Aetheling (The Sutton Hoo Stories Book 1) by Sonntag S

Author:Sonntag, S [Sonntag, S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Modgeþanc

PlansT

he weeks of steady meals and easy living had made a marked improvement upon Rian. She was still skinny and flat-chested, but she no longer looked drawn and wasted as she had done when he had first met her. She seemed more cheerful as well; she had always been friendly, but now there was a genuine light in her eyes which made Eorwald much more confident in his choice to keep

her with him.Eorwald knew that his men were talking about him, but he did not care. He liked Rian. She had spent every night with him since the first, and he did not see how the gold – not to mention the food and drink and lodging – that he gave her were any different from what he might have given any other girl. They were just presents to him; a ring or a couple of peningas , and she was happy to spend her nights with him. He liked to believe that she enjoyed it.

It was damp and cold the night Eorwald told Rian that he loved her. Or, rather, he blurted it at her without thinking, as her limbs draped over him, both of them covered with a blanket as they listened to someone play the harp very poorly. Her hand had made its way into his trousers and he was so overwhelmed with the sensation that he forgot himself.

She gave him a half-smile, but in his slightly-drunken state he could not be sure if she pitied him, or if she might have been deciding on her own feelings.

“I want you to come and live with me when I go back toWuffingham,” he continued. “I want you to be a free woman and I will make sure you have a house and a livelihood and that you won’t have to… well, you know… anymore.”

Rian removed her hand from between Eorwald’s legs and touched his cheek, the sad smile still on her lips. “You are so good to me,” she said. “I really don’t deserve it, but I am grateful.”

“So will you?” Eorwald asked.Rian shook her head. “I could have a fine house and a farm and a dozen sheep of my own, but that is not the life I know. I can’t spin or sew or make cheese or brew beer, and any children I might try to bear would end up half-wild; I have never learned how to do anything else, apart from what I do now.”

This was surprising. “Didn’t your mother ever teach you…” he said, but stopped at the look on her face.

“My mother died when I was a baby,” she said, “and I lived in my uncle’s house until he started letting his friends pay toput their hands up my skirt,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone, “Eventually I decided I might as well keep the money for myself and I ran away, and I’ve been doing this ever since. I don’t know anything else.”

“But you could have a much better life,” Eorwald said.

Rian

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