Free Townsend, Lindsay - The Snow Bride (BookStrand Publishing Romance) by Lindsay Townsend Page B

tunic.
    “Stop it!” Elfrida cried above the tearing cloth and the widow’s howl, but then she, too, yelled, startled and dazzled together. The widow still shrieked her indignation, but when her arms were revealed they were heavy with bracelets, shimmering bands of gold that sparkled and flashed in the bright winter air.
    “This is no poor widow.” Magnus seized the woman’s wrists, pinioning her tightly as she tried to writhe away. “She has done evil and been rewarded for it.”
    “Not force alone,” Elfrida whispered, feeling a clammy heat creep up her body as the widow cried and tried to hide her arms beneath her cloak. The gold sparkled insolently in the sun, and Magnus’s men stirred restively until a barked order from Magnus had them stepping back. “And I was sorry for her because of her fear for her son.” She wished she had not seen this. The betrayal by a fellow villager of the forest shamed her. “ How did you know?”
    “I heard them clashing under her tunic. The women of the East do something similar. Now tell her what I said.”
    “ Tell her yourself. ” Elfrida bridled, unused to being spoken to in that brusque way.
    Magnus looked at her until she felt herself blush. “I am sorry, too,” he said quietly, “but time is against us, and we must do what we must.” He puckered his lips as if to kiss her, then yanked the widow toward him instead, licking his lips.
    The sight of his looming, scarred head and greedy tongue were too much. The widow confessed.

Chapter 6

    Elfrida, to Magnus’s annoyance, would not immediately translate what the woman had said.
    “We must ride away from here,” she said twice. “It is bad luck for us to stay.” She refused to say more, but she had been surprisingly gentle with the widow, smiling at her, taking her hand, prompting her whenever she faltered. Magnus disliked such care of a traitor but tolerated it because it was a woman.
    “Very well.” He was indifferent to their leaving the village but did not like secrets of any kind, only indulging Elfrida because she was looking weary again. “We do not go far, though, madam.”
    Elfrida was stiff in the saddle before him, her back as straight as an arrow shaft. Her willpower amazed him, though, of course, she was a witch. He must remember to treat her as he would Peter, as a deadly peer. It was a disconcerting thought when she was so tiny, more slender even than Peter’s Alice .
    “How far, then?” she called back to him, and he grinned, glad that she did not hoard a grudge. He had been discourteous to her in the village, but now it seemed they were again allies.
    “Why not here?” he replied and drew rein, halting on the track in a huge swirl of snow, a snow dragon, spitting white. Leaving his men to stop as they would, he waited for the thin flakes to settle and for Elfrida to catch her breath to scold.
    When she did not, he knew that she was worried. Something in the widow’s flood of words had turned that churning anxiety that he glimpsed so often in her haunted face into outright alarm.
    “Is it very bad?” he asked against her ear.
    “Worse,” she replied, suppressing a shudder. “I would speak with you without other listening ears nearby, Magnus.”
    He liked the way she said his name, the ‘M’ mellow and the long ‘A’ and soft ‘
NUS
’, but this was not the moment for pleasure. Instructing his men to gather firewood and leaving them to dismount, grumbling, into the snow, he spurred his horse farther along the track.
    “Will this wait until we return to your village?” His wagons and more men were there, and Magnus sensed he would need both soon. Hearing her sigh, he answered himself. “No, it will not wait.”
    Behind him, he could hear the men with him now making a game of finding firewood, exactly like boys. They would be playing snowballs next. He judged it safe now to stop and dismount.
    Clinging to the horse’s mane, Elfrida also dismounted and turned southeast on the