“And me, as well,” Bolthor said.
“No one should leave Ravenshire for fear of a fight,” Eirik insisted. “None of my guests would dare object to your being here… any of you.”
“I have never walked away from a fight,” Toste said.
“Nor I,” Tykir and Bolthor said.
“There is something else to consider,” Eirik said. “I know it is a long shot, but what if Vagn’s killer were amongst the guardsmen accompanying my guests?”
Toste froze at the possibility. He agreed it was remote, but it was worth being on watch. “In any case, you all have a way of diverting a conversation this way and that.”
“Us?” they said.
“Yea, you. What I started to say before you all diverted me is that I need to get away from Ravenshire and travel to Evergreen.”
“Esme’s estate?”
“Yea. As I have told you before, something is not quite right about her situation. Why would a lord as powerful and wealthy as Blackthorne try so desperately for so many years to gain such a piddling little piece of land? Methinks I should take a day or two and ride there. Investigate a bit.”
They all nodded.
Eirik stroked his chin pensively. “My stepson John’s estate at Hawk’s Lair is not far distant from Evergreen. We could go there, see what John knows, then study the estate as well as we can without raising eyebrows.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea,” Toste said, “except for the we part. I go alone.”
“Why?” Bolthor asked in a wounded tone. “I thought we were partners, you and me… especially now that Vagn is gone.”
“We are. We are.” He patted Bolthor’s arm. The skald was too sensitive by half. “But this is something best done alone, in disguise. What we don’t want is four big hulking Norsemen raising eyebrows about the countryside.”
Everyone nodded hesitantly in agreement.
“Will you go soon? On the morrow?” Eirik asked.
Toste shook his head, then smiled. “Nay, not till the beginning of next week. I have much more punishing to do.” With that, he picked up his tub and swaggered off.
And he was whistling.
The Clueless Viking Hall of Fame …
“Eirik, have you seen my large brass tub?” Eadyth asked that night.
“I might have.”
“Where?”
“Passing through the great hall.”
“You saw my tub going through the castle? By itself?”
“Not exactly. It was on Toste’s head.”
“Has he lost his mind?”
“Methinks so. Or another body part.”
They looked at each other and smiled.
When women get ideas, duck …
Tykir was panting for breath in his bedchamber later that night.
Really, sometimes his wife forgot that he was forty-and-seven years old and that he had trouble keeping up with her ten-years-younger body. Well, actually, he had no trouble keeping up, being a lusty Viking and all that, but she did make him pant more these days.
“I have a wonderful idea,” Alinor said, snuggling up to him and placing a hand lovingly over his limp manpart.
“Uh-oh!” Anytime Alinor mentioned “a wonderful idea,” especially when holding his cock, he knew he was in for trouble.
“I think Toste should marry Esme.”
Where that ludicrous idea had come from, he had no clue. Women’s minds flitted here and there like hummingbirds. Flit, flit, flit. “No matchmaking, Alinor. Toste asked us not to interfere. Remember?”
“It wouldn’t exactly be matchmaking.”
“It would be exactly matchmaking if you are involved.”
“Toste needs someone to love now that Vagn is gone.”
“A man does not need someone to love.”
She removed her hand from his nether region and smacked him on the chest.
“Not all men need someone to love,” he amended, not being a total lackwit.
She moved her hand back where it belonged, so she apparently forgave his loose tongue. Smart wife! “Toste has a hole in his life.”
“Which you intend to fill?”
“Mayhap.”
“Alinor, do you not have enough to do helping Eadyth prepare for this grand feast?”
“Everything is arranged. All the plans are made. Eadyth has more than enough servants to carry through once the guests arrive. In the meantime…”
“How about our sons? Dost know what Thork did today?” Their eleven-year-old son was a handful—a rogue in the true spirit of Viking males. Their other three sons, Starri, nine, Guthrom, six, and Selik, two, showed signs of following the same mischievous path.