Sandra Hill (18 page)

“I’ll stay with you till you fall asleep.” He got up off his knees and nudged her hips over so he could sit on the edge of the sofa. She scrunched her eyes tighter. “Mayhap I could tell you a bedtime saga. Nay, I know; I’ll regale you with little hints of the ways in which Viking men make love to their brides.”

Oh, no!

“You do know about the famous Viking S-spot, of course.”

A snicker was her only reply.

“You doubt my word? Ah, you will pay for that, wench, in good time. But, truly, Norsemen have long been known for their prowess in the bedsport, and—”

She snickered again, continuing to keep her eyes closed. She wouldn’t give him the benefit of seeing the hurt in her eyes.

He tapped her chin in reprimand. “Part of our prowess is due to our fit bodies, no doubt—”

“No doubt.”

“Sarcasm ill-suits you, my love,” he remarked, “but there are some who attribute our prowess to the…ah, secrets.”

Secrets? What secrets?
When he didn’t carry on, she cracked one eye only a teensy bit, but he noticed. It was the cue he’d been waiting for. The rat!

Chuckling, he clarified his outrageous assertion with great gusto. “Being adventurers, we Norsemen travel far and wide—”

“And along the way, rape and pillage every female in sight.”

“This raping and pillaging accusation has become tiresome. What I was about to say is that, in our vast travels, we have learned many secrets of lovemaking. Secrets we pass down in our families. Secrets that draw women to our beds like honeybees.”

“Don’t think for one minute I’m going to hop in the sack with you because of some sexual secrets. Buzz off and find another place to scatter your pollen, you oversexed…insect. This bee isn’t interested.”

“Ha-ha-ha! I am laughing at your jest. See, Merry-Death, I told you that you have a sense of humor.”

“Well, I’m not laughing now, and this is no joke.
You either stay in Maine, or I go home with you. And that’s that.”

“Nay.”

“Yes.”

“
Nie þýðir nei
,” he said sternly. “No means no, and that’s final.”

“Not in my vocabulary.”

He inhaled and exhaled several times with exaggerated loudness. “Mayhap I should share one of the secrets with you to change your mind. Just one, do not beg for more. But you must promise not to reveal it to any other.”

She rolled her eyes at his persistence.

To her horror and amazement, he went into graphic detail about some erotic foreplay that involved tongues and ropes and immense size and remarkable out-of-this-world staying power.

“You lie,” she accused. No one, man or woman, could do what he’d just described.

He arched a brow with displeasure. “Did I not tell you that I never lie? If you cannot credit that secret, mayhap you will be more believing of the ‘Hot Oil—Cold Sword’ secret. That one is for more accomplished warriors in the bedsport.” He grinned at her. “I have done it many a time.”

She clucked at his overinflated ego. Really, if she weren’t so angry, she’d have to admire his adorable charm. “Go away, Rolf. I will
not
marry you.” She rolled over, facing the back of the sofa.

“Have you e’er made love in bed furs, Merry-Death?” he asked in a silky rasp. “There is no better sensation in the world for a woman, I am told, than the caress of the furs at her back, and the seductive torment
of her lover’s furred skin at her front. I would give you that experience.”

A thrum of excitement whisked through her.

“And then, of course, we shipbuilders have particular talents.”

“Oh, Lord!”

“It comes from working with our hands. We love to touch…and touch…and touch. The skin on our fingertips has become so sensitive. Have you e’er made love with a man who bears the calluses of his trade, Merry-Death? I would warrant you have not.” He paused, the sound of his breathing heavy in the air. “It is a pleasure beyond all others, this I promise you,” he ended on a whisper.

She turned back, facing him. “Don’t do this to me, Rolf.”

“I love you, Merry-Death,” he said fervently, leaning forward to lay his warm lips against hers. “I cannot promise you a perfect manifestation of this love. I can guarantee no future for us. But this I do swear; I will do the best I can to make you happy in the days we have. No man could do more.”

With that, he stood and walked away from her. At the patio door, he stopped. Over his shoulder, he repeated, “I love you, Merry-Death.”

“And I love you, Rolf,” she choked out. But he was already gone. And Meredith got a foretaste of the slow death she was going to suffer when he abandoned her for good.

A whirling dervish hit Maine the next day, and its name was Geirolf Ericsson. Now that he had a mission, he worked with a feverish intensity. And his mission,
in this case, wasn’t the return of the relic. The mission was—
Heaven help me
—her.

How would she ever be able to resist him?

When she came home from the college at six o’clock, Rolf and Mike were glaringly absent. But the progress made on the project in just that day of Rolf being back on the job was phenomenal. Although Rolf’s ship appeared much the same as the day before, the college longship—which they’d christened
Fierce Eagle
after the school mascot and to complement Rolf’s
Fierce Destiny
—had a skeleton framework standing proud on the stocks, highlighted by an impressive fifty-foot keel. Even the stem and stern had been hand-riveted on. Rolf had been right. Already this ship looked much sturdier and more finely crafted than Gramps’s had.

She’d left for work at seven, having a pile of project paperwork to tie up and lessons to prepare for classes, which resumed on Monday. Before her departure, she’d studiously avoided even a glimpse of the side yard where she could hear Rolf working. Coward that she was, she’d feared facing him after their monumental disclosures of love the night before, followed by his infuriating opposition to a future for the two of them. But she wouldn’t be able to dodge him forever.

She began to walk around the site. There were more of the students than ever before—at least three dozen. Apparently, as word of the project spread, more young people volunteered their time. Meredith had received three phone calls this morning at her office from area newspapers wanting to do feature stories on the Trondheim Venture. That should garner even more support.

To her dismay, Meredith had also found a message on her answering machine from the producer of
Home
Improvement
, which she’d yet to return. And, even more incredible, Mike had a message from Sharon Stone. “Hey, Mike. Just calling between scenes to chat. Later, babe. Sharon.”

Strolling farther, she glanced at a crude worktable set up at the side of the house, above which several papers had been tacked on a makeshift bulletin board. Apparently students had been organized into work groups, following detailed schedules for their duties that Rolf must have printed off from her computer. Cutting of planks. Wood shaving and sanding. Cooking. Weaving of wool and animal hair for caulking. Making wood nails. Trough for water soaking of timbers. Drying of skins.

Huh? What skins? What drying?

One sheet listed SCA Activities. Wait a minute here. When did the Society for Creative Anachronisms get involved in this project? When she’d asked for their help last month, they’d been uninterested. To her amazement, the schedule listed hands-on workshops, lectures, exhibits and whatnot on such things as Saga Telling: A Skaldic Tradition; Tenth-Century Costume; Quern-Made Bread; Soapstone Crafts; Medieval Fabrics; Viking Handheld Looms; Pennanular Brooches: A Norse Trademark; The Pattern-Welded Sword; Dragon-ships and Sea Wolves. And they were all to be held on her property over the next few months.

There was a sealed envelope on the table with her name, “Merry-Death,” written in almost childlike pencil handwriting. With her heart thudding, Meredith opened it to find a carefully folded sheet of notepaper with only one sentence on it. “I love you.” There was also an erasure at the bottom that she was able to decipher—one that Rolf had wisely decided was inappro
priate in this circumstance. “Did you buy more mead?”

Tears filled her eyes.
Oh, Rolf, you are going to be a very formidable foe in this battle of wills
.

She forced herself to stop daydreaming and move around the clearing. “Hi, Jerry, Pete, Frank,” she called out. Having been in Maine the past three months, she knew many of the students by name.

“How’s it goin’, Dr. Foster?” they replied, setting down their axes and wiping their sweaty foreheads with bare forearms. Most of them were shirtless, a fact not missed by a number of female students, whose eyes followed their every movement with appreciation.

She waved them back to work and watched for a few moments as they engaged in the ancient method of clinker shipbuilding. The boys, all athletically fit, were energetically splitting logs along the radii to create wedge-shaped planks—as many as sixteen from one log—much like the slices from a round cake of enormous height. These “clove boards” would be overlapped to form the sides of the longship.

“You’re home, Aunt Mer,” Thea said cheerily as she ambled up to her, a toddler on one hip. The baby wore denim coveralls and the cutest little black-and-white checkered athletic shoes. At Meredith’s uplifted brows, Thea explained, “This is Teddy. He belongs to one of the SCA ladies.” She pointed to the other side of the clearing, where several women were stirring a huge caldron over an open fire.

Holy cow! That kettle would hold enough stew to feed an army, which it appeared she was accumulating here. “Dinner?” she asked.

“Nah. Soap,” Thea said. Her niece was wearing a long gown in the Viking style, the white chemise cov
ered with the open-sided apron. Her dark hair was neatly plaited into two braids, and not a speck of makeup marred her perfect complexion. All this was a great backdrop to her nose ring.

Soap?
she mouthed silently. What did soap have to do with the building of a Viking ship? But whoever was responsible for this transformation in Thea deserved a huge hug.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, she suspected who the big lug was, and no way was she going to risk giving that lug a hug, big or otherwise. Not unless he agreed to stay here in the present or take her with him to the past.

“Would you mind holding Teddy for a while, Aunt Mer? He weighs a ton. And I hafta go check on the boar.”

Gladly, Meredith took the child into her arms. He gazed up at her, blue eyes wide with curiosity, thumb stuck in his adorable mouth. Meredith closed her eyes. Babies always made her feel this way. Teddy, meanwhile, was tugging on her hair, causing the pins to come loose. He giggled as one side of her upswept hair flopped down. “What boar?” she squeaked out finally, opening her eyes to see Thea eyeing her new hairstyle with amusement.

“It’s not really a boar. There were none in any of the butcher shops we called this morning, can you believe that? Not one single boar! But Rolf said boar tastes similar to pig. So, we’re having a pig roast tonight,” Thea announced joyfully. “It’s been cooking all day in a pit we dug filled with hot stones and wet leaves. I’m so glad I came here, Aunt Mer. I’m having such a cool time.”

Thea started to walk off, but Meredith grabbed her
shoulder with her one free hand. Teddy’s sticky fingers were working on the neckline of her cotton knit sweater, stretching it out as far as it would go. “Whoa, Thea, hold on. Where are Mike and Rolf?”

“They were here till about two o’clock. Then Rolf said he had lots of shopping to do.” Thea averted her eyes with those last words.

“What kind of shopping?” Meredith asked suspiciously.

“Gee, how would I know?” Thea exclaimed, but she still wouldn’t make eye contact.

Meredith took Thea’s chin in her hand and forced her to face her. “What’s going on, Thea?”

“Is it true that you and Rolf are gonna tie the knot?”

“No!” she said too quickly and too vehemently, her cheeks immediately heating with embarrassment.

“Rolf said I could be, like, a witness. That’s the same as a bridesmaid in a Viking wedding, you know.”

Meredith groaned.

“Did you see the roses yet?” Thea’s voice was hushed with awe.

Uh-oh!
“The…the what?”

“Roses.” Thea pointed to the back of the house. “That’s, like, the most romantic thing in the whole world. I told Phoebe and Cora in Chicago this morning, and they said it was, like, totally buggin’, even better than the time Brad Pitt…”

Thea’s chatter droned on, but Meredith had already spun on her heel and was stomping toward the back of the house, the side facing the ocean. Teddy, propped on her hip and hanging on by one hand around her neck, had managed to work his other grubby little hand inside her shirt, tugging gleefully till one bra strap broke. The neckband of her shirt had lost its elasticity
under his insistent jerking and now hung off one shoulder.

Thea scurried after her, informing her in a rush, “Oh, and I totally forgot to tell you. Mom up and took off this morning. She just left a note saying she was, like, called out of town on an emergency. She said she’d be back, but, you know Mom, maybe she will and maybe she won’t.”

Who cares what my sister does now? Who cares if this baby turns my clothes to shreds? Who cares if half of Maine is overtaking my yard? I have more important worries
.

Meredith stopped dead in her tracks when she turned the corner. Dozens, literally dozens, of rosebushes had been planted around the patio and the wood foundation of what Meredith feared was going to be a Viking longhouse. The plants were large and small, budded and full-flowered, everblooming and late blooming, long-stemmed and climbing, but already the scent of roses filled the air. And Meredith couldn’t stop the tears that overflowed her eyes.

Teddy took one look at Meredith’s tears and began to wail himself. She rubbed his back distractedly till he ceased sobbing and tucked his face sleepily into her neck.

Meredith scanned her wonderfully transformed backyard. Rolf must have suspected how much the rose fragrance meant to her when he’d entered her bathroom last night. Somehow, he’d known. Oh, God, how she loved him!