Lord of Hawkfell Island by Catherine Coulter

she weaves her web around him. I remember she always stands toe to toe to Harald, her husband. She shouts louder than he does, despite the level of his ire. He would never strike her or threaten her. Alna is right. You are fearless. You are like her.”
    Mirana wondered about that, but said, pleased, even as she shook her head, “Well, we won’t shout as yet.”
    â€œAh, no, obedient sheep we’ll be,” said Amma and she gave Mirana a fat smile.
    â€œSay nothing to Sculla,” Mirana told Amma. “Even though he is a faithful husband, he is still a man, and a man is more loyal to other men in many things than to his wife.”
    â€œI’ll say not a word,” Amma said, then she laughed. “I will prepare a barley soup that will make the men weep with pleasure.”
    â€œAnd what of Entti?” Mirana asked.
    â€œAh, that sweet little simpleton will do as she’s told,” Old Alna said. “She has cooked the swill, we’ve not lied about that. Asta hands her pine bark and she adds it to the stew. Amma gives her turnip root and she merrily grinds it into a paste to throw into a soup.”
    â€œAye, with a sweet empty smile on her face. Now we’ll let her watch,” Amma said.

8
    S HE LAY ON her side on the floor, wrapped in a single blanket. Her left wrist was chained tonight because he’d looked at the bruises on her right wrist, said nothing at all, and chained her left.
    He hadn’t fondled her again, had scarcely even looked at her once they’d returned to the longhouse. She thought about her meeting with Amma and Old Alna. She was doubtless a fool to involve herself with the women’s problems, but the urge had been strong inside her and she’d done it. She hoped her plan would work. She hoped Rorik would wait to make his threats to the women, just a day, just to see if perhaps their fear of him would better their cooking. Aye, and when it did, how he would preen. How all the men would strut about, feeling so pleased with themselves. But not for very long. She wished she didn’t like the women so very much, but she did. She felt kinship with them now.
    She listened to Rorik’s deep even breathing. She closed her own eyes and tried to copy his rhythm. It didn’t work. She lay there wondering what would become of her, wondering what Einar was doing to find her, if he was doing anything. She might brag of her half-brother before Rorik, but to herself, she admitted the truth. No, she had no idea at all what Einar woulddo. He was a strange man; she’d never understood the way he thought, why he behaved as he did.
    Suddenly, Rorik’s breathing hitched, his chest heaved, and he groaned deep in his throat. He cried out, and then moaned, his voice deep and raw and filled with pain, “Nay! By Thor, nay! Inga, don’t leave me! By all the gods, no!”
    He heaved and jerked. She felt the box bed moving in his frenzy. She came up onto her knees. He was thrashing, moaning, in the throes of a nightmare.
    â€œRorik! Wake up!”
    He cried out again and again, softly, cries of great pain, of helplessness and misery too deep to bear.
    â€œRorik!”
    He jerked upright in the bed, gasping for breath. She could make out his outline, but not the expression on his face.
    â€œYou had a nightmare,” she said calmly, leaning forward so she could see him better. The chain rattled as it struck against the wooden bed frame.
    He looked over at her, kneeling up so she could see him, the chain dangling from her left wrist. The sound of that damnable chain clinking against the wooden bed. He shook his head. The nightmare . . . always there, the horror of it, the pain of it, always there in the back of his mind, freed at night to sneak in unchecked and hurt him and make him relive it again and again. He hated it and he couldn’t seem to escape it.
    He said nothing to her. He hated her for hearing him relive the