Sandra Hill (19 page)

“I will be back,” he threw out to her backside.

Hah! I’ve got news for you, Viking. You are not leaving. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not for a good long while. Not if I can help it
. “You will pay for this, Toste. You will pay.”

Esme went off, not to find the ladies of Ravenshire, but to put her own plan into motion. Two could play at this game. Toste Ivarsson was soon going to find that he’d met his match.

The lull before the you-know-what…

By the time Toste reentered the keep, Esme was out of sight and almost everybody had gone to bed, except Eirik, Tykir and Bolthor, who still sat before the low fire in the solar. They took one look at Toste, then a quick second look and burst out laughing.

“Look, look, look! Ha ha ha!” Abdul squawked.

“Someone ought to make parrot porridge out of that dumb bird,” Toste said.

“You’re not the first person to suggest that,” Eirik commented.

Bolthor immediately began spewing forth one of his poems, “This Is the Tale of Toste the Torn.”

“You have straw on your crotch,” Eirik pointed out.

“And your lips are red and puffy. Did someone punch you?” Tykir asked with false innocence.

“Methinks I detect a lump in his
braies
. So he might still be a bit tormented…and torn,” Bolthor concluded.

They were all grinning at him as they sipped their horns of mead. Vikings—and half Vikings, for that mat
ter, as Eirik was—ever did enjoy teasing each other, and Toste did not mind all that much.

Still, he soon changed the subject. “I must needs leave on the morrow at first light with Sister Margaret.”

“I will go with you,” Bolthor offered, not for the first time.

“Nay. This I will do myself.” He’d already explained the details of his plan to the men. “I will be back as soon as possible—by Christmas, I hope. No need for any of you to get up so early in the morn.”

“Dressed as a nun?” Tykir asked, a gleam in his merry eyes.

“Yea, dressed as a nun…at first. Till after I deliver Sister Margaret to the minster.”

“And you will leave Lady Esme here with us?” Eirik inquired.

Toste nodded.

He thought he heard Eirik mutter, “Lackwit!” but he probably said something like, “Holy shit!” ’Twas a favorite expression of Eirik’s he’d learned long ago from his barmy half-sister Rain, a healer, who claimed to come from the future.

“By thunder, Toste, do you know how much your brother would have enjoyed this masquerade of yours?” Tykir said.

“I do,” he said and fought back tears.

Eirik handed him a horn of mead and said, “To Vagn!” They all raised their horns then and said, “To Vagn!”

It was a fitting good-bye, Toste thought.

I can’t believe I’m doing this…

Esme worked furiously to complete her plan.

It was the most daring thing she’d ever tried. But des
peration prompted daring. That was what she told herself.

Having a few coins she’d garnered over the years, she managed to bribe a retired cook from Ravenshire to help her. Bertha, a slovenly, greedy-eyed crone of more than sixty years, still lived on the estate in her own thatched hut and helped out in the kitchens on occasion.

“Did you prepare the empty woodcutter’s hut, as I instructed?”

“Yea, I did, mistress, and I got ye a fire goin’, too. It’s colder’n hell on a Sunday outside, it is.” She scratched her armpits as she spoke, then broke wind loudly.

Esme restrained herself from wincing or clouting the foul woman. She needed her, having had no time to find a better accomplice.

“And you promise not to tell anyone about this?”

“Are ye barmy, mistress? I’d be kicked out of Ravenshire on me arse if anyone found out.”

“All right. Now go to Toste and give him my message.”

After Bertha left, Esme picked up a bundle she’d prepared, put on a cloak and made her way toward the woodcutter’s hut, which she hoped was far enough away from the keep that no one would suspect what was going on.

“Dear God,” she prayed, “please help me, and I will say a paternoster every day for the rest of my life.”

She thought she heard a voice in her head, presumably God’s, say, “You are on your own.”

So be it.

Even tricksters get tricked betimes…

“The lady Esme wishes ye to attend her out at the woodcutter’s hut.”

“Huh?” Toste said. He was alone in the solar and nodding off to sleep, having drunk many more horns of mead than he should have. “Why does she want me? And why at the woodcutter’s hut? And how in Thor’s name would I know where that is?”

The old slattern blinked at him in what was supposed to be a sexual way, he supposed. “I be thinkin’ that a virile Viking like you would know what she wants.”

“Huh?” he said again.

“Are ye comin’ or not? It’s past my bedtime, and Lars is waitin’ fer me in the furs. Expectin’ a second swive, I ’spect.”

He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting even a first swive with her. “Yea, I am coming,” he said. He was too intrigued by the possibility—remote as it was—that Esme wanted something more from him. After all, her last words to him had been, “You will pay.” But it was understandable, really. He had always had a way with women. She wanted him, pure and simple. It was the only explanation.

He couldn’t wait.

Caught in the spider’s web…

Toste made his way clumsily down the path, lit only by the torch the old crone carried before him. He shouldn’t have drunk so much mead, especially on the eve of a journey.

If he’d known the woodcutter’s hut was this far from the keep, he never would have come. Well, actually, he would have. His curiosity had always been stronger than his good sense.

When they finally arrived and he saw light seeping
through the shuttered window openings and smoke coming through a hole in the roof, he breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t one of Tykir’s jokes, as he’d begun to suspect.

The slattern opened the door for him, shoved him inside, then slammed the door after him. He could swear he heard a lock click into place, but he was probably mistaken.

The single room was dark, except for the hearth fire. When he accustomed himself to the dim light, he saw Esme, and he relaxed with a grin.

She wore a gossamer-thin bed rail. Backlit by the fire, the outline of her nude body underneath the rail could be seen as clear as day.

He stepped forward and began to reach for her.

She danced away. “Nay, Toste. Do not be so anxious. Take off your clothing first.”

Take off my clothing? Whoa! We are moving a bit fast here, aren’t we, my lady?
But Toste was not dumb enough to speak those words of caution. “I thought you were angry with me,” he said even as he began to disrobe.

“I am, but I find that other emotions inside me are even stronger.” She put a palm against her stomach as if to indicate where those stronger emotions were located.

His cock, which had already raised its head with interest at the vision of Esme in the see-through garment, now came to full attention. He’d treated her badly earlier tonight, when he’d implied that if she would do such and such he would not leave. Mayhap he would be able to make it up to her now.

When he was fully naked and she gawked at him as if a trifle frightened—as well she should be—she said something that entirely destroyed the impression of naivete.
“Toste…uhm…would you mind if I tied you to the bed?”

Not only was he shocked but his precious manpart was shocked, too. Why else would blue veins be standing out on it as if it were going to explode? “Why?” he asked her, once he pulled his gaping jaw off the floor.
That has to be the dumbest thing I have ever said
.

“Because I am rather shy…and this is my first time…and, well, I would feel better if I could explore your body first…and…oh, I suppose it was a bad idea.”

“Nay, nay, I didn’t say that. But you don’t have to restrain me to explore my body, dearling.”
I wonder if I am in a drunken stupor and imagining all this
.

“Oh, you say that now, but if I touch you in the wrong way—or the right way—you might be tempted to…never mind.”

Tempted? I am so tempted, lady, that my thickening is about to explode
. “Nay, we will do it your way,” he said quickly afore she changed her mind. He made his way toward the pallet in the corner and was disconcerted, but only for a moment, to see soft cloth strips hanging from each of the four bedposts. She had been prepared for his yielding. Ah, well, he would make her yield much more by morning. He lay down and submitted each of his limbs for her to tie, which she did with surprisingly strong and secure knots.

Then she stepped back from the pallet and said, “Do not be angry, Toste.”

“Why should I be angry?” Understanding came to him of a sudden. A trick! He had been tricked. He fought mightily against his restraints, to no avail. “Can I assume there will be no tupping tonight?”

She nodded.

“Do not do this, Esme. You have no idea what the consequences will be. I have killed men for much less.”

“You forced me to it. Agree to my plan, give your word of honor, and I will release you right now.”

He told her to do something vulgar to herself.

She winced but did not back down. When he continued to glower at her, she walked closer, tied a thin strip across his mouth to prevent his yelling, and pulled a fur pelt up over his body against the chill which was sure to fill the hut in the coming hours.

“I will check on you in the morning,” she said after covering herself with a cloak and slipping her feet into leather shoes. To her credit, her expression was filled with sadness. Then she left. Just like that. She left.

Silence filled the hut, and Toste shook his mead-fuzzy head. He could not believe what had just happened. A part of him admired Esme for her daring in pulling off such a trick. But a bigger part of him was blood-boiling angry.

Toste started to laugh behind his gag and couldn’t stop. Not even when tears rolled from his eyes. Esme had won this battle, but she’d best beware. This war was far from over.

Brother, where art thou?…

Vagn was dreaming. He knew he must be dreaming. And yet the picture behind his eyelids was so vivid.

He was lying on a bed. Correction: His brother Toste was lying on a bed. And he was spread-eagled, bare-arse naked, tied to the bed posts.

Is someone trying to make my brother wed, just as Gorm restrained me in hopes of a forced marriage to his daughter Helga?

Do people wed in the Other World?

He would be worried about Toste and whatever torture was about to be inflicted on him, except that his brother was laughing uproariously at his predicament. And Vagn saw a woman’s form in the shadows.
Was there ever a man’s predicament in which a woman wasn’t involved?
It was the same black-haired witch he’d seen before, the
one who turned his brother hard with lust.

It was all so confusing. First he’d seen images of his brother being picked at by black crows. Then he’d thought his brother kissed a nun. Now he seemed to be involved in bondage, and laughing about it. What could it mean? One thing was for sure: Valhalla, or heaven, for that matter, was not all it was cracked up to be…if that was indeed where Toste resided now.

Where art thou, brother?

How can you speak to me from the Other Side?

Is there a reason you keep calling to me?

Dost need my help?

When Vagn awakened, he found his face wet with tears.

Well
, he thought grimly as he dressed for the day ahead and noticed through the arrow slit window that it was snowing again,
much as I would like to help you, brother, I have my own torture to take care of
.

Since when do Vikings sit back twiddling their thumbs, and other body parts, whilst others take the offensive?

Since when do Viking men allow their women to rule the roost?

Since when do Viking men let their women do more outrageous things than they do?

Enough!

Today was the day Vagn Ivarsson was going to show Helga the Temptress that her tempting days were over.

Cosmo, where art thou?…

Helga was running out of ideas.

In fact, she was running, period. She’d seen the glint in Vagn’s eyes this morning when he was breaking fast
with her father’s guardsmen and it said, loud and clear:
Helga, you’d best run for your life. There is one mad Viking out for your tail
.

Even Helga recognized that the candle incident went beyond what was proper into the realm of the scandalous. Perchance even the perverted. How would she know? She’d never even heard of perversions till a few days ago.

“Greetings, Helga,” a male voice said.

She almost jumped out of her skin. She was sorting embroidery threads in the rear of her sewing solar, out of view from the door…or so she had thought. But fortunately, it wasn’t Vagn. It was Finn Finehair.

“Greetings, Finn,” she replied as he came closer. His mustache was looking particularly fine today and he’d forked his beard. What was the occasion?

Uh-oh!
He was gazing at her the way Vagn did on occasion. With hunger.

At first, he just leered down at her, twirling one side of his mustache with his fingertips. Did he have any idea how ridiculous he looked? Apparently not.

“Wouldst like to sit next to me tonight at dinner?” he asked, still leering.

“Why?”

“I have been…uh, noticing you of late.”

“Why?”

“Do not be coy, m’lady,” he said, tweaking her chin. Nobody ever tweaked her chin, but she was too surprised to react before he went on, “I have been getting your hidden messages.”

“What hidden messages?”

“Oh, the sway of your hips. The licking of your lips. Your jutting bosom.”

Helga could understand how he might have misunder
stood the signals she had been sending to Vagn.

“Besides, Vagn said—”

She dropped the threads she’d been sorting. “Vagn said
what?
”

“Well, he didn’t precisely say you were hot for me, but the way he worried over your attentions to me, ’twas obvious…
you know
.”

“Nay, I do not know. What precisely did Vagn tell you?”
I will kill the lout. I swear I will
.

“‘Stay away from Helga’—that is what he said.”

“Vagn said that to you.” An odd thrill rippled through Helga. Mayhap the lout did care for her, after all.

“Yea, and I figure that he would not admonish me so if he didn’t suspect you are attracted to me. Many women are, Helga; so do not blush. As to Vagn, he obviously envies me my fine beard, and you know what they say about men with mustaches, don’t you?”

The waggle of his eyebrows, which appeared to be plucked into a perfect arch, should have told her that further questions could be perilous. But did she listen to her intuition? Nay. “What do they say about men with mustaches?”

“They are better able to please ladies in the bedsport.” Now he was twirling the other end of his mustache.

She frowned, unable to picture how a mustache would figure in the coupling in any woman-pleasing way.

Finn must have interpreted her frown of confusion as permission to elaborate. “More friction when the man’s mouth is engaged down below.”

Helga gasped. She’d never heard anything so outrageous in all her life. Could it be true?

Finn preened as if he’d informed her of some great personal talent. Mayhap it was.

“Methinks that Vagn envies my finesse. After all, I have a fine mustache and he does not. It’s all in the bristles, you know, and the wax.”

This is more information than I want or need. How did this conversation go so far afield…like into the midden?

She decided to let him down gently and tell him she was not really interested in him. But just then, Vagn came storming in.

“I thought I told you to stay away from Helga,” he shouted at Finn, fists raised.

“Try and make me,” Finn countered, raising his fists, too.

She jumped between the two just in time.

Vagn and Finn were of the same height and build, but to her way of thinking, Vagn was a much more handsome man. Today he wore dark brown
braies
tucked into low boots and a leather tunic belted at the waist. His long blond hair was tied back off his face—a face with high cheekbones, strong jaw and cleft chin. Eyes as clear as a summer sky glared at her icily. This was a man who needed no mustache to enhance his masculinity. He was man enough without adornments.

But handsome didn’t matter in her present situation. The man was interfering in her life.

“Who are you to make decisions concerning my life, Vagn? ’Tis none of your affair whom I associate with.” She did not stop to consider the irony of the fact that she’d planned to get rid of Finn herself and was now defending her association with him.

“Hah! You made it my affair when you concocted that scandalous proposal.”

“What scandalous proposal?” Finn wanted to know.

“Yea, what scandalous proposal?” her father wanted to
know. She hadn’t realized her father had entered the solar on the heels of Vagn. Her father had probably been drawn by the raised voices…as had a dozen or so soldiers and housecarls who were gaping at the spectacle.

She would have groaned if there were time, but she had to act quickly before Vagn did something rash, like tell her father she’d asked for his seed.

“I offered to make Vagn a cloak of bright red wool to match his eyes on a
drukkinn
night, embroidered along the edges with pink tongues. He considered the garment a scandal. Ha ha ha!”

Tongues?
Vagn mouthed at her, then gave her a cold look, obviously trying to decide whether to embarrass her in front of one and all by telling the truth. “Notice that I am not amused, m’lady,” he said finally. Fortunately, though, his anger seemed to have dissolved.

Finn left the solar chuckling, and her father remarked to Vagn, “You do not think a tongue cloak is mirthsome?”

“Nay, I much prefer a cloak embroidered with…oh, let us say, candles,” he answered to the bewilderment of all who remained.

Except Helga.

Who discovered she was suddenly left alone in the solar with Vagn.

And he was not smiling at all.

Let’s make a deal…

“Sit down, Helga. We are going to talk.”

Her eyes darted right and left, as if she were considering a run for freedom. When she realized that he blocked any escape route and there was no one left in the
room to help her, she sighed in surrender and perched herself atop a high stool. She made sure that a table separated them, though it would offer little protection if he chose to attack. But that would come later. For now, he sat on a high stool on his side of the table, tented his fingers before his mouth and pondered the troublesome wench.

How anyone could have called her homely was beyond him. Today Helga wore a plain blue gunna with a gold braid belt, covered by a sleeveless surcoat of a darker blue. Her golden blond hair was braided intricately into one thick braid that hung down to her waist. Her blue eyes were wide with embarrassment she tried to hide with fluttering brown lashes. Her lips, large and luscious, parted as if in invitation. If Helga only knew the power of those lips!

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said of a sudden.

“You should be.”

She raised her chin defiantly.

“I am a man full-grown, not a youthling whose strings you can pull like a puppeteer. For days you have been teasing me like a dockside tart. I have allowed you to think you can manipulate me, just to see how far you would go, and truth to tell, you shocked the spit out of me. No more games.”

“I did not play any games.”

He raised a halting hand. “Please! Helga the Gamester could be your new name.”

“Well, you forced me to use underhanded tactics when you would not agree outright.”

He laughed. The woman never gave up. “That is the most backhanded apology I have e’er heard.”

“I was not apologizing.”

“You should.”

She inhaled deeply, which caused him to look at her chest area…and wonder irrelevantly if her nipples were large underneath her clothes.

She saw the direction of his gaze and folded her arms over her chest.

Little good that did when his lustsome imagination was involved.

“Are you a gambler, Helga?”

“Huh?”

“You heard me. This sex-dance you have been playing with me is like a game of chance. ’Tis time to even the odds. Are you willing to play?”

“Nay!” she said without thinking. Then immediately amended, “It depends on the final prize, and whether the rules are fair.”

“You want a babe.”

“You do not.”

“I want your body.”

He saw her eyes light up and her lips part at that disclosure. He guessed that
now
her nipples were engorged or he was not the man he knew himself to be.

“But I am willing to give my body only if a babe will result. You have told me that is out of the question.”

“I’m thinking of another alternative.”

“The game of chance you mentioned.”

Quick-thinking lady! He had to admire that. “The very same,” he agreed. “There are ways for a man to prevent conception, Helga. Ways known all the way back to the beginning of time. ’Tis known as spilling one’s seed upon the ground.”

Her face flushed as she comprehended his meaning. “And why would I agree to that?”

“Because it is not a certain method.”

“Are you asking me to make love with you on the mere chance that I might conceive?”

He shrugged. “Even under the best of circumstances, conception seems to be in the hands of the gods. I know men and women who have been swiving their entire lives and never had children, whilst with others the quickening happens after only one poke.”

“My father would have a fit to know that some rogue was defiling his daughter under his very roof.”
On the other hand, if it fit his purposes in creating a grandbabe, he probably wouldn’t mind that much
.

“
Defiling?
You make sex sound dirty. Well, actually, good lovemaking can be dirty…in a nice-dirty way.” His lips twitched with mirth but only for a second. He was not in the mood for laughter just yet.

He could tell that she had no idea what he meant by “nice-dirty,” but she wasn’t about to ask. Good. In his present mood, he would probably tell her in very precise detail.

“Your father would not have to know…if we were discreet. ’Tis not my intent to shame you, Helga. In fact, I would insist that no one know of our arrangement or our doings, including your carnal mentor, the ill-famed Rona, or that peacock Finn.”

Her lips twitched with mirth then, too, at his accurate description of Finn.

Vagn gave her a level somber gaze. He was taking this all very seriously, and he wanted her to know that.

“It all seems so secretive…as if it were dishonorable.”

“I prefer the word ‘private’ to ‘secretive.’”

“I understand how the game would work if I do not
conceive, but suppose your seed did manage to find my womb. What then?”

His own face flushed now. “I would not abandon my son.”

“And if it were a daughter?”

“I would not abandon my daughter, either.”

“Explain yourself.”

“I would wed you.”

She threw her hands in the air with exasperation. “Then I gain naught. If I were willing to wed to gain a child, I would have done so long ago.”

He would like naught more than to reach across the table and shake the willful wench. Why must she always be at cross purposes with him? Why could she not be biddable for once? He counted to ten silently, then offered, “A compromise, then.”

She tilted her head in question.

“If I should get you with child, I would offer for you. If you refuse, then you must let me acknowledge my child and be a part of the babe’s life.”

“You ask much.”

“Nay, Helga, you are the one who asks much.”

“Why would you be willing to make this compromise?”