His proposal could easily have charmed Helga into compliance, except for one word which stood out like a sore thumb. Children. “You know,” she accused him. “You know that I am with child, and now you want to marry me.”
“I do know, Helga, but—”
She stood abruptly and shoved his beseeching hands aside.
“Nay, I will not marry you.”
“Now, Helga, be reasonable.” He stood, too.
“Reasonable?” she practically shrieked, then lowered her voice for fear she would attract attention. “We had an agreement.”
“Yea, we did, and part of that agreement said I would ask you to marry me if you conceived,” he argued. The stubborn lout!
“Why? Why do you want to wed me?” Deep down, Helga knew that if he said three simple words to her, she would capitulate.
Unfortunately… or fortunately… he did not utter those words. “It is time for me to wed. We do well together. Why not?”
“Ooooh, I would like to clout you a good one.”
“Huh?”
“Vagn, if it were not for this child”—she put a hand protectively over her flat belly—”would you be asking me to marry you today?”
He thought for a moment, then answered honestly. “Probably not today, but mayhap someday I would have. I like you, Helga, and I think you like me, too.”
Like? Like? The dunderhead! “I would ask you one more question, Vagn. If your brother were still alive, would you be asking me to marry you?”
“That is an unfair question. If my brother were alive, I wouldn’t even be here.”
Her shoulders sank with defeat. She’d given him a chance, and he’d failed her. “If I were ever going to marry, Vagn—and I am not—I would want more from a marriage than that. I am sorry, but nay.” He was about to say more but she put up a hand to halt him. “I will not deny you access to this child, and you may acknowledge it, if you wish.”
“Of course I will acknowledge my child, you foolish wench.” He wagged a finger in her face menacingly. “Be forewarned, though, I do not accept your rejection. We will marry. You can bet your luscious lips on that.”
To prove his point, he kissed said luscious lips soundly, then stomped away. Helga loved the way Vagn loved her lips. He didn’t love her, but he loved her lips.
In the hall outside the solar, she heard her father ask him, “How did it go?” Frigg’s foot! My father knows, too?
And Vagn replied succinctly, “Just bloody hell wonderful!”
* * *
Chapter Thirteen
« ^ »
Tiptoeing loudly …
It was two days later.
Down the stairs and through the great hall of Ravenshire, Toste carried a brass tub on his head, with a bundle of various supplies slung over his shoulder. And he was whistling.
The whistling was his downfall.
He’d almost made it to the wide double doors that led down the steps and out to the bailey when Bolthor called out, “Is that you whistling, Toste?”
With a sigh of resignation, he turned, still with the tub on his head, and said, “Yea, ’tis me.”
Bolthor was sitting at one of the long trestle tables at the far end of the mostly empty hall, whittling a piece of wood. “Dost know you have a tub on your head?”
“Of course I know I have a tub on my head.”
“You need not snap at me. I did not cause you to have a tub on your head.”
“Why do you have a tub on your head,” Tykir inquired silkily, having coming up behind him. So surprised was Toste that he almost dropped the tub.
“Because I want to bathe.” Could I say anything more lackwitted than that?
“Why can’t you bathe in the spring house or up in your bedchamber?” It was Eirik speaking now. He’d come up on his other side. His three friends were surrounding him, all of them grinning.
“Because I like to bathe in private.” They ought to call me Toste the Lackwit.
“Ah, suddenly modest, are you?” Tykir remarked.
Or lackwitted.
“Well, that is understandable,” Eirik said. “I do not like to show off my body parts to one and all either, impressive as they are.”