Edin's embrace Read Online Free PDF Page A

wide, round neckline of her shift and pulling it off her shoulder, so that her right breast was bared. Her hands fluttered upward, then fell to her sides again. Her eyes sidled to his, and then away. The indecency seemed to her less ghastly than the coolness of his stare fastened on her breast.
    At last he grazed the tip of it with his middle finger. She had the hazed nightmare feeling that this was a check, nothing more, the way a man checks equipment he intends to use. She felt the beginnings of sexual terror. Her stomach pounded like a second heart; panic pounded through her veins.
    Just as she felt herself growing weak with the piling up of horror, a further movement came at the door. There Cedric stood, with his sword out of its scabbard at last. He held the weapon awkwardly, with the hilt gripped in both fists. Upon seeing one dead Viking in the room and another looming over Edin, he paused. His eyes met hers.
    That intense, large-eyed stare was much too weighty and sustained. Her understanding rebelled for a moment against what she saw in it —no deep cunning thoughts, just his sense of helplessness, his fear. And his desire to simply leave her to whatever fate was in store for her. She saw him as he was then, unmarked by experience, decision, or impact. She had been willing to become his wife, to give herself to him, her body, her heart, her life. From a young age, there had existed in her mind a set of expectations and hopes, an aggregation of conceptions picked up from remarks, descriptions, reveries, all of which sheltered under the word love, and now in her bridegroom's eyes she saw that there was . . . fondness, certainly . . . and desire . . . but not love.
    Whether he would have quietly stepped back and fled for his own life she was never to know, for the Viking lifted his eyes from her breast and saw the direction of her gaze. He whirled, his sword coming up reflexively. Everything seemed slowed down as Edin watched. The length of his sword added to the length of his arm gave him such a long, killing reach. Cedric saw the broad, keen blade coming. He moved his own sword with desperate ineptness. He shouted; the Viking made not a sound. The blade sliced horizontally Cedric's mouth opened wider, though only a gasping sound came from him now. He seemed to fold at the waist, over that damascened blade, then he crumpled to the floor.
    Edin screamed. She struggled against the Viking's grip on her arm which kept her where she was. Cedric's face was a terrible thing. Clearly he was in mortal agony. His legs moved, and his mouth still gaped silently, as though there was not enough strength in him to give voice to his pain.
    The barbarian muttered something, glanced at Edin with those coolish eyes, then frowned, shook his head, and suddenly plunged his sword into the young thane's heart.
    Edin felt something in her slip. Her pulse slowed to half its rate. She swayed on her feet; her vision darkened. She hardly noticed that the Viking had let go of her. She sagged to her knees and crawled to Cedric's side. "My lord?" She reached for the tatters of his blood-soaked shirt and tried to close them over his wounds. "My lord . . . Cedric . . . you've ruined your shirt. I could try to sew it, but ... oh, Cedric, you should have fled."
    She felt a hand on her arm again and looked at it, at the twiglike scars that started at the fingers and went up the wrist until they disappeared beneath the sleeve, scars of innumerable blade cuts. She looked up into those pewter eyes that were divided by the iron nosepiece of the helmet. A Viking. She ought to be terrified, she understood that distinctly. His appearance there above her was violent and impossible. For a moment more she was uncomprehending; then anger such as she'd never known flooded her. Everything savage in her surfaced at once. She yanked away from his grip and stood, facing this man who had in the space of minutes stolen her future. Her heart turned bitter inside her. She