“I did not say you are a trollop. In truth, I do not consort with trollops, and I definitely want to consort with you.”
If he thought that was going to smooth waters, he had another think coming. “Why?
Because of that one kiss?” she taunted.
“It was an unusual kiss, unlike any I have experienced afore. Well worth repeating, would you not say, Ree-tah?”
“I have decided not to be attracted to you anymore.”
He chuckled. “One can decide such things?”
“I can, especially if you go back to your usual negative, insulting attitude. How come you‟re not scowling?”
“I have scowled for three days, on the way back to Norstead. My men are complaining. In truth, I am sick to my teeth of everyone commenting on my moods. Yea, I am angry, as well I should be. I am angry at the loss of my brother. I am angry that I have lost my way of life and must needs take Thorfinn‟s place as master of Norstead and Amberstead. I am angry at you for trying to escape. I am angry at my people for not stopping you. And most of all, I am angry with myself.”
“Wow! Why don‟t you tell me how you really feel? All I did was ask why you weren‟t scowling today.”
He calmed down after his outburst. “No doubt tomorrow I will be back to my normal growling and frowning.”
“Good.” When he only grinned at her response, she went on, “Why don‟t you go find your fiancée and suck face with her?”
“Fee-auntsie?”
She rolled her eyes. “Betrothed.”
Steven frowned. “I am not betrothed to anyone.”
“Someone better inform the merry widow. Lady Thora has you or Oslac, or both of you, in her marriage crosshairs.”
“Explain yourself, m‟lady.”
“Lady Thora told me that you and Oslac belong to her and warned me not to interfere.”
He regarded her with amusement. “A tup does not a marriage proposal make.”
“Does Lady Thora know that?”
“She will. Little does Lady Thora know, but I have already made plans for her to be back in her father‟s Vestfold house afore winter. Let him find her a new husband.”
She shrugged. It wasn‟t her problem.
“Tell me more about how you are attracted to me.”
Typical man! Needs to have his ego stroked.
She thought about asking him why he was attracted to her, but she was afraid he would tell her . . . in embarrassing detail. As if the subject were closed, he walked over to the bed, sat down, then lay down, big as you please, with his hands linked behind his head on the pillows.
“What do you think you‟re doing?”
“Waiting for you to get ready for dinner. And I do not mean boy‟s garb.” He waved a hand toward her current attire. “Not that I do not appreciate how well you fill them out. Bend over so I can get a better look at your arse.”
“In your dreams!”
“Why? A well-shaped arse is an attribute to be desired for a woman. Mayhap I will order all women in my keep to wear braies so I may assess their arse worthiness.”
She made a face at him, knowing that he was deliberately baiting her. Actually, she was planning on going down to the laundry area when everyone was at dinner and washing out her tunic and tights. There was a plain, faded red wool gown that she‟d pilfered from a chest that once belonged to Thorfinn‟s first wife. She didn‟t take any of the finer garments, but she figured no one would notice if she borrowed a few older items. “I‟m not going down to dinner.”
“Yea, you are.”
“Why does it matter? Do you enjoy humiliating me?”
That shocked him. “How have I humiliated . . . well, how have I done anything objectionable since I have returned? You, on the other hand . . .”
“It would be like walking a gauntlet, bare naked, if I had to walk down there in front of all those horny men.”
“No man at Norstead—horny or otherwise, assuming horny means what I think it does— would take you to his bed furs without your consent.”
“Oh, that makes me feel better, assent being open to interpretation, I assume.”
“Besides, you are under my shield now.”
“I am?”
“Until I decide what to do with you.”
“That‟s just great. Then what? You start lopping off body parts, or toss me off a cliff like you threatened that sobbing maid, or—”
“Swive you silly.”
Her face heated again, and she was not a blushing kind of woman. “That was crude.”
He wriggled his butt on the bed and said, “I had no idea Thorfinn‟s bed was so comfortable.
Methinks I will sleep here tonight.”
“And where will I sleep?”
His silence was ominous.
“Maybe we should go to dinner after all.”
“Good idea!” he agreed, as if that had been his intent all along.
“You go ahead. I‟ll meet you there as soon as I change.”
“I have a better idea. I‟ll wait, and we will go together.”
She bared her teeth at him.
He grinned. “Take something from Luta‟s chest.”
“I already did.” She pointed to the red gown.
“That gunna is fine, but you need something over it. It is so worn I would no doubt be able to see your nipples, and that would distract me from my meal. Perchance give me a stomach upset.” “Good Lord!” she muttered at his continual bluntness. “There are no aprons like I see many of the Viking women wear here.”
“Luta favored all things Saxon, including their men, apparently, since she ran off with one of them. There must be a surcoat or two in here.”
He jumped off the bed in one lithe movement and went over to Luta‟s chest. Pulling items here and there, tossing some to the bed and disregarding others, he finally ended up with a sleeveless, collarless black garment, like an open vest, except it was calf-length. The edges were embroidered in a red and gold intertwined leaf design.
She managed to change with her back to him, giving him only a tiny glimpse of skin. Then she turned and put her hands on her hips. “Does this meet with your satisfaction, your high-handedness?”
He studied her, ignoring her sarcasm. “Not quite.” Digging deeper in the chest, he pulled out a gold linked belt and a braided brass hair ornament called a fillet or diadem, used to hold a woman‟s hair off her face with the center medallion smack-dab in the middle of her forehead.
Not of much use to her with her short hair, and she would probably have a circle imprint on her forehead for days. He fixed the belt around her waist so that it hung low about her hips. She kept telling him she could do it herself, but he slapped her hands away and insisted, “Let me.”
He was probably aware of the oddly sensual sensations he was generating in her by “dressing”
her.
“Have you ever had long hair?” he asked.
“Sure. When I was a teenager, it hung down to my butt.”
“I would like to see that.”
“What? My long hair or my butt?”
“What do you think?” Grinning, he put the fillet on her head then and used his fingers to feather her short hair around the band. “Perfect,” he declared, standing back to survey his creation. “Now you look like a Viking princess.”
“With my short hair?”
“Even with your short hair. Yea, you will do.”
“For what?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.
But his attention had already wandered. “You cannot wear those boots with a gown.”
“No one will notice.”
He was already deep in the chest again, pulling out several soft cloth shoes. “Here,” he said, handing her a pair of what looked like ballet slippers.
“I would really prefer my boots.”
“I would really prefer you take them off.”
Okay, the problem was, how to take off her boots without his seeing her hidden knife?
“Stubborn damn Viking,” she muttered and went to sit on the opposite side of the bed, with her back to him. Without raising her gown, she toed off one boot. No problem. But when she toed off the other one, the boot slipped, and the knife flew, hitting the side of the washstand with a clunk.
Immediately, Steven was at her side, shaking his head at her. “Tsk-tsk-tsk! Just when I was starting to trust you!”
She refused to apologize. “Did you really expect me to walk around without defending myself? Women are entitled to self-defense, too.”
“In all honesty, I do not know of one other woman who wears a knife in her shoe.” “Maybe I‟m smarter than the average woman. Maybe I‟ve been trained to take the offense, instead of the defense. Maybe women in your time have been docile for too long.”
“May-be you talk too much.” He grabbed her hand, gave her a quick, sizzling kiss, and tugged her toward the door, which he proceeded to open.
There they immediately ran into two old, cackling women with wild . . . really wild . . . gray hair, Rita‟s first experience with actual cackling. They could have been anywhere from seventy to a hundred, give or take.
Steven groaned and linked his fingers with hers, attempting to move around the old crones, to no avail. They were circling them, bony hands raised high, muttering strange, guttural sounds.
“Who
are they?” she whispered to Steven.
“Kraka and Grima, the witch sisters.”
Ah, Sigge’s aunts.
“Tulla, tulla, aba fri! Issa, issa, frasa beil!” the one witch chanted after throwing some smooth stones at Rita and Steven‟s feet. The stones had sticklike scratchings on them that Rita recognized as runic symbols.
The other witch tossed a handful of white stuff over her and Steven, which she soon learned by a flick of her tongue was salt, and pronounced, “Witches‟ brew, flames on high, magic gruel. Scales of a dragon, bat tongues, butterfly wings. Three man-hairs, rose petal touched with women‟s dew. Goddess grant she be the one to lighten the Norseman‟s darksome life.”
“I think she means you,” Steven pointed out. At her frown of confusion, he explained, “You are being sent by the witch goddesses to lighten up this dark Norseman, meaning me. I cannot wait to see how you will do that.” He waggled his eyebrows at her.
Noticing that several housecarls were rushing toward them, the witches tugged up the hems of their black gowns and proceeded to rush away, one of them addressing Rita, “Come to the circle of rowen trees next full moon. Dance naked with us to fulfill the prophecy.”
And just like that, they were gone.
One of the three guardsmen rushing by told Steven, “Sorry, m‟lord, we tried to keep them out of the castle, but they slipped by.”
Steven nodded and then smiled at Rita. “I give you my permission to dance naked in the moonlight, as long as I get to watch.”
“This is the weirdest experience I‟ve ever had. First, time travel, now witches.”
“Just ignore the witches. I will protect you.”
Just then, the guardsman who had come forward said, “Did ye know, m‟lord, that most men spend their lives sowing wild oats, but even more time praying for a crop failure? Ha-ha-ha!”
Rita smiled at the guardsman‟s ill-timed joke, but Steven just glared. How unkind of him!
The guardsman scuttled off. If he had a tail, it would have been tucked between his legs.
“That wasn‟t nice. You could have at least smiled at his joke.”
“And encourage more of the same? I do not think so. My people have taken to telling jokes to lift my dark mood.”
“I don‟t understand all these references, not just from the joking guard, but those two dingbat witches. What do they mean about the darkness here at Norstead, and what I have to do with some kind of light?”
“Well, I have been in a bit of a black mood.”
“For how long?”
“Oh, a little while.” “How long?”
“Two years. And five years afore that as I watched my brother nigh drown in his sorrows.”
“Are you crazy? That‟s not a mood, that‟s depression.”
“That is what I said. My brother Thorfinn and I were very close, and when he died . . . or left . . . or whatever happened to him . . . well, I have been unable to climb out from under this weight of sadness.”
“A depressed Viking,” she said. “Who would have thought it? And it‟s not blackness. It‟s called the blues.”
“Huh? Do you make mock of me?”
“Blues is another name for depression.”
“So, I have the blues?” He grinned. “Sounds better than depression, which is rather pitiful for a Viking.”
“Hey, even Vikings get the blues, honey.”
How much trouble could one woman be? . . .
Steven was intrigued. Nay, more than intrigued. He was smitten.
Did not matter that the woman had arrived on their shores looking like a mottled fish. Did not matter that she had hair shorter than most boylings. Did not matter that she had an attitude and flapping tongue that defied good sense. Did not matter that she was strange beyond his wide experience with her acrobatic and military skills, not to mention her talk of time travel.
Sitting beside him at the high table, her blue eyes darted here and there, taking in all the sights, which she claimed were new to her. Not just the layout of his vast hall with its central hearth fires, or the attire and demeanor of his people, or the fare placed afore them on the table . . . wild boar in persimmon sauce; brined ham hocks in heavy cream; hákarl, or cured shark; baked trout stuffed with mushrooms and onions; honey roasted duck stuffed with oysters; skyr, a cured milk dish similar to cottage cheese, served with bilberries, neeps, carrots, peas, beets, horseradish, and wild celery; manchet bread; hard and soft cheeses; fresh fruits; oatcakes; horns and mugs of ale, mead, and cold buttermilk.
Her hair fillet was tilted on her head, giving her a rather winsome look, instead of making her appear unkempt. He had seen far more beautiful women in face and form. Why she made him breathless and gladsome was beyond his ken.
“Tell me more about my brother,” he urged, as two lutists moved to the front to play their music. Some of the men had already moved into small groups to dice or play the Viking board game
hnefatafl
, similar to the Persian chess, except that one player had a red army with twelve warriors and a king, while the other player had twenty-four warriors but no king. The goal was for the white player to capture the red king. Still others had wandered off with their ladies or wenches to do what lovers did. It was a peaceful scene.
She glanced down at the table where he had linked the fingers of one hand with the fingers of one of hers, his thumb caressing her wrist.