Neither would he admit it now, but laughed lightly as he drew her to him. “Now may he not give me thorns who gives me also the sweetest rose in his king-dom? I tell you he is the kingliest king ever I had to deal with, and the chief I would soonest trust England to. Be no Danish rebel, shield-maiden, or as the King’s officer I will mulct your lips for every word of treason.”
She showed no rebellion against his authority, at all events; and her hands remained in his clasp until of his own accord he opened his fingers with an exclamation. “Do you wear bracelets for rings, my fair, or what? What!” From the monstrous bauble in his palm, he raised his eyes to hers, and if she had seen their look she might have answered differently. But her gaze was still on the ring; and as she felt him start, that impish dimple peeped out of her cheek.
“Is it not a handsome thing?” she said. “It looks to be a ring to belong to a giant.”
“Is it—Rothgar’s?”
The dimple deepened as she heard his tone. For all its absurdity, there must be some truth in Dearwyn’s witch-skill. She was obliged to droop her lashes very low to hide the mischief in her eyes. “It is not his now,” she murmured. “It has been given me—to keep me in mind of something.” But after that her amusement grew too strong to be repressed, and she looked up at him with over-brimming laughter. “There will soon be too much of this! Sweetheart mine, are you in truth so easy to plague?”
Laughing she looked up at him, but, even as his face was clearing, something in it struck her so strangely that her laughter died and she bent toward him in sudden gravity. “Lord! It is not possible for you to believe that I could love Rothgar!” Her manner of uttering that one word made it speak more scorn than volumes might have done.
For a while he only looked at her, that strange radiance growing in his face; but suddenly he caught her to him and kissed her so passionately that he hurt her, and his voice was as passionate as his caress. “No,” he told her over and over. “Would I have offered you my love had I believed that? No! No!”
Satisfied, she made no more resistance but clung to him with her arms as she had clung to him with her heart since the first hour he came into her life. Only, when at last he released her, she took the ring from her finger and thrust it into his hand with a little gesture of distaste. “I shall be thankful if I do not have to see it again. It is Elfgiva’s, that Canute gave her after he had won it from Rothgar in some wager. It is her wish that you bring it to the King again by slipping it into his broth or his wine where he will come upon it after he has finished feeding and is therefore amiable—” She stopped to laugh merrily in his face. “See how the very naming of the King turns you grave again! When one gets a Marshalship, one becomes more and more stark.” Grown mischievous again in her happiness, she mocked him with courtesies.
But it was only very faintly that he smiled at her fooling, as he held the spiral against the light and shook it beside his ear. “Is there no more to the message,” he said slowly. “Am I to know nothing of her object? Or why I am chosen of all others?”
“Easy is it to tell that,” she laughed. “You were not chosen without a reason, and that is because no one else is to be had, since the scullion who formerly served her has gotten himself killed in some way and the man who stepped into his shoes, out of some spite, has refused Teboen’s gold. And as for her object—I wonder at you, lord of my heart! What kind of a lover are you that you cannot guess that?” Feigning to flout him, she drew away; then feigning to relent, turned back and laughed it into his ear. “It is a love-token! To hold him to the fair promises he made at its giving, and to remind him of her, and to win her a crown, and to do so many strange wonders that no tongue can number them! Are you not ashamed to have failed on so easy a riddle?”