Dark Viking (31 page)

“Perchance? I‟d like to perchance you.” She inhaled and exhaled for patience. “You are feeling like you escaped the executioner‟s axe by Isrid falling pregnant to someone else, aren‟t you?”

“Yea, I am,” he freely admitted.

“Would you have refused to marry her in favor of me?”

“That question is unfair.”

“Is it?” “Ree-tah, I am weary. We are both exhausted. So much has happened in a short time. You have to admit that it is best not to make momentous decisions under such conditions.”

Her shoulders slumped, and he felt as if he had failed her in some way. Well, tomorrow when they were both rested, he would set things to right.

She let him undress her then, and when they were both naked, he snuggled up against her back. He fully intended to let her sleep, but when he tucked her closer against him, he felt a wet drop fall on his hand. She was weeping.

“Ree-tah!” he said, turning her. At first, he just kissed the tears away and caressed her shoulders and back in a soothing manner, but soon the need to connect with her in a deeper way overtook him. He made love to her. Gently. Adoringly. Beseechingly, though he knew not for what. Understanding, perhaps.

This was no fast and furious, blood-boiling frenzy to swive. It was a mutual kissing.

Stroking. Murmuring. And when he finally joined himself with her, he felt an overwhelming emotion he did not recognize. In fact, its intensity frightened him.

“I love you,” she whispered.

Was that it? Was it love?

Unfortunately, he waited too long to speak his mind. She already slept.

And Steven was as confused as ever.

Love hurts . . .

Rita waited until early afternoon while Steven would be involved with Althing matters before leaving.

Going out to the stables, she saddled her own horse, telling the stableboy she was doing an errand for his master. The only thing she took with her was the wet suit and flippers, a small tent, a blanket, and some bread and cheese. She would let the horse loose later to return to the castle.

It took her several hours before she arrived at the rocky shore where she had first emerged here into the past. It had been hard making a decision to return to the future, but after much deliberation, she decided that it would be best for Steven and Norstead if she went.

Truly, even if he‟d said he loved her, which he hadn‟t, she was not the best lady to partner with Steven at Norstead. He needed someone of his culture, and probably a lady of his noble class who would bring him military alliances. After talking with Disa yesterday afternoon, she had a better idea of what kind of woman that would be. Not that Disa was unkind to her, just brutally honest. “Steven is a wonderful brother. The best. But he is a born womanizer. It is not in his makeup to stay with one woman forever. Most Viking men are the same. We Viking women learn to live with it. Not happily. I certainly do not intend to expose myself to that pain again. Still, I can see that you care for my brother. Could you live with that kind of marriage?”

Disa had been assuming that Steven had offered marriage. Not that it would have mattered.

Without love, she would not marry. And even then, fidelity was crucial to her.

Her leaving would be better for everyone.

So she arranged the small tent, spread out the blanket, and waited. And she prayed, “Please, God, this is so hard. Help me get home. Wherever that is.”

How deep is your love? . . .
Steven was frantic that night.

It wasn‟t until after the evening meal that he realized that Rita was gone. Everyone . . .

Kraka, Grima, Sigge, Lady Igorsson . . . looked weepy-eyed but claimed no knowledge of where she was. Finally, his meddling sister disclosed her part in advising Rita of all his shortcomings.

“I should have left you to rot in the pirate‟s lair,” he‟d told her in the end.

She had just smiled. If ever there was a witch, it was his sister.

It was morning before he‟d discovered the riderless horse returning to Norstead, and he finally figured out where she had gone. It was with a pounding heart that he approached the clearing where her small tent was erected. Had she left already? Was it too late?

He tethered his horse to a tree some distance away and approached quietly. She was on the other side of the tent, kneeling. Good gods, she appeared to be praying herself back to the future.

“Nay!” he shouted, causing her to tumble over, then quickly rise to her feet.

“You shouldn‟t have come,” she said, brushing off the seat of her braies. Her eyes were red with weeping.

“Yea, I should have come. Well, that is not quite true. You should not have left Norstead, requiring me to come after you. But here we are.” He threw his arms out in surrender and sank down to a boulder.

“What are you doing?”

“Staying with you.”

“You can‟t stay with me.”

“Why? I‟m going back with you to the future.”

“What? You can‟t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you‟re needed here. Your people depend on you.”

He shrugged. “You are needed, too, but you are leaving. Do you not care about Sigge and the witches? How about your newfound wheel friend? And me . . . who will turn this blue Viking into a cheerful man? I may just die of sadness without you.”

“Don‟t overdo it, Steven.”

He shrugged. “Besides, it will be good to see my brother again.”

“Steven! Stop it! This is not a game. What if you come back with me and don‟t like it? Not that I even know if you can come back with me. Hell, I don‟t even know if I can go back.”

He smiled at her nervous blathering.

She took a deep breath. “Why are you doing this?”

“For you. Where you go, I go.”

She let out a little whimper. “Don‟t.”

“Ree-tah, you said something last night, but you fell asleep afore I could respond.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, knowing precisely what he referred to. “You had plenty of time.”

“Yea, I did, but this is new territory to me.” He stood and motioned with his fingertips for her to come closer.

“Not a chance!”

He smiled. Being a natural-born seducer, he knew when he was winning a battle of the senses. “I love you,” he said.

“No!” she said and began to weep. “I love you.”

“No, you don‟t.”

“I love you.”

“Stop saying that.”

“I love you, I love you, I love you. There is no argument that will make me change my mind.”

“Yes, there is,” she said. “I‟m pregnant.” She clamped a hand over her mouth, immediately regretting having blurted that out.

This was the time for careful words. He knew that what came out of his mouth next would determine his future.

A baby.
She was going to have his baby. A snot-nosed, bawling bratling with black hair and blue eyes. Or blond hair and silver gray eyes.
A child.
A being created by the two of them. A baby!

He wanted to ask how that could happen with the birthing control device, but the whys and hows did not matter. Not really.

On the other hand, he was outraged. She would go away without telling him of her pregnancy. He could have gone a lifetime before ever knowing he had a son or daughter somewhere else.

He stepped up to her, lifted her into his arms, and said the only thing he could. “I love you, heartling.”

With those words, which would have gagged him at one time, but came so naturally now, Steven‟s heart lightened.

He smiled against her mouth. “I want to make love with you, but not here on this rocky ground where you first came seducing me.”

“Me seduce you? Hah! You told me I was an ugly mermaid.”

“Me?” He put a hand over his heart and feigned innocence. “I fear we might both be tossed through time in the midst of peaking and land in some place neither of us would relish. Like the moon.” Even so, he was already beginning to remove her garments, kissing every bare spot along the way.

“The moon, huh?” She had her hands under his braies in the back, on his bare buttocks— Thank you, gods, for unshy maidens—and was shoving the cloth down his hips to land at his feet. “Did I tell you that men in my time have traveled to the moon and back? Moon exploration is actually possible.”

His jaw dropped open, whether from her telling him of that modern marvel or from the place where her hands were now touching him. Talking was not what he had in mind with a rising enthusiasm. Forget the moon. Now was the time for exploration of a different kind. “Come, my betrothed, and pledge me your troth in the age-old fashion.”

“Betrothed? I did not hear any proposal from you. And, besides, next time a man asks me to marry him, it better be down on not one knee, but two.”

He laughed. “If I am down on two knees afore you, it will not be to use my tongue to speak.”

“Steven!” she said with pretend shock.

That was one of the things he loved about her . . . that he could not shock her. Well, mayhap he could. After he bared her body and whilst he removed the rest of his garments, he lifted her onto the bare back of his horse and immediately mounted behind her. “We will go to a soft forest bower not far from here where we can make love in comfort, or else . . .” he chuckled, placing a hand over her belly, “we could have horse sex if we cannot wait that long.”

“That is such a myth. That sex can take place on a horse. Writers put that in romance novels all the time, but . . . yikes! What are you doing?”

“Do you not know by now that you should ne‟er tell a Viking that he cannot do something?”

Her only response was a gurgling noise. He was fairly certain it meant she liked what he was doing, and the rhythm of the slowly moving horse aided his cause. Immensely.

Later . . . a way too short time later, he lay beside her on the soft moss carpet with sunlight filtering through the evergreens. She was panting for breath.

He was smiling. What man would not smile if he could make his woman breathless.

Looking up at him, she traced his jaw with a fingertip. Love shone in her blue eyes.

“Will you miss being back in your own time?”

“This is my time now. But, yes, there are things I will miss. Hopefully, you‟ll make up for all those losses.”

“I can only try.” He cast her a lascivious leer, knowing full well that sex was not what she had meant. Or not totally. He turned serious then. “Do you really think the gods sent you here because I was so sad?”

“My blue Viking,” she teased. “Yes, that‟s the only explanation I can come up with. God sent me to you. He saw how unhappy you were and how it was affecting your people.”

“The ways of the gods are deep and unfathomable.” He plastered a particularly doleful expression on his face then. “Uh-oh! The flames of my good mood seem to be dying. I feel the blues coming on again. Perchance . . . do you have some other trick to refire my embers?”

Rita realized then that Steven would be using that excuse for the rest of their lives as a rationale for her to make love to him. Well, she had news for him. It went both ways.

“Baby, I have a thousand ways to light your fire, but keep in mind . . . sometimes mermaids get the blues, too.” 

You haven’t partied ’til you’ve partied Viking style . . .

Everyone agreed the Althing that year was the best ever, highlighted as it was by the marriage of Lord Steven of Norstead and Lady Rita of America.

The lawspeaker Agmundr reluctantly conducted the ceremony under the decorated Althing tent with Oslac, Brandr, and Brodir standing beside Steven as his witnesses, and Rita having an amazing five witnesses: Joy, Sigge, Kraka, Grima, and Disa. No one had ever heard of witches being part of a wedding ceremony afore.

The bride was a sight to behold in a white, soft wool gown of the Saxon style, but it was covered later with a Norse apron of highly prized crimson samite silk adorned with gold braiding. Hanging from the chain betwixt her two shoulder brooches were the keys to Norstead.

Steven was just as beautiful, some said, attired as he was in a black tunic and braies of the finest wool, cinched at the waist with a gold-linked belt said to be worth a king‟s ransom.

Presumably, it was a gift from the pirate Brodir.

During the ceremony, Steven placed his gold ring . . . the selfsame matching one worn by his brother Thorfinn . . . on the tip of his sword and handed it to Rita, saying, “I give you this ring to mark the continuous circle of our unbreakable vows, and this sword to hold in trust for our sons.” He‟d glanced at her flat stomach as he spoke, and tears filled the bride‟s eyes.

Steven promised his new wife protection under his shield, love until death, and fidelity, which outraged some of the Viking men. She promised him love, honor, and lots of some strange things called Pup-suckles, to which Steven had thrown his head back, roaring with laughter, then a quick kiss of thanks.

He‟d chased her back to the keep for the
brudr-hlaup
or “bride-running.” Viking ritual called for him to swat her on the arse, then lay the sword across the threshold. If she stepped over it, it would indicate that she accepted her new husband. She not only stepped, she did a front flip over it.

He had then sword-pierced one of the high standing beams, the roof tree, of his great hall.

The depth of his cut indicated virility. No one was surprised that his gash was very deep.

His
morgen-gifu
, or the “morning gift,” would be presented to Rita on the morrow to show his satisfaction with her bed performance. It was said to be an odd-shaped piece of marble he‟d brought back from the Arab lands, but he declined to explain its significance to anyone who asked. Except for Oslac, who just smirked.

When asked by the lawspeaker if she had a
heiman flygia
for her new husband, Rita had replied, “Yes. All the proceeds next year from the sale of my deodorant.”

Several of the Viking men in attendance were not impressed, having heard how the odd wench complained of their body stench. There was much feasting at the wedding reception, the primary drink being mead, which tradition said should be imbibed for a month during the “honeymoon” period. Strangely, Rita refrained.