and stood upright, waiting as she usually did for a person to decide which eye to speak to. His mouth opened and closed, and then, to give himself time, he hitched up the wet cloth and tightened it. ‘Ah, Lady Fearn,’ he said, holding out his bandaged hand. ‘Perhaps you could rebind this for me?’
She looked at it with distaste. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, calmly, ‘since it was of my doing. Do we have dry linen?’
Holding his hand in the air, he called to the far end of the ship, ‘Oskar! Bandage!’
Her eyes wandered over the shipload of half-naked men slithering about in various stages of undress, laughing and tousled, some of them combing wet hair and beards. Yet her gaze was held, rather against her wishes, by the man before her whose sun-bronzed skin rippled over bulging muscle and sinew, over powerful shoulders and a chest like those men singled out for their wrestling skills for Jorvik’s entertainment. He saw where her eyes went before they locked with his. ‘Well?’ he said, quietly.
She blinked. ‘Hold your hand out,’ she retorted. ‘I need to take this one off.’
Bantering shouts diverted his attention as she began to unwind the soggy linen. ‘Are you coming in to bathe with us, lady?’ they called. ‘We’ve warmed the water for you.’
Aric grinned. ‘Enough!’ he called. ‘We man the oars at a count of two hundred.’
‘Hah!’ said Oskar, holding out the linen strips. ‘Which of them can count to two hundred?’
Fearn took them from him, flicking a haughty eyebrow. ‘Twenty counts of ten?’ she murmured. ‘Yes, it’s healing. I don’t need the moss, just the honey. Hold still. It won’t hurt.’
The two men exchanged grins, appreciating their beautiful captive’s attempt to patronise them in retaliation for her plight, taking the advantage the bandaging offered to watch her hands skilfully tending the row of punctures on his skin. They noted her graceful figure braced against the rocking of the ship and took time to admire the smooth honeyed complexion and the long sweep of black eyelashes on her cheeks. They had time to see the swell of her perfect breasts beneath the linen and wool, and the neat waist tied with a narrow leather girdle. A leather purse hung from this beside the knife in its fur-lined sheath and a rope of beads hung from her neck at the centre of which was a large chunk of cloudy amber, nestling into the valley of her breasts. Just for a moment, the two men would both like to have been that piece of amber.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Try not to wet it. It will heal faster if it’s kept dry.’
Aric turned his hand over and over, then nodded his thanks. But Fearn had already turned away to help Haesel fold the skins and furs, pretending not to have seen. She did not hear Oskar’s flippant question asking if Aric thought she might bite him some time, but Aric was not as amused as his friend had expected. ‘It was not done in play,’ he said, pressing the wound. ‘Far from it. If she’d done this to her lout of a husband, he’d have knocked her down.’
‘Well, so do many men when their women step out of line,’ Oskar said.
‘Do you?’
‘Hit Ailsa? No. Never had to.’
‘No man has to, Oskar. There are better ways than that to deal with women.’ There was a tone in Aric’s voice that his friend had not heard before, that made him wonder if Aric was telling the whole truth when yesterday he’d said that he didn’t yet know what he was going to do with her. Was revenge his only motive? Oskar thought not.
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