Free Surrender My Love by Johanna Lindsey

Through no fault of mine, he suffers dreams of the damned, and you wonder why I laugh? ’Tis out of my hands.”
    “Begone, then, if you can do no more,” Turgeis growled. “Your humor is not meet.”
    “So you say, but I beg to differ. I never thought I would have vengeance for my man, but here I am given it, and without lifting a hand in harm. That is justice, Viking.”

    “He is not even a Celt, you fool.”
    The old witch made a scoffing sound to that. “I have eyes. He can be no other thing.”
    He didn’t tell her again to leave. He yanked her up and shoved her out the door. Behind him, Selig groaned, still deep in the agony of delirium.
     
    It was dawn before Erika left her nephew’s chamber for her own. She hadn’t slept. She had sat by Thurston’s side all night, holding his little hand, aching each time he stirred and whimpered. Turgeis had straightened the bone, Elfwina had bound it tightly and left potions for the pain and swelling, but it would be many weeks before the pain became tolerable, and many months before they knew if his arm would mend properly. And she would worry each hour of that time, and pray she had done the right thing.
    She had told Elfwina that she had seen bones straightened before, but in truth she had seen it done only once before, for her brother when he broke his leg. Ragnar had begged her to have Turgeis try to straighten the bone before it was splinted, something she had never heard of and neither had he, yet he was desperate, nigh full grown, with plans made for his life that he was not willing to give up because an accident had crippled him. One of their half brothers had had a like injury and would bear a limp and pain the rest of his life because of it. And he was not kindly treated, by his own father, by his other siblings, and certainly not by strangers.

    Ragnar had been willing to try anything to avoid the same fate for himself. And it had worked, was such a logical thing to do really, if you took the time to think about it. Yet who was to say it would work every time, or work on an arm as well as a leg, or on a boy instead of a man? Erika knew something of herbs and she could sew skin together with a neat stitch, but she knew nothing about things that went wrong beneath the skin. So few healers did.
    She was exhausted both physically and mentally from the strain of worrying. And for several hours she had sat there brooding not about Thurston, but about that prisoner in the pit, and his unreasonable attitude—and her unreasonable reaction to him.
    She didn’t care what his excuse might be. She had none.
    She was accustomed to arrogant men. Danish men—Vikings, as the rest of the world called them—were as arrogant as they come. She was accustomed to handsome men. Ragnar was one himself, and he had several others who followed him who could make a girl sigh sweetly. She was not used to being insulted, but was that enough reason to make a fool of herself? To cause another harm?
    She wasn’t surprised to find Turgeis awaiting her outside Thurston’s chamber. She didn’t want to speak of the Celt, didn’t want to know if Wulnoth had done him much damage. Her guilt wouldn’t be able to bear it.
    Yet she had to ask, “Will the man be all right?”

    Turgeis had slept little himself. And he couldn’t give her the answer she wanted without lying. But he knew very well what the truth would do to her. The man had asked her to feel his head for herself. She couldn’t be expected to, but she would castigate herself because she had not. The whipping he could easily survive, but that other injury and the resulting fever? Elfwina, their only healer, hadn’t offered much hope, and he could not enlist her aid further, vindictive witch that she was.
    So he lied. “He will be fine.”
    Her tired smile justified his falsehood. If the Norwegian died, he would simply get rid of the body and tell her he had escaped, killing Wulnoth in the process. It would be a pleasure to make