Page 4 of Ruthless, But for Her

CHAPTER 3

Ashton

“Adrift, my boy?” Leif called from the stern.

Eyes narrowed against the grey, Ashton looked out into the dense fog, grateful it had held.

He nodded without turning.

Silence descended on The Einar as the last orders were given. There was nothing to do now but wait. That was the part Ryker had never learned to endure.

Ashton's mind wandered to a day when he was fifteen that had started like this one, but ended in his first storm at sea. Growing up on the docks of Mere's End, like other parentless borderers, he had taken more than one job that required some knowledge of the North Sea's moods. On his second voyage, a supply run up the coast, that same sea had nearly swallowed him and Sorren whole. Sorren had laughed when they finally made it ashore, salt-soaked and shaking, and Ashton hadn't spoken to him for a full day in punishment for it.

“I like it not.”

There was little need for Ryker to inform him of that fact when his pacing already did so. Back and forth across the deck, like an animal caged between the rowing benches, his brother made his displeasure known to anyone with eyes.

As they drifted silently through the fog, their captain held firm.

Leif had agreed with Ashton's approach, pointing out to Ryker that he had been made battle commander, not master strategist, for a reason. Ryker, caring little for being reminded of an impetuous nature he could not himself deny, had been on edge since.

“You're doing little to settle the men.”

Ryker stopped pacing.

He looked toward a row of oarsmen watching them. Ashton waited for whatever came next, because something always did. Having been raised beside Ryker, working alongside him, one would think he'd grown accustomed to the other man's unpredictability. But even Ashton couldn't have anticipated the sudden, broad grin.

“Do you remember the raid on Berwick?”

It was an odd thing to mention in that moment. The Einar sat silent, the typical sounds of men and rope and the steady rhythm of oars absent.

They drifted. Waiting.

“I remember Sorren's expression well.” Ashton paused. “He wore it for a week. The new man, the Irishman, reminds me of him at times.”

Ashton didn't have to follow Ryker's gaze to find the man in question. He could feel him at his back... flaming red hair and beard covering most of his face, the blue eyes nearly as striking as Sorren's. The new sailor proved strong and resourceful since coming aboard, a welcome addition to a crew that could not afford weakness.

“You spoke to Margot?” Ryker asked.

“I did.”

I do love her.

The mother who was not their mother, who had built an empire from nothing, who had fed them and kept them and shown them how to survive in a world that had not wanted them.

I love her. But I resent her, too.

Those two things had always lived in him, side by side, for years. It was the one thing he and his brothers, especially Ryker, had never agreed on.

“She comes,” Leif said.

Leif. Their captain. Their mentor. The only man other than his brothers whose word Ashton would take on faith alone.

Both he and Ryker looked up.

Ashton stepped away, moving toward the prow. Leif was right. But how? What did the old Norseman read in the fog that they could not? Some quality of sound, some change in the water's pull beneath the hull, some instinct built over decades at sea? Ashton had learned to trust what he didn't yet understand, which was nearly everything about Leif Einarsson.

He raised his fist. The signal rippled back through the crew without a word spoken, each man stilling, each oar lifted clear of the water.