She gave Wilfrid a quick glance as if to question whether she had said too much. He gave her a fractured nod and turned his gaze back to the table game. Her shoulders relaxed infinitesimally and she returned her attention to Rurik.
‘What have you said to him? I must warn you that—’ She broke off and glanced to Wilfrid again. Leaning towards Rurik, she lowered her voice and said, ‘I must warn you that you cannot be allowed to upset him. Any variance from his normal routine can frustrate him and send him into another attack.’
She did not have to say that another attack just might kill him. He seemed frail and half-gone from the world as it was. If Wilfrid heard them, he did not acknowledge it. Rurik had already ascertained that the man was a bit hard of hearing, but he wanted to know for certain. ‘Can he not hear you if you whisper?’
She shrugged. ‘The hearing on the weak side of his body seems to have gone.’ The older man’s weak side was the side nearest Annis.
Rurik found it odd that he was being asked to not upset the man who had had a hand in his father’s death. The very man he had come here to kill. His fingers clenched around the seax. One quick move and the man before him could be dead, his blood spilled all over his precious table game. The idea of it did not hold the same appeal it had a week ago.
What joy was there in killing a man who was simple-minded and half in his grave? Had not the gods already accomplished the justice that Rurik had been prepared to mete out? Impotent anger and bitterness roiled within him. He had come so close only to have his justice denied to him. There had to be someone else. Wilfrid could not have acted alone.
Annis’s astute gaze saw his fingers and accurately read his intentions. Her own hand gripped the hilt of her dagger where it lay beside her on her lap. ‘If you do that... I will kill you.’ The words were low and softly spoken, but no less intense because of that.
‘Perhaps I would forfeit my life to see him dead.’
Rurik’s gaze turned from the old man before him, the man that he should hate, to take her in. She seemed unusually reserved and then he recognised that serenity for what it was. It was the warrior quiet. The calm before the storm of battle. He could easily plunge the small dagger into Wilfrid’s neck, but then Rurik would have to face her. If she did not kill him, the sound of their battle would rouse other warriors. Rurik would not live out the hour. There was no question about him being taken downstairs to the cage, not when there was no reason left to keep him alive. Not when vengeance would burn in their own hearts as brightly as it had blazed in his.
Was he prepared to kill her as well? He would no doubt be forced to fight his way through her if he had a hope of making his way out of the house. The question made his fingers loosen on the seax.
‘I have not questioned him yet, if that is your concern,’ he said to her. ‘I told him that we are lovers.’ He could not help the satisfaction he felt at her reaction.
‘What?’ The colour fled her face along with her rage. She stared at him as if he had spoken in his own Norse tongue when he was very certain that he had used the Saxon words correctly.
He fought the smile that threatened to make itself known. He very much liked this sparring with her. ‘Wilfrid wanted to know why I was here, who I was. All the normal things that a person questions when finding a stranger in their bedchamber. I told him that my name is Rurik and that I am here as your lover.’
She continued to stare as if his explanation had made no sense, so he asked, ‘Would you prefer that I tell him I am here as your pris—’
‘Do not say it.’
She spoke quickly so that he would not confess the truth and risk Wilfrid hearing. Interesting. He had no idea why she would want to hide the fact that he was a captive from her father-in-law, but he was beyond intrigued. Their voices had risen to a normal conversational tone, so Wilfrid had heard this part. He gave her a nod and reached across his body with his good arm and took her hand.
Strange. Rurik had expected anger and a desire for retribution, but Wilfrid seemed perfectly content that she had taken a lover. Who were these odd people? No one here reacted as he thought they should. Continuing the odd display, Wilfrid brought her hand to his face. He mumbled something, but Rurik could not make it out.
Her eyes glazed with tears that she hastily blinked back. Wilfrid released her and went back to the game as if he were alone. He moved the King, but then also one of the pieces Rurik was supposed to control.
‘He behaves like a child.’ Rurik lowered his voice again so as not to draw Wilfrid’s attention. ‘One moment he is alert and the next he is so absorbed in his game that he does not see us.’
She nodded as pain slashed across her features. ‘I do not know if it is the result of the attacks, but there have been times when he does not even know me, but in the next instant he will call me by name.’
‘That happens often?’
She shook her head. ‘Only a few times and only late at night, like now.’
Her gaze went to Wilfrid, the table, the dagger...anywhere but Rurik. It was as if
