“Ten,” Vagn piped in. Toste, are you laughing at me up in Valhalla? Are all you dead warriors placing wagers over what wooly-witted thing I will do next?
Helga gasped.
Saleem swore.
Later, after Saleem stormed out of the chamber, carrying only the green wool, Helga shook her head at him and made that tsk-ing sound women love so well. “I am not going to wed with you. So get that idea out of your head.”
He made an exaggerated moue of unconcern. Ten mancuses in coin meant naught to him. He had gambled more in one night of dice or hnefatafl, which made him think of something else: another gamble—one which he had won. “Where is Clod? Oh, good Thor, how could I have forgotten? Where is Clod?”
“Clod?” Helga said as she folded up some of the loose fabrics lying about. “The only Clod I know of is you, you clod.”
“Nay, it is my horse Clod that I refer to. He was with me at the battle. I distinctly recall him standing behind me, neighing frantically, when the sword went through me.” I have become a blithering idiot.
“Are you referring to that sway-backed horse as old as Odin that followed you here from the battlefield?”
“He is alive?” Vagn asked, no longer feeling like a blithering idiot, just a hopeful idiot.
She nodded, bemused at his concern over a decrepit, useless animal.
Vagn couldn’t help himself then. Tears welled in his eyes. He did not know why, but Clod’s escape from death seemed to have some meaning to him. Hope, that’s what it was. If that old warhorse could survive the battle, there was always hope that… well, suffice it to say, there was hope. “Thank you,” he choked out in an emotion-thick voice. Then he did the only thing any red-blooded Viking would do in the circumstances. Especially faced with a woman with the most kiss-some mouth this side of an Arab harem.
He kissed Helga the Homely.
And he kissed her good.
Really good.
Helga’s knees gave way, and she did not even have the excuse of a battle injury. He caught her as she almost swooned at his feet. He smiled against her mouth and kissed her again. There was one good thing Vagn knew how to do, and that was kiss a woman witless. Actually, there was another good thing Vagn could do equally well, and it also made a woman witless.
“What are you doing to me?” Helga asked when he gave her a moment to breathe.
“Convincing you,” he whispered against her mouth.
“To marry you?”
He grinned. “Nay, something else.”
He thought she said something that sounded like “Clod,” but she probably said that she was “awed.” Leastways, that’s what he chose to believe, especially since she’d just opened her sinfully large and moist mouth for him.
His knees nearly collapsed… again, as they had two days ago. This time it was due to pain of an entirely different sort.
* * *
Chapter Three
« ^ »
The abominable Viking…
The nun was kneeling on all fours in the dirt, arse up and outlined by her tautened robe, whistling. The whistling was mediocre; the arse was magnificent.
Well, son of a sword! I think I have died and gone to Asgard… or is it heaven? Have I sunk so low that I now lust after a nun? Pitiful… I have become pitiful. But not in a million years would Toste inform Lady Esme—or Sister Esme—or Eat-me (don’t think he had forgotten that erotic misspeak)—of his presence in the abbey gardens… not until absolutely necessary. He was enjoying the view too much on this unseasonably warm November day… and he didn’t mean the scenic village and forests which surrounded the tidy grounds of the religious community. His brother Vagn had always claimed to favor women with big breasts, but Toste ever did appreciate a shapely female arse. I wonder what she would do if I dropped down behind her, real close, and—
“Go away, Viking.” Apparently, she was aware of his presence, after all, but didn’t even bother to turn and look at him, just continued trying to lure a cat out of a low bush by waving a peacock feather about. She’d stopped whistling, though.