Kept by the Viking by Gina Conkle

Author:Gina Conkle [Conkle, Gina]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2018-03-05T14:03:18+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Heads dipped in conversation turned to the jarl’s table. A thrall slicing meat at the center spit stopped sawing. Another balanced a tray on her hip. Housekarls standing guard peeked in the open doorway. Longsword stood up, loose-limbed and a little drunk, casting a chieftain’s stare on the crowd.

“Midsumarblot cannot pass without entertainment.” His voice was power itself. Smooth. Full of authority despite mead’s influence.

Light glowed on blond hair combed back to a braid starting at the top of his forehead, going to the middle of his back. The shaved sides of his head showed no tattoos. Life had marked him, but unlike his brother, no eye could see the jarl’s scars. He would rule and rule well, a big man with bigger ideas.

Longsword’s mouth set...with challenge. “What kind of chieftain hosts a feast and doesn’t provide a skald?”

What was this? Two matrons whispered to their Viking men. Another few murmured from the sides of their mouths. Ademar glowered. The grumbling stopped, but a flicker of a rift showed itself...a thing the jarl knew. Vikings who had recently settled in Rouen gave root to another weed—discord at finding a jarl who made peace with Christians living in the land, a current of strife made worse because the jarl had a Frankish name.

Rurik shifted uncomfortably in his seat. This was why Longsword wanted him to marry a Viking woman. The winter attack from the Breton Queen. Food stores damaged. Families killed. The merry, Viking faces he’d seen upon arrival would not cower from trouble, but they would not support a leader they thought less than ruthless. Rollo was Longsword’s famed father, but his mother was a Frankish Christian. None here would forget that fact.

The chair beside Rurik scraped wood.

“I will be your skald.”

All eyes went to Safira. Curious. Lustful. Shrewd and measuring. His Paris maid stood tall, shoulders squared, achingly pretty in scarlet as she stared back.

Ivar the blacksmith, a beast of a man with two maids in his lap, raised his drinking horn. “What does a Christian woman know of our stories?”

Her lips twitched. Safira was likely tempted to inform the oaf that she was Hebrew, a distinction that would be lost on the blacksmith. Instead, she smoothed her skirts and gave him an artful tilt of her head.

“Your jarl called for a skald. A storyteller. He didn’t say what stories would be told.” Safira wended her way around the table and stepped down onto the earthen floor past owl-eyed Gyda. “I wager my stories will entertain you as well, if not better.”

Howls of laughter rang. Rurik tensed, ready to spring from his chair and lead Safira back to her seat, but a staying hand—the jarl’s—stopped him.

“Let’s see what she does,” he said under his breath to Rurik.

Scarlet skirts swaying softly, Safira claimed the center of the hall. She was hypnotic. Her footsteps graceful, she walked undaunted before Ivar and the smirking Viking women in his lap.

“What have you to wager?” The blacksmith boomed.

She smiled gamely at him. “Nothing, but why let that stop our fun?”

Ivar’s hearty laugh was the first to break.

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