“You dolt!” she said. “That was me.”
“Even better.”
He made slow, adoring love to her then. No words were exchanged. They seemed unnecessary. He showed her with his body how very much he had missed her. When they both reached their peaks, he asked again, “Helga, will you marry me?”
And she asked that infernal question of hers, “Why?”
It occurred to him that there might be some magic answer that he could give which would unlock the door to her acceptance, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what it was.
“I would be a good husband to you and father to our child. I would take over your father’s estates when he is gone, if that is what you want. I would not take any authority from you if you did not want me to. I would help you with your merchant business.” He looked expectantly at her.
“And?”
“We could have a good life together. Partners, that is what we would be. Husband and wife, but partners.”
“Nay,” she said with a deep sigh of disappointment. “I will not wed with you.”
* * *
Chapter Fifteen
« ^ »
A medieval Ann Landers…
The next morning, Alinor found Toste and Vagn out in the stables, sitting in an empty stall, swilling down mead.
She did not blame them for trying to escape the crowded keep. More guests kept arriving, and the din of talk and laughter was overpowering.
“Why the long faces, you two?” she asked, dropping down to the clean straw next to them. Vagn handed her the jug and she took a long swallow, then wiped the back of her hand over her mouth.
“Neither of us is having much woman-luck,” Vagn revealed.
“Hard to believe, is it not?” Toste added.
Yea, ’twas hard to believe that these two accomplished womanizers had met their own personal stumbling blocks.
“Helga will not marry me, even though she carries my babe,” Vagn said.
“Esme has forgiven me for the captive business. In truth, methinks she liked it, though she would not admit such… yet. But she wants me only as her castellan at Evergreen.”
Alinor stared at the two brothers, so very identical in appearance, so bone-meltingly handsome. “Do you love her?” she asked, looking pointedly at each of them in turn.
They both turned red-faced at her blunt question.
“Well, yea, I suppose I do,” Toste said finally.
“Of course I do,” Vagn said more forcefully.
“Have you told her?” Again she looked at each of them separately.
“Not in words,” Toste said.
“You thick-headed fool. In what? Signs from the heavens?”
“There is no need to be sarcastic,” Toste snapped back.
“I must have told Helga that I love her.” Vagn was rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I mean, I think I did. Didn’t I? Surely, even if I didn’t, she knows.” He looked up and inquired of Alinor, “Doesn’t she?”
“Words should not be necessary,” Toste argued.
“Believe me, words are necessary.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t say it. I felt it. Why didn’t Helga feel it?”
“Vagn, three words. I… love… you. That is what she needs to hear. Enough with this feeling the sentiment.”
Alinor rose to return to the keep, her mission accomplished… she hoped. One never knew with thick-headed Vikings. “And, by the by, Bolthor is in the great hall regaling one and all, with a saga entitled ‘Dog and Candle Sex and Vikings.'”
Toste and Vagn bolted to their feet and rushed ahead of her back to the castle, both of them muttering something about adding skald soup to the yuletide menu.
Alinor whisked her hands together and grinned with satisfaction. A meddling woman’s work was never done.
When a man loves a woman …
Vagn was wasting no time.
He entered the great hall, which was overflowing with people though it was not yet midday. At first, he was disoriented by the dimness after the bright sunlight outside and by the amount of mead he’d already drunk on an empty stomach. But then he spotted Helga at one of the upper tables sitting with her father and some of the Briarstead soldiers, including Finn Finehair. Is that coxcomb everywhere?