sea water swirled around her, embracing the tops of her legs, curling lovingly around her freezing limbs. As the tide lapped higher and higher, a panicked fear took hold, silencing her screams. For what was the point of calling out? No one was coming for her now. The shore was visible in the limpid twilight, snagged by lingering sunlight, but it was empty, deserted. Everyone had gone.
Unable to settle on one spot for any length of time, her vision scurried across the silvery mud. Twinkles of light shimmered out from the huddle of cottages that formed the town. A weakness suffused her muscles, draining the last of her strength; her stomach was empty save for the small bowl of gruel she had eaten with her father and sister that morning. Her brain jumped and twitched with hunger and fatigue; the temptation to lower herself into the swirling brown water, to sink her hips into it, threatened to overwhelm her.
How would her father cope without her? Her sister? Poor Marie, she had been through so much already. Her beauty had been the bane of her life, her angelic looks catching men’s interested gazes wherever they went. Tears welled in Gisela’s chest, spilling hotly down her cheeks, blurring her sight. She would no longer be there to protect her. Pressing trembling palms to her face, she wept at the sheer hopelessness of her situation, the sea water creeping to her waist, soaking the coarse fabric of her gown. She had never been prone to self-pity, but at this moment in time, as the tears dripped down through her fingers, she truly believed that she was going to die.
The slim outline of the maid’s wavering figure became gradually more distinct as Ragnar strode along the narrow wooden planks, the rope tied around his waist for safety playing out behind him, back to his men on the shore. Shiny tussocks of grass perched on top of the carved mudflats; seabirds wheeled around his head, flapping and croaking at his presence as he passed by. Halfway across the mudflats, the incoming tide lapped his calf-length boots, frothing around his ankles. He cursed. The leather would take an age to dry out.
Jerking his head up, he suddenly realised the maid’s screaming had ceased. Had she even seen him? For if she saw him, it would give her hope. But the girl stood with her hands over her face, the brown churning current of the river at her back. A coarse linen scarf wrapped tightly around her neck and head, secured with a fearsome-looking silver brooch, the silver that had flashed in the dying sun, attracting his attention before.
‘Hey!’ he called out in Saxon. ‘Hey! You there, I’m coming for you!’ He was expecting her hands to fall away from her face, for her to look up and see him. But she remained as she was, face covered with her hands, as if she hadn’t heard him. Which, of course, she might not have, given the noise that the seabirds were making. The maid’s garments were shabby, ripped in places, loose threads dancing in the shimmering light. Layer upon layer of earth-coloured cloth enveloped her, garments that every low-born Saxon seemed to wear.
Ragnar sighed. Any one of their men could have come out for her. But he knew what had driven him out here: the same thing that made him ride headlong into battle, always at the front of the pack, swinging his axe with violent dexterity around his head; the cursed restlessness of his soul, the tortured guilt over what had happened to his sister. His mind and body never settled, beset with a constant, driving energy.
When he finally reached her, the water was up to his knees. Still she did not look up. Had she not heard him approach? Legs braced apart, Ragnar stood on the plank, the maid a couple of feet away, her gown floating around her, swirling in the vicious tide. ‘Give me your hand!’ he shouted at her.
* * *
The voice stabbed in her chest. A harsh, guttural order, in Saxon, which she struggled to understand. Her hands dropped from her cheeks, midnight-blue eyes rounding in shock. A huge man stood in front of her, his hand stretched out across the churning water. The dying sunlight caught the ends of his hair, firing them to a molten bronze. A golden halo, springing out around his head. Like an angel, she thought stupidly, her mind befuddled. Had an angel come to rescue her? The heady scent of leather and woodsmoke rose from him, mingling with the strong salt-laden smell of the sea. Was he an illusion, a figment of her exhausted brain dreamt up by her desperate plight?
Gisela frowned as she peered more closely. Nay, not an angel. The man towered over her, spreading his long legs wide against the surging rush of tide. Clad in a sleeveless leather tunic, criss-crossed with leather straps, fearsomely riveted, he looked more like a barbarian, scowling darkly at her failure to move, or to even stretch her hand out towards him. Secured by an ornately wrought brooch, a length of woollen cloth wrapped around his broad shoulders served as a cloak; woollen braies encased his powerful legs. Honed thigh muscles flexed beneath the cloth. The sun’s low angle threw his face into relief, like a carved statue, the craggy angles of his square jaw and the shadowed hollow of his cheeks beneath sharply delineated cheekbones.
Her heart plummeted foolishly. She was not often given to fanciful notions, but her imagination, dulled with fatigue, had certainly excelled on this occasion. Her fear of drowning, of near death, had forced her mind to evoke this image of perfect masculinity. She folded her arms, mouth set in a mutinous line, challenging the vision to disappear. An apparition dreamed up by her mad, unfocused brain through fear and lack of food. The man did not exist. If she stared at him long enough, he would surely vanish. Gisela tipped her head to one side, waiting.
‘What is wrong with you?’ the man roared again in Saxon, his generous mouth twisting in frustration. ‘Do you understand me? Give me your hand!’ The water caressed the hemline of his woollen shirt, hanging beneath his shorter tunic. Frowning, she struggled to work out his identity; he wore no surcoat to denote his coat of arms like any Saxon or a Norman knight. With that mass of golden hair around his head, he appeared before her like a Norse god of old. Laughter bubbled up in her chest. What would her confused mind come up with next?
Something gripped her shoulder, shaking her violently. Then a hand pushed against her cheek, fingers calloused and warm, one thumb digging into her chin. She reared back at the contact, but the fingers held tight, pulling her forward. Bright green eyes loomed into the centre of her vision.
‘Look at me,’ the man said, his harsh voice clipping the Saxon vowels. ‘You have to help me, otherwise you are going to drown. Do you realise that? Put your arms around my neck and I will pull you out of here.’ As he reached over, his hands dug intimately beneath her armpits, gripping her flesh through the layers of clothing. Gisela flinched, a jolt of heat racing through her; his thumbs brushing against her breasts.
But this isn’t happening, she told herself dully, as a small squeak of protest fell from her lips at his cursory manhandling. Bending double, the man reached out from his place of security on the plank, the white wood palely visible beneath the water, and pulled and pulled, dragging her slowly, inexorably, from the mud. ‘Put your arms around my neck!’ he demanded again, growling against her ear. Stung to compliance by the harsh command, Gisela lifted her slim arms, linking her fingers at the back of his neck. His skin was warm; the fronds of his hair tickled her hand. She frowned, her muddled mind trying desperately to make sense of the situation. Was he truly pulling her out of this godforsaken mud?
Air sucked around her frozen limbs as the mud released its cruel snare upon her legs. Her feet, caked in heavy mud, dangled uselessly as arms of thick-roped muscle lifted her, shoving her slender frame against a hard, masculine body, chest to chest. The man thrust one arm beneath her hips, swinging her legs up high. Her soaked gown clung to her thighs, to the soft flare of her hips.
Warmth surged through her, a delicious puddle of sensation that broke through her vague, dream-like state of semi-consciousness. His nearness was brutal, a curt slap on the jaw, buffeting her sensitive core, wrenching her body to a state of full, throbbing alertness. Breath squeezed in her lungs; it was as if his cursory touch ripped the clothes from her body and exposed her nakedness for all to see. She felt stripped bare, vulnerable, her breasts bouncing treacherously against his solid chest, her arms flailing away from his neck, not wanting
