Free Lord of Hawkfell Island by Catherine Coulter Page A

reason.”
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    Rorik strode into the sleeping chamber. He’d bathed all the wild boar’s blood off him, all the rotted marsh mud, and donned a clean tunic. He stopped, surprise and fury combining to make him flush red. She was propped up against his feather pillow like a lady taking her ease. Her hair was combed and braided. Soft curls had come loose to feather around her face. She looked very different, aye, that lady or princess ensconced in her bed, waiting for her slaves to attend her. He frowned down at her. She looked up at him, saying nothing.
    He saw the chain around her wrist. It made him feel better. She might look like a princess, but she was, indeed, his hostage, chained by him. Aye, he was the master, he was the one who held her future in his hands. He wouldn’t allow her to forget it. “Get up,” he said.
    She rose slowly, to stand before him. “Give me your hand, your right hand.” It was heavy with the chain but she thrust it toward him. He unfastened the chain from her wrist and let it drop to the ground.
    She was wearing a gown of soft gray wool, a white linen tunic over it, belted. He frowned, sudden angerroiling in his belly. “Who has aided you?”
    â€œIf I tell you, will you chain them to the floor and beat them?”
    â€œI haven’t beat you,” he said, watching her massage her wrist.
    â€œNow you will because I have given you the idea.”
    â€œWho?”
    She saw the pulse quicken in his throat. He was angry, and becoming angrier by the moment. He was the lord here and yet someone had aided her, his prisoner.
    â€œHafter helped me.” Oh aye, Hafter, his man, let him chew on that one.
    Rorik didn’t chew long. “Ha! Hafter help you? Even if he would ever be so unwise, nay, so stupid, he wasn’t this time. He was with me all day. Stop your damned lies. It was doubtless one of the women. Who?”
    She turned from him and walked toward the doorway. He grabbed her arm and jerked her around to face him. She raised her other hand to strike him, and he grabbed her wrist. He saw then the scrapes and cuts and eased his hold on her hands. He saw the red marks still sharp and angry on her wrist from the rough links of the chain.
    â€œAre you hungry?”
    â€œSince you have starved me since you dragged me here, I am ravenous. I nearly gnawed at the chain. Will you offer me food or pig swill again?”
    He frowned. “I don’t know. Sit you down on the bed, and I will bring you what there is. If I don’t deign to eat it, then you won’t have to either.”
    He returned shortly carrying a wooden plate. On the plate was a pile of mashed peas with some sort of red berries crushed in, a reeking pile of cabbage boiled with small chunks of what seemed to be barkfrom a pine tree. In the center of the plate lay a large herring, headless, not boned, and burned blacker than a Christian’s sins.
    She looked at the plate. “Is there naught else? Is all the food like this?”
    â€œAye,” he said, and looked grim.
    Mirana didn’t know what was going on here. Also, it threw her off balance to see another side of this man. He’d been only vicious to her, but now he looked ready to howl or weep at the sight of the inedible slop on the plate. Mirana thought of the wonderful bread, the delectable roasted herring she’d been fed earlier, the big plate of beans seasoned to perfection. But now this. She said nothing. It made no sense.
    â€œI would rather starve,” she said deliberately, and glowed at the thought of her full belly. “Take this miserable swill and grind it under your heel, or act an enraged child again and throw it onto the ground like you did this morning with the porridge.”
    Instead, Rorik dumped the plate onto her lap, stepped back, rubbed his hands together, and said with a good deal of mockery, “If it was Hafter who aided you—which of course seems very likely