“That's what this is about then? Some blasted grudge you harbor against my father?" She muttered something indecipherable beneath her breath in a language he suspected was not English. French, perhaps? Her words were too low for him to determine. "Has the world gone mad?""Has it ever been sane?" he asked. He ahd decided the world a far from logical place long ago, when he'd been lost to the streets at the tender age of eight. "When you mull it over, you and I marrying is scarcely absurd. Fitting perhaps. Face it, neither of us is a feted blueblood.”

“She would have liked to know how he felt as to a meeting. Perhaps indifferent, if indifference could exist under such circumstances. He must be either indifferent or unwilling. Has he wished ever to see her again, he need not have waited till this time; he would have done what she could not but believe that in his place she should have done long ago, when events had been early giving him the indepencence which alone had been wanting.”

“Fane's wolf must have been in control of the wheel because he leaned down over Jacque and growled low. He placed his face against her neck, breathing deep, and his voice was guttural when he spoke. "Mine." Jacque turned her head slightly and did what no other would ever be able to do when this alpha was at this point, she looked him in the eyes. "Yes, I am yours.”

“No, Maximilien, I am not offended," answered she, "but do you not see what a poor, helpless being I am, almost a stranger and an outcast in my father's house, where even he is seldom seen; whose will has been thwarted, and spirits broken, from the age of ten years, beneath the iron rod so sternly held over me; oppressed, mortified, and persecuted, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, no person has cared for, even observed my sufferings, nor have I ever breathed one word on the subject save to yourself. Outwardly and in the eyes of the world, I am surrounded by kindness and affection; but the reverse is the case. The general remark is, `Oh, it cannot be expected that one of so stern a character as M. Villefort could lavish the tenderness some fathers do on their daughters. What though she has lost her own mother at a tender age, she has had the happiness to find a second mother in Madame de Villefort.' The world, however, is mistaken; my father abandons me from utter indifference, while my mother-in-law detests me with a hatred so much the more terrible because it is veiled beneath a continual smile.”

“Ashamed of what she had thought, Rycca lowered her eyes. “I am sorry.”“For what? Assuming I took the stone by force? But that’s what Vikings do, isn’t it?”He sounded exasperated and she could not blame him. But neither was she prepared when he suddenly asked, “Why did you not want us to marry? Because I am Viking?”She had wondered if he would ask, then decided her reasons would likely mean nothing to him. But he was a man of surprises, this hero of her strange world. And very good at biding his time.“It is true, I did not wish to wed a Viking.”“Because of what you have heard about us?”

“No matter where and when you meet him you feel that he has come from some place-no matter from what place he has come-some country that he has devoured rather than resided in, some secret land that he has been nourished on but cannot inherit, for the Jew seems to be everythere from nowhere.”