Once she’d completed her ablutions, including his long, sinewed legs, his feet and his sinfully flat belly, she frowned, wondering what to do next. Should she hand the cloth to him and demand he wash his genitals himself, thus calling attention to her inability to remain aloof from his nakedness, or should she work on his wound area? Most of all, she tried her best to avoid looking at the manpart standing before her… and, yea, it stood upright like a silly flagpole under her scrutiny. Do not look at it, Helga. Do not look. “Make it lie down.”
He laughed. “How?”
“I do not know how. Just do it.” I am not looking. I am not looking. I am not looking.
“It just means that he likes you,” her father had the audacity to say. She’d noticed the servant leaving, but had forgotten her father remained in the room.
“Well, that is not necessarily true,” Vagn confessed. “It has a mind of its own. It is not always so discriminating.”
” ‘Tis true, ’tis true, now that you mention it,” her father said. “I recall when I was young, the mere sight of a good pair of udders on a wench would light the wick in my candle.”
“Coarse, ignorant lackwits, both of you!” she pronounced. Despite her irritation, she dared to lay her hand on the Viking’s right thigh and yank it none too gently apart from the other thigh so she could finish her cleansing, but her action caused the manpart to grow even more. Despite his abated fever, his flesh still raged hot to the touch. Was it renewed fever or her touch that caused the heat? Alarming thoughts, both.
Helga jumped back then with horror… not because of his outrageous manpart, or his hot skin, or her belated delicacy, but because she’d just realized something. Her eyes bulged with disbelief as she gazed down on his reclining body. “Where’s your birthmark?” she asked in a sudden panic.
“How do you know about the birthmark?”
“Hah! You know very well how you talked me into going to the stables at King Haakon’s court to show me ‘a secret’ which turned out to be your nude body and the birthmark. Vile boy!”
“Was that before or after I called you Helga the Homely?”
“Before.”
If looks could kill, he would be one dead Viking. With renewed horror, she declared, “You are not Toste.”
“He is not Toste,” her father concurred.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell everyone.”
And then his sap began to rise…
Vagn was up and about in Gorm’s keep… but just barely.
Apparently, he had not recovered as much as he’d thought. Two days ago, after Helga had washed his nude body—and wasn’t that an experience to savor!—and rebound his wounds, Vagn had attempted to leave the pallet, but his knees had given out and pain had shot through his chest, radiating out to all his extremities. It had probably been due to the stress of her endless questioning as to what had happened to Toste, now that she accepted he was not his brother. To his vast indignity, Helga had caught him as he’d begun to crumble in a heap at her feet. He’d learned later that it had taken Helga, her father and the guard outside the door to get him back onto the pallet, where his wounds had reopened and begun bleeding profusely again.
But he was downstairs now, making his way gingerly toward the solar where he heard voices. Gorm was off patrolling his estates, and a housecarl had brought him a morning meal of honey cakes and ale a short time ago. He could not lie on that mattress one moment longer for fear he would have more horrific nightmares, either reliving the battle at Stone Valley or suffering a harsh blow to the head, which had caused his brother’s death. Even when he was awake, his head ached and he sometimes saw visions of human crows in black garb gathering about him with squawking voices, about to peck out his entrails. Most of all, he was bored and restless. And, truth to tell, he was randy as a bull whose male-sap had risen.