew made just as you like with chicken and rosemary.”
    Cymbra shrugged, disinterested. She had no appetite. The trays Brita brought thrice daily went back scarcely lighter than they arrived. Indeed, she had eaten so little that the serving girl was growing anxious.
    “I can fetch something else,” Brita said. “Perhaps you'd like some goose liver spread on warm bread?”
    Cymbra