pulled out the tall pink bottle, shut the refrigerator and stood, her smile intact. Her mother, tall, blond as her daughters and stunningly beautiful in a crisp white shirt, a heavy turquoise necklace and black slacks, did not smile back.
“Mom, we were just—”
Ingrid wasn’t listening. “Who is this man?”
What to do? How to handle this? There was just no right approach to take.
Elli gestured with her bottle of fruit-flavored sparkling water. “This is Hauk FitzWyborn.”
Hauk whipped his big fist to his chest and lowered his head. “Your Majesty.”
There was an awful moment of total silence.
Then her mother said, too softly, “Hildy was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. She told me. But I refused to believe it.” Ingrid was looking at Elli again, blue eyes gleaming dangerously. “Let me guess. A warrior, right? One of Osrik’s goons, his… Viking berserkers?”
“Mom.” Elli set the unopened bottle on the bar and went to her mother. “Come on.” She took Ingrid’s elbow. “Let’s not—”
“Don’t.” Ingrid jerked free. “I want to know what’s happening here. I want to know why you’ve brought one of your father’s thugs into my house.”
Chapter Six
So much for the faint hope of giving this explosive subject the delicate introduction it deserved.
Elli made it short and simple. “Hauk is here to escort me to Gullandria. I’m leaving sometime in the next two days. Father has—” What to call it? “—invited me. And I’ve said I will come.”
Ingrid’s mouth had dropped open. “I don’t… You’re not… Surely, you can’t—”
Elli reached for her mother’s arm again. “Oh, Mom. Here. Sit down.” She made a shooing motion at Hauk, who still loomed nearby, hand to chest, head down, blocking the nearest chair.
Hauk got the message. He moved to the other end of the big room and pretended to stare out a window, giving them as much privacy as he could without actually leaving them alone together and going against the orders of his king.
Elli eased her mother down onto the cushions. “Mom. Please.” She knelt, took Ingrid’s trembling hand. “It’s not the end of the world. It’s…something you had to expect might happen someday, that one of us would want to go there, to meet our father face-to-face.”
Ingrid was shaking her head. “No. I never in a thousand years expected that. I’d always believed I made it clear to the three of you. To go back there is a bad idea. A very, very bad idea.”
Elli squeezed her mother’s hand. “He is my father.”
Ingrid leaned close. “He gave you up.” She spoke low, with a terrible intensity. “Gave you up as I gave up our sons. And look what happened to them, to my little boys.” It hurt to see it, the way heartache could twist such a beautiful face. She gripped Elli’s hand more tightly. “Isn’t it enough that both of them are dead? He has no right, none, to summon you now.”
“But I want to go.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do. It’s important to me, to know my own father, to find out for myself what he’s like.”
“I can’t believe he’s done this. I told him no. I told him absolutely not, under any circumstances.” Ingrid didn’t seem to realize what she’d just let slip.
Elli prompted, though she already knew the truth, “You’re saying you spoke to him recently?”
Ingrid blinked. And then confessed, “Yes. He called last Friday.”
“You didn’t say a word to me. You didn’t tell me—”
“Of course I didn’t tell you.” Ingrid wrapped her other hand around their joined ones. “There was no need to tell you. He called and he asked me to send you—all three of you. When I refused, he started giving orders. When giving orders didn’t work, he offered me a bribe.”
Elli stiffened. Her father hadn’t mentioned any bribes. “You’re not serious. He wouldn’t—”
“Oh, yes, he would.” Ingrid was nodding, her mouth a thin line. “He mentioned a figure. A large one.” She added, more to herself than to Elli, “As if I need his money, as if money means a thing to me when measured against my babies.”
Elli supposed, now that she thought about it, that she could see her father trying just about anything to get her mother to let him see his remaining children. “He’s got to be desperate. And so very lonely now. He’s lost two sons.”
Ingrid made a feral sound deep in her throat. “He’s lost two sons! It’s my loss, too. Our loss, all of ours. Yours and mine and Brit’s and Liv’s. My sons, your brothers. Gone. Dead. And no one will ever convince me they died purely by accident. A fire in the stables and a five-year-old loses his life horribly, his poor little body burned almost beyond recognition. Wasn’t that enough? Evidently not. Because now there’s been a storm at sea—Valbrand washed overboard, survivors reporting they saw him swept away.
“No. There’s more than misfortune at work here. In Gullandria, the rules of succession make life much too hazardous for the sons of the king. The jarl are forever forming their alliances, plotting and planning. Deep in my heart, I’ll always suspect that your brothers didn’t die purely by accident.”
Shock had Elli staring. “You’ve never said anything like that before.”
“Of course I haven’t. I’ve always prayed I’d never have to.”
Elli found she was determined, now, to speak with her father, to learn all that he knew about the circumstances surrounding her brothers’ deaths.
Ingrid stared into the middle distance. “I kept my word to your father. One son dead all those years ago. And then, last summer, the other vanishes. Sometimes it was like a knife, buried deep, turning cruelly inside of me, but I did what I had to do. I stayed here, in America, with you girls. I couldn’t save what was gone, but I kept my promise to your father. And I kept you three safe.” She shifted her burning gaze to Elli. “Please. I am begging you. Don’t go there. I’m afraid for you to go there.”
Elli realized her father had been right to fear she might be swayed by a visit to her mother. Ingrid was very convincing. Her arguments not only made sense, they plucked hard and hurtfully at Elli’s heartstrings. Elli loved her mother. Greatly. The last thing she wanted was to see Ingrid suffer and know she herself was the cause of it.
Over by the window, Hauk turned—just enough to meet Elli’s eyes. Something flashed between them: an insight, a knowing. Elli saw that the warrior understood exactly what she was feeling, that he had been warned by his king to expect it. It was why he guarded her so closely, why she had not been allowed to come here, to her mother, on her own.
Elli pushed her doubts aside. She had made an agreement with her father. And she would keep it.
