The Viking Prince by Sarah Woodbury

Author:Sarah Woodbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ireland, dublin, medieval, middle ages, viking, dane, danish, mystery, medieval mystery, godfrid the dane, vikings, romantic suspense
Publisher: The Morgan-Stanwood Publishing Group
Published: 2018-09-17T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Day One

Godfrid

“It has been a very difficult day.”

Cait put her hand on her belly, frowning. “I don’t know that I’ve eaten properly even once.”

Godfrid’s stomach growled at the mention of food. He’d had wine several times, but otherwise only bread and cheese, hastily eaten before he left his house that morning. Arno had neglected to feed him. “We should get something now, don’t you think?”

But Cait and Godfrid had gone hardly more than three steps from Arno’s house when Jon, Godfrid’s captain, skidded to a halt in front of them. “We have found another body, my lord.”

“Where?” Godfrid said.

“One street over from the warehouse. It belongs to a woman, and several of Rikard’s slaves have identified her as Deirdre.”

Cait’s hands went to her mouth. “No!”

Godfrid looked down at her. “Who’s Deirdre?”

“A fellow weaver and an incurable gossip. And my friend.”

Godfrid’s arm came around Cait’s shoulders, even as he looked to Jon. “Take us to her.” They set off at a rapid clip. “She slept in the barracks as you did?”

“She did.” Tears were running down Cait’s cheeks.

Godfrid tried to speak gently. “But not with you?”

“My pallet is closest to the stairs. She is the most senior slave, so she had her own small space with a curtain at the back.”

“You didn’t look for her this morning?”

“I would have had to step over the other women to reach her. That pool of wine put her whereabouts out of my mind.”

Godfrid could feel Cait’s anxiety, and he took her right hand while keeping his left arm around her shoulders. “I didn’t mean to offend. It was a genuine question.”

“I know.” The words came out a wail. Tears she hadn’t shed for Rikard were streaking down her cheeks. “I thought of her on and off all day, but with one thing and another, I never went to look for her.”

The walk was distressingly short, though Cait gained control of herself in the last few blocks before the warehouse, to the point that she was no longer openly weeping. She agreed to stand back as Godfrid approached the alleyway to which Jon led them. A long bundle wrapped in hemp sacking had been pushed up against the warehouse wall. On another day, the bundle could have been anything, but it was body-shaped, and a hand had come loose from the wrappings and lay palm-up on the ground.

While Godfrid was not pleased to have another body on his hands, and he felt sorry for Cait, who remained by the corner of the street and the alleyway, white-faced and weepy, he couldn’t help but think its appearance was clarifying to the investigation. Deirdre clearly had been murdered.

Holm crouched by the body and gingerly peeled back the hemp sacking. “Why on earth did you bring Lord Conall’s sister to a crime scene?”

“Perhaps you haven’t met very many Irish women, Holm, but when one sets her mind to something, it is impossible to change her course. She wanted to come, and her brother was not available to dissuade her.

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