Sandra Hill (17 page)

With a cluck of reproval, he asked, “Why?”

She raised her chin, refusing to open those wounds again. To her surprise and dismay, though, she blurted out, “Because you don’t want me.”
I am pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. Next I’ll be begging him to make love to me
.

“I love you, Merry-Death. How can you think I don’t want you? Is this a language problem we are having? Shall I fetch the talisman belt?” While speaking, he’d distractedly opened the front of her robe and taken her left breast in a wide, callused palm.

And it felt so-o-o good. Was she acquiring a taste for calluses now?
Oh, lordy, yes!
Were her tastes becoming as plebian as her parents said?
Yep!
Oh, geez, did she say…no, did she think, “yep?”
Yep
. Would she be ogling blue-collar workers at construction sites, like that guy in the diet Coke commercials?
Probably, if they have long hair and washboard stomachs and tushes that…

While her mind was regressing, Rolf watched her
and absentmindedly drew wide, abrasive circles over her breast. Every bone in her body began to melt, one calcium particle at a time. She wanted to slap his hand away, but she forgot how.

“Do you do everything you darn-well-Viking-please, without asking permission?” she asked in a suffocated whisper.

“Yea.”

She shuddered under his ongoing caresses.

“Let me,” he implored thickly. “Let me give you pleasure. After that, we can talk with a modicum of rationality about…so many things important to us.”

Was he saying she was irrational? “Aaaarrgh!” she shrieked and gave him a harsh shove against the chest. Caught off guard, he fell off the sofa and onto the floor.

Startled, Geirolf peered up at the wench with shock. He ever did love a good battle and his Merry-Death was giving him a fair chase. She’d knocked him right on his ass. With a grin, he congratulated her. “Well done, sweetling.” Then he launched himself at her afore she could scramble away. This time, he tossed her over his shoulder and carried her into the scullery where he flicked on the light lever, and then dropped her into a chair. “Sit,” he ordered, “and do not move.”

He went back to the great room where he found a pair of sweating
braies
. A man could scarce carry on a serious discussion when naked and lustful. On second thought, he scrounged through the small chest Merry-Death had given him for his belongings till he found a pair of the tight jaw-key undergarments men wore in this land. He needed something to bind his raging manroot if he wanted to speak in more than a drooling drivel to Merry-Death.

Returning, he sat in a chair on the opposite side of the table. Her robe was tucked neatly around her body now, but if she thought she presented a prim and proper picture, she was sorely mistaken. Her drying hair wisped out in wanton disarray. Her cheeks were flushed with anger and brush burns from his nighttime whisker stubble. Her eyes glittered with glorious fury.

“I love you,” he said, taking her hands across the table.

Her shoulders slumped. She tried to pull out of his grasp, but he laced their fingers and held firm. She averted her face.

“Look at me, dearling.” When she did, reluctantly, he asked, “What is amiss? Does my love displease you?”

“You don’t love me, and saying you do out of pity…that’s what displeases me.”

“I have ne’er told a woman I loved her afore…. Oh, do not look so skeptical. I have not. Therefore, if I fumble with my words, you must make allowance. ’Tis new territory for me.”

“Rolf, I’m thirty-five years old. I’m not a raving beauty. When I walk down the street, men seldom give me more than a passing glance. I’m not a scintillating conversationalist. My sense of humor is about nil. I devote my life to study in boring, cryptlike libraries. I can’t have children. So, when a man like you says he’s fallen in love with me…Well, pardon me, but I’m not buying it.”

He shook his head sadly at her self-assessment. Pulling their laced fingers up to his face, he kissed the knuckles of one of her hands, then the other. Her indrawn breath, quickly suppressed, ricocheted down her throat and lungs and out to her extremities. He knew
that was so because he felt it in the rapid beat of her pulse where their wrists were joined. With great effort, he placed their hands safely back on the table where he wouldn’t be tempted to kiss more than knuckles.

Searching for the right words, he began tentatively, “I have met more beauteous women, ’tis true, and have enjoyed tumbling a few of them. Nay, I will admit, more than a few.”

Her lips twitched to hold back mirth at his stumbling admission. ’Twas a good sign, this half-smile.

“But my heart ne’er thundered like Thor’s mighty hammer when one of them walked into a chamber,” he continued. “The blood did not drain from my head, leaving me dizzy and gasping for breath at a mere smile from one of them. I did not tingle when one of them brushed my skin in passing.”

“Tingle? You?” She hooted with disbelief.

“Yea, you may smirk if you choose, but I have taken to tingling. My brothers would make great sport of teasing me if they knew of the malady, I can tell you. And the skalds would write a saga poking jest at me. ‘Geirolf the Tingling Shipbuilder,’ or some such.”

She did smile then, a full-blown smile that transformed her face and touched his heart. He closed his eyes and counted to ten. “
Einn, tveir, þrír, fjórir, fimm, sex, sjo, átta, níu, tíu
.” Upon regaining his composure, he went on. “As to your not having a sense of humor…I cannot credit that. You are funny to me. In fact, I cannot recall having smiled or laughed so much in all my born days as I have this past sennight with you.”

She squared her chin, unconvinced. The stubborn wench!

“You point out your less-than-exciting profession.
Well, I know naught about that. When Jillian called you boring earlier—”

“My sister called me what?” Merry-Death squealed and tried once again to escape from his renewed clasp, no doubt to go attack her sleeping sister.

Her ferocity amused him mightily. “What I started to say was that, when Jillian called you boring, I told her she was blind.”

“You did?”

“I did.”

Her open face revealed the inner struggle her mind was waging with her heart. Unfortunately, he must hurt her before all was reconciled betwixt them. “Lastly, you are barren.”

Meredith recoiled under his harsh statement.

“You told me of your infertility afore. Do not ever mention the subject again. ’Tis of no importance.”

She sighed. “Rolf, I don’t understand any of this.”

“Do you believe that I love you?”

He held her gaze till she answered in a whisper, “Yes.”

Releasing a sigh of relief, he leaned across the table and kissed her lips, briefly. Then he sat straight in his chair, all businesslike. “So, we have settled one issue. Now, the next important hurdle. Who am I? Tell me, Merry-Death, who is this man who sits across from you, professing his love?”

“I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

“See. That is one of the biggest obstacles we have to overcome before taking any further steps, including making love. And we will be making love, sweetling. Do not doubt that.”

“Are you saying that you didn’t want to make love with me upstairs because I don’t know who you are?”

“Exactly! Well, partly.”

“Then tell me. Who are you?”

“Merry-Death, I do not lie. You must concede. When I tell you that I come from the past, you must accept it as truth.”

“But it’s impossible,” she cried.

“’Twas hard for me to credit, too. But there it is. Until you trust me fully, we cannot…proceed.”

“But—”

“I could spend days telling you of my land and my time. I could describe, in detail, the Norse and Saxon courts and all their peoples. Their dress. Their language. The politics and the everyday living. I could fill in the gaps in your history books, and correct the mistakes they contain. Eventually, you would believe that I am Geirolf Ericsson, born in the year of our Lord nine-hundred-and-sixty-two on a Norwegian fjord to a Norse jarl and a Saxon lady. But we do not have days to waste, and I much prefer that you trust me on my word alone.” After his long-winded declaration, he waited for his words to sink in to Merry-Death’s obviously troubled mind. Finally, he insisted on a reply. “Who am I, Merry-Death?”

“Oh, no!” she whimpered. There were tears in her eyes as a dawning acceptance unfurled. Then, with a firm voice, she said, “You are Geirolf Ericsson, a tenth-century time traveler.”

He nodded, too overcome to speak. Her trust meant more to him than he’d realized.

“I’m not sure why I believe you, Rolf. Or when I accepted that you were telling the truth. Maybe just now. All I know is there have been too many little-known historical details you’ve volunteered that have
turned out to be true. But, in the end, it comes down to intuition. Going with the heart.”

“Thank you,” he said softly.

She pulled their clasped hands across the table and reciprocated his earlier gesture, kissing each individual knuckle with slow, painstaking care. The whole time, her eyes clung to his with some mysterious message. He felt the tingle everywhere, even in his ears where he could swear tiny bells were ringing. When she was done, she set their hands back on the table.

“You haven’t asked me the most important question of all,” she informed him. “If you think those other things were impediments to overcome, you must know there’s an even bigger one ahead.”

He cocked his head. There were so many questions, but he wasn’t sure which she referred to. Except…

Oh, dear Lord, how could he have failed to consider
that?
Insecurity was new to him and unwelcome. He did not favor the unsettling queasiness in his stomach at the possibility of rejection.
Oh, please
, he prayed to all the gods, Christian and Norse alike,
do not let me have come so far, only to fail
.

Her face was blank now, revealing nothing. Would she keep him in suspense forever? “Well?” he rasped out.

“Well what?” Oh, she was a cruel wench, torturing him with knowing delight.

“Do…do you love me, Merry-Death?” His voice was so raw and low, he was not sure she heard him.

But she did.

“With all my heart, Viking. With all my heart.”

Meredith reeled under the euphoria of her own words.

I love him. I can’t say why. I don’t know when it happened. But I do. I love him
.

“I love you,” she whispered in wonder.

He stood and came around the table to take her into his arms. His fingertips gently cupped her face as he adored her with his eyes. “I love you, too, heartling.” The kiss he pressed lightly on her lips was soft and sweet and full of promise. She could tell he restrained himself from deepening the kiss or holding her more intimately. Why? Her mind swirled in confusion under his intense scrutiny.

But then she noticed the tears that filled his eyes. He swiped at them with a man’s embarrassment. “I ne’er expected love to feel like this. You make me tremble with so many new feelings. I want to scream my joy
to Valhalla. And I want to weep with the exquisite pain.”

“Oh, Rolf.” There were no words adequate to express the depth of her emotion. “Let’s…let’s go somewhere private where I can show you how much I love you. I want…I need to make love with you, sweetheart.” She tried to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him close.

He groaned and, with a quick kiss, took her by the forearms and set her at arm’s length.

“What?”
Oh, geez, is he going to reject me again? I don’t think I can take much more of this ping-ponging back and forth. Want you, want you not
.

“Wipe away that wounded look, Merry-Death. Do not for one moment doubt my desire to mate with you.”

“But?” Meredith tried to sound angry but her voice came out wobbly with insecurity.

Rolf groaned again, and his jaw worked with a silent effort for control. “Come,” he said, leading her into the living room where he adjusted the sheets on the sofa. “Lie down.”

When she did, expecting him to join her, he instead tucked her in tightly up to the neck, arms bound at her sides. Alone. He was putting her to bed
alone
. Then he knelt on the floor beside her.

“Sweetling, please, I beg you, help me do this right.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Ah, but you did. Your eyes reproach me for being a rascal, which I am not. I am trying my best to follow the noble path.” He put up a halting hand when she started to protest. “Two days ago—nay, two hours ago—if you’d suggested we have a…what did you
call it?…a fling, I would have been on you faster than lightning. And we would have enjoyed each other’s bodies. Immensely.”

“Then what’s the problem?” She moaned, trying to wriggle her arms out of her sheet strait-jacket to reach for him.

“Shhh. Behave yourself, wench.” He feathered a fleeting kiss across her lips and chuckled. “Did you feel the tingle?”

“I’m looking for a hell of a lot more than a tingle.”

“Tsk-tsk,” he teased. “A coarse tongue is uncomely in a Viking woman.”

She told him in one explicit expletive what he could do with his Viking women.

“Surely you know that I have no desire to do
that
with any woman but you at the moment. Patience, my love,” he cautioned with a smile, “though I must admit that your eagerness flatters my ego. No, no, no, do not turn willful on me now. And sticking out your tongue is another thing that is ill-favored in a Viking woman. Truly, you must learn to curb your waspish impulses.”

“Let…me…up…now,” she demanded.

“Nay. Lie still till I explain.”

“You are driving me crazy. Are we or are we not going to make love?”

“You must be crazed if you would ask that. Of course, we will make love. But not tonight.”

He had to subdue her then, bearing down on her shoulders. Otherwise, she would have slapped him silly. The man was turning her into a basket case.

Finally, she calmed down, and Rolf began again, “When we exchanged vows of love, it changed everything. Before, our coupling would have been a mere sating of lust. A form of ‘Love with a Hot Viking,’ as
you once mentioned. Now, it will be much more. Lust, to be sure. ‘Love with a Hot Viking,’ to be absolutely sure. But, in addition to that, methinks love merits a different, more tender handling.”

Meredith clamped her lips together, resisting the urge to ask Rolf to elaborate on his insane logic. But her eyes threw daggers at the infuriating man.

“If we were in my land, my father would go to your father and ask for your hand in marriage.”

She giggled at that ridiculous notion. A Viking jarl entering her father’s staid library? No doubt replete with furred mantle and battle axe. Then she inhaled sharply. Marriage? She hadn’t expected that. But she liked it. A lot.

“There is naught of amusement in formal wedding negotiations, Merry-Death. A legal wife is distinguished from a concubine by the bride price her husband’s family pays for her.”

Meredith didn’t like the sound of “price.” It made her feel like chattel. “And if my father refused?”

“I would have you anyway.” He grinned at her with heart-stopping arrogance.

“Are you…are you asking me to marry you?”

“Yea…nay. Damn, I am bungling this badly because I care too much.”

Bungling? This guy’s bungling could charm the socks off a nun
.

He took a deep breath before resuming. “If we were in my homeland, I would get down on my knees—” he looked pointedly at his kneeling position—“and pledge you my troth…man to woman. The Viking way. ’Tis as valid in the eyes of the gods as any Christian marriage.”

“I want to touch you so badly.” She whimpered under the sweet caress of his words.

He denied her plea, soothing her with a butterfly stroke of his fingertips across her lips. “But that wouldn’t satisfy my family, especially my mother. Banns would be called up and down the fjords throughout Norway, and a grand wedding feast would be planned. Each week, I would send a new and more wondrous present to entice you to my bed—fine jewelry from Byzantium, sable furs from the North Seas, fine silks, a newly foaled Saracen colt, fragrant oils from the east. When the fated day arrived, we would wed in the loud and boisterous way of Norsemen throughout time, and then say our vows afore the priest who serves my mother’s chapel. The celebration would last two sennights.”

She smiled at the splendid picture he painted.

“But we are not in my time, or my land, and ne’er will be.” He sighed. “Leastways, not together.”

Ripples of panic drew her alert.

“So, I must improvise.”

“This is the nineties, Rolf. Couples today rarely wait till marriage to consummate a relationship, especially when engaged, or committed.”

“Ah, but I am not a man of the nineties.”

Geez, this is a new twist. A man insisting on celibacy before marriage. But I kind of like it. Yes, I do. He’d better not make me wait too long, though
. “We could be married by a priest, or a justice of the peace, here in Maine.”

“Nay, I am the man. I must provide. We’ll have a wedding, to be sure, but it will be that of a Norse man and woman. A personal ceremony—man to woman—not a religious one. A ritual of the heart.”

A ritual of the heart? What a wonderful expression! God, this man is really smooth. Or he speaks from deep emotion, which is a soul-staggering prospect
. She blinked back tears. “When?”

“Two, three days at most.”

She moaned.

He chuckled. “Anticipation is not a bad thing, sweetling.”

“Easy for you to say,” she snapped.

“Nay, not easy at all,” he said somberly. Then he released a breathy sigh of resolution. “But I must make preparations first. The wedding garments for us both. My bride gift. The ritual bed furs. The marriage longhouse.”

“I don’t need all those things, Rolf. And if you go out and kill some animal to give me a fur, I swear I’ll kill you.” But then she caught the last of his statements. “Oh, no, no, no. I told you before. No longhouses built on my property.”

He smiled and patted her arm. “We shall see. Mayhap just a small one. A few discarded planks from your ship, some wattle and daub, a thatch or turf roof, a center hearth, a bed—most important, a bed. A sweat-house would be nice, too…just a tiny one, a hut, really. I don’t want to anticipate
too
much.”

“You…you…you…” she sputtered.

“Overwhelmed, are you, dearling?”

“I’ll show you overwhelmed,” she raged.

“You will? Ah, I can scarce wait. Will it be a sexual trick?”

“Let me loose,” she demanded.

He tightened her linens, instead. “Is it wise to turn your face so red, my love? I don’t want you to swoon with the vapors afore we settle our other obstacles.”

She went still with suspicion. “What other obstacles?”

“The divorce.”

“I beg your pardon. You asked me to marry you only a few moments ago. Now, you’re planning the divorce. Oh, no! You’re not talking about a prenuptial agreement, are you?”

“Prenuptial what? Oh, that. Nay. I meant that I will be leaving your land in a few short weeks, and—”

“You intend to leave? But I thought—”

“You thought I would stay now that we have acknowledged our love?” he finished softly.

She nodded.

“It cannot be. My mission remains the same. I have to return the relic as I promised my father. I’ve been researching tenth-century Norway in your library and on the Internet. There
are
references to a famine late in the tenth century.”

“That may well be, but I keep telling you, I don’t think you can change history.”

“Mayhap not, but what of changes
within
history?”

She waited for him to explain.

“Since the books give no date when the famine ended, perchance my intervention will cut it short by months or years. And there is another concern.” He worried his bottom lip with his upper teeth as he contemplated something that clearly alarmed him. “I discovered in one of your history tomes that Aethelred, the slimy bastard, intends to slay all Norsemen in Britain five years hence, in 1002, including the Viking settlers and hired soldiers in his own service. Amongst those to fall under his blade will be the sister and the brother-by-marriage of King Svein of Denmark. Duty
compels me to give my fellow Vikings fair warning of Aethelred’s evil designs.”

“Now, that
is
changing history. And you must know, if you read farther into those texts, that there will be massive retaliations against Aethelred in subsequent years. And ultimately, around 1017, a young Viking knight, Cnut, will conquer all of Britain. England will be under Viking rule for twenty-five years after that. So, in a sense, what goes around, comes around.”

“I am unfamiliar with this go around—come around rule. I just know I must return to my homeland, to complete the circle.”

“Then I’ll go with you,” she decided suddenly.

His expression hardened. “It cannot be.”

“You made the offer to me before,” she pointed out.

“Yea, but that was afore I loved you. I’m not even sure that the Demon Moon time hole will work for me. And I would never, ever risk your life in the effort to perform my mission. Besides, you’ll have your own grandsire’s quest to carry through when I’m gone. I can build your longship, but I’ll not be here for the sailing.”

“So, what does all this have to do with a divorce?”

He swallowed with some difficulty, and then proceeded, “When I am gone, I do not want you to grieve…leastways, not overlong. In time, you’ll want to wed again.” He raised a palm to stop her objections. “That’s why we’ll exchange only the Norse vows. No Papist rite, which is more binding. Divorce is simple in my society. A mere declaration of intent afore witnesses and a stating of the grounds for complaint.”

“Like?” she said through gritted teeth. Lord, he was a thick-headed ass if he thought she’d do any such thing.

“Any number of just causes. Impotence, the woman wearing men’s
braies
, the man donning feminine apparel, miserliness—”

“I’ll bet a wife’s being barren is one of those just causes.”

“I thought I told you not to mention that subject again. By the by, did I neglect to tell you, a willful wife is one of the biggest reasons for divorce?”

“How about a husband who refuses to listen to his wife?”

“That, too,” he said with a grin.

“So, Mr. I’ve-Got-It-All-Planned, you intend to marry me, bebop off through time to your home, divorce me, then—”

“Oh, nay, I ne’er said I’d be divorcing you, sweetling. I have no intent of doing that. I’ll not wed again, that I vow. I but wish for your freedom.”

This was the most ridiculous conversation. “Will…will you come back?”

“I could try, but, nay, my guess is ’twould be impossible.”

“And how about your mistress, that sweet Alyce from Hedeby tart?”

He shrugged. “I cannot promise celibacy for life. Nor would I expect it of you.”

Meredith felt as if she’d been dealt a sucker punch to the stomach. “You are so incredible. You tell me you love me in one instant and that you’re leaving me in the next. Well, I won’t stand for it.”

“You have no choice, dearling.”

“Oh, I have a choice all right. I may not be able to stop loving you, but I can refuse to make love with you. And I sure as heck am not going to marry a guy who intends to desert me a few weeks later.”

“They can be the best weeks of both our lives,” he pleaded.

She surged upward with anger and desolation. When he tried to push her back down this time, she bit the heel of his hand.

“Ouch!” he griped, but didn’t give way, even when she drew blood.

She sank back down and closed her eyes. She couldn’t bear to see even that tiny wound on his hand and know that she’d caused him pain, however small. “I won’t marry you,” she repeated in a dull monotone, with her eyes still closed.

“Yea, you will.”

“And I won’t make love with you now.” Making love with Rolf, and then giving him up would hurt more than never having him at all. “And none of your sweet talking will move me, either.”

He laughed with supreme self-confidence. “’Tis said that a Norseman, when his sap runs high, could move the earth.”

“Go away, Rolf. I want to go to sleep now.” She needed time alone to ponder all that had happened tonight and to brace herself for the days ahead. Days when she would have to fight her feelings for Rolf. Then those days when he would no longer be here.