A shudder passed through her as she briefly met his glance. She felt guilty because she had been thinking about something besides her love for him when he looked at her in that way.
Brynhild Fluga had gone on ahead. When they reached the inn, Erlend asked Kristin, “Do you want to go into the main room, or should we talk upstairs in the loft?”
“As you please,” replied Kristin.
“It’s cold up there,” said Erlend softly. “We’ll have to get into the bed.” Kristin merely nodded.
The instant he had closed the door behind them, she was in his arms. He bent her this way and that like a wand, blinding her and smothering her with kisses, as he impatiently tore both cloaks off her and tossed them to the floor. Then he lifted the girl in the pale convent dress in his arms, pressing her to his shoulder, and carried her over to the bed. Frightened by his roughness and by her own sudden desire for this man, she put her arms around him and buried her face in his neck.
It was so cold in the loft that they could see their own breath like a cloud of smoke in front of the little candle standing on the table. But there were plenty of blankets and furs on the bed, covered by a great bearskin, which they pulled all the way up over their faces.
She didn’t know how long she had lain like that in his arms when Erlend said, “Now we must talk about those things that have to be discussed, my Kristin. I don’t dare keep you here long.”
“I’ll stay here the whole night if you want me to,” whispered Kristin.
Erlend pressed his cheek to hers.
“Then I would not be much of a friend to you. Things are bad enough already, but I won’t have people gossiping about you because of me.”
Kristin didn’t reply, but she felt a twinge of pain. She didn’t understand how he could say such a thing, since he was the one who had brought her here to Brynhild Fluga’s house. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she realized that this was not a good place. And he had expected that everything would proceed just as it did, for he had a cup of mead standing inside the bed drapes.
“I’ve been thinking,” continued Erlend, “that if there’s no other alternative, then I’ll have to take you away by force, to Sweden. Duchess Ingebjorg received me kindly this autumn and spoke of the kinship between us. But now I’m paying for my sins—I’ve fled the country before, you know—and I don’t want you to be mentioned as that other one’s equal.”
“Take me home to Husaby with you,” said Kristin quietly. “I can’t bear to be separated from you and to live with the maidens in the convent. Surely both your kinsmen and mine will be reasonable enough that they’ll allow us to be together and become reconciled with them.”
Erlend hugged her tight and moaned, “I can’t take you to Husaby, Kristin.”
“Why can’t you?” she asked in a whisper.
“Eline came back this fall,” he said after a moment. “I can’t make her leave the farm,” he continued angrily, “not unless I carry her by force out to the sleigh and drive her away myself. And I don’t think I could do that—she brought both of our children home with her.”
Kristin felt as if she were sinking deeper and deeper. In a voice that was brittle with fear she said, “I thought you had parted from her.”
“I thought so too,” replied Erlend curtly. “But she apparently heard in ?sterdal, where she was living, that I was thinking of marriage. You saw the man I was with at the Christmas banquet—that was my foster father, Baard Peters?n of Hestn?s. I went to him when I returned from Sweden; I visited my kinsman, Heming Alvs?n, in Saltvik too. I told them that I wanted to get married now and asked them to help me. That must be what Eline heard.
“I told her to demand whatever she wanted for herself and the children. But they don’t expect Sigurd, her husband, to survive the winter, and then no one can prevent us from living together.
“I slept in the stables with Haftor and Ulv, and Eline slept in the house in my bed. I think my men had a good laugh behind my back.”
Kristin couldn’t say a word.
After a moment Erlend went on, “You know, on the day when our betrothal is formally celebrated, she’ll have to realize that it will do her no good—that she has no power over me any longer.
“But it will be bad for the children. I hadn’t seen them in a year—they’re good-looking children—and there’s little I can do to secure their situation. It wouldn’t have helped them much even if I had been able to marry their mother.”