The Viking's Woman by Heather Graham

those who had suffered so needlessly and was very afraid that some treachery had perhaps cost him the assistance of the Irish prince when he needed it most. He held Rhiannon too tightly. He did not blame her, but he was shaking with emotion and anger. “Nay, you are clear, but you do not understand my words! I have been betrayed. You set your men to attack a man I asked here in friendship. You set your hand against me.”
    Rhiannon gasped, horrified. “I would never betray you, Alfred. How can you accuse me so? I fought the enemy! We have always fought the enemy.”
    “I do not accuse you, but I tell you that you were to have welcomed the man but you fought him instead.”
    “I swear I did not know!”
    He loved her; suddenly he could not look at her. He could not lose the manpower he needed now. Victory was too close; it was sweet on his tongue. He could not bear that it could be seized from his grasp. He needed the prince of Eire, and if the Irish prince demandedsome punishment, he might be forced to fulfill the price.
    He raised his voice as he entered the manor house. He carried Rhiannon before the fire and set her there. “Alswitha!” he called to his wife, and she was there, his bride of Mercia, with his young daughter, Althrife, in her arms. She quickly set the child down and gasped, staring at him reproachfully as she greeted Rhiannon, embracing her. “What has happened to her?” she demanded, dismayed at Rhiannon’s dishevelment.
    Alfred could not dispel the rage that had settled over him. “Someone within her household chose not to honor the order of the king; that is what has occurred.”
    “Nay, that cannot be true!” Rhiannon protested.
    Alfred was trembling. She didn’t understand the depths of his emotion, and she was stunned that he would be so furious with her when she had come to him for succor.
    “I accuse
you
of nothing, Rhiannon, yet someone did betray me—and you. And what has happened could have dire consequences, far more deadly to our cause than what has already occurred.”
    Rhiannon disengaged herself from the queen’s embrace and stood, shaking, to challenge the king. “More dire than the sea of blood before my town? Have you forgotten, Alfred? Men, good men, my dear friends, lie dead—”
    “Have you forgotten, lady, that I am the king?” he thundered in return. “And, Rhiannon, it might well be your dear and loyal friends who turned traitor, for the message was sent that the prince of Eire sailed,that he was to be greeted with all courtesy and escorted here.”
    “No message came, my lord!” she cried. “And believe me, sire, I saw no Irish prince, just a horde of Viking raiders.”
    He spun around, ignoring her.
    “By the saints, Alfred!” Alswitha called after him. “How can you be so cruel as to doubt the girl!”
    He turned back to them both and his gaze seemed empty. “Because all Wessex could depend upon this. Because peace could depend upon the whim and fury of a foreign prince.” He swept his mantle around him, buttoning it high. “I ride, my lady,” he told his wife, “to the coast. Rhiannon has survived, and she is, I trust, safe in your keeping.”
    He left them, staring after him. Alswitha seemed even more distraught than she.
    “He does love you. Dearly,” Alswitha said.
    Rhiannon turned to her and tried to smile. The effort failed. “Aye, he loves me. But not as much as he oves Wessex.”
    “He does not love
me
as much as he loves Wessex,” Alswitha said dryly. She noticed that Rhiannon was shivering, and she called to her women, who came scurrying into the hall. “Quick, we must have warm water and give the lady Rhiannon a bath before the fire and warm her, lest she be ill.”
    Beyond the walls of the manor they could hear the sounds of hoofbeats and the jangling of the horses’ trappings as men mounted to ride. Alswitha put an arm around Rhiannon’s shoulders and led her toward the easterly side of the hall, the women’s solar. There her