Impatiently, she dropped her cloak, kicked off her shoes, pulled the nightdress over her head, and stood naked in front of him.

He stared at her hungrily. “My immortal soul,” he said. “You’re even more beautiful than I remember.”

“You, now,” she said, indicating his nightshirt. “I want to look at you.”

He pulled it off.

She saw again the scars on his arms, the fair hair on his belly, the long muscles of his thighs. Without shame she gazed at his cock, which was becoming larger by the second.

Then she had had enough of looking. “Let’s lie down,” she said.

She wanted no teasing, no stroking and whispering and kissing: she wanted him inside her, right away. He seemed to guess that, for instead of lying beside her he got on top immediately.

When he entered her, Ragna sighed deeply and said: “At last.”

CHAPTER 15

December 31, 997

ost of Ragna’s servants and men-at-arms were to return to Normandy. After the wedding she kept them with her as long as she reasonably could, but the time came when she had to relent, and they left on the last day of December.

A typical English drizzling rain fell on them as they carried their bags to the stables and loaded the packhorses. Only Cat and Bern were to stay: that had been the arrangement from the start.

Ragna could not help feeling sad and anxious. Although she was deliriously happy with Wilf, still she feared this moment. She was an Englishwoman now, surrounded by people she had met only a few weeks ago. As if she had lost a limb, she missed the parents, the relations, the neighbors, and the servants who had known her since before she could remember.

She told herself that thousands of noble brides must have felt the same. It was common for aristocratic girls to marry and move far from home. The wisest of them threw themselves into their new lives with energy and enthusiasm, and that was what Ragna was doing.

But that was small consolation today. She had known moments when the world seemed to be against her—and next time that happened, who would she turn to?

She would turn to Wilf, of course. He would be her friend and counselor as well as her lover.

They made love in the evening and often again in the morning, and sometimes in the middle of the night, too. After a week he had resumed his normal duties, riding out every day to visit some part of his domain. Fortunately there was no fighting: the Welsh raiders had gone home of their own accord, and Wilf said he would punish them in his own good time.

All the same, not every trip could be completed in a single day, so he began to spend some nights away. Ragna would have liked to go with him, but she was in charge of his home now, and she had not yet secured her grip on authority, so she stayed. The arrangement had an upside: he returned from such journeys hungrier than ever for her.