“Stay put!” he ordered Esme.
Fortunately, she burrowed farther inside the foliage and said not one word.
Toste and Bolthor rushed off to investigate, their pace slowed by Bolthor’s crippled gait and Toste’s throbbing head. By the time they reached the trees, the villain… or villains… were gone. They walked back slowly, discussing the happenstance. Attacked in a nunnery, of all things!
When they returned to the garden, Toste helped Esme out of the bush. She appeared shaken, but lifted her chin bravely as she whisked evergreen needles off her robe. Her veil was half on, half off. She threw it to the ground, where it nestled next to the discarded peacock feather.
“Dost think it was some Saxon warrior come to finish us off?” Toste asked Bolthor, even as he watched Esme compose herself.
“The arrow was meant for me,” Esme said matter-of-factly.
“What?” he and Bolthor both exclaimed.
“I saw one of my father’s men lurking about earlier today. I should have suspected he would try something like this.” Her words were brave, but her ashen face and trembling hands betrayed her fear.
Toste quickly explained to Bolthor what Esme had told him about her father’s desperation to gain her lands… by her religious vocation or by her death.
” ‘Tis outrageous that a man would do such to his own blood,” Bolthor said, squeezing one of Esme’s hands in his.
“Do you want your dower lands? I mean, do you really want them? Enough to fight for them?” Toste asked Esme, a little irritated to see his friend comforting the lady.
Her face brightened. In fact, her eyes almost seemed to glow with a blue fire. “Yea, I want what belongs to me. With a passion.”
Passion sounded good to Toste.
“I would give anything to get what is mine.”
Oh, lady, you should not promise such to a man. “Anything” prompts way too many images.
He paused for several moments before announcing, “Then I will help you, m’lady. I will be your champion.”
That certainly got the lady’s attention. Her jaw dropped down practically to her chest, which he was beginning to notice had a decided prominence that even nunly garb could not hide. Observing the direction of his stare, she folded her arms over her breasts. “Thank you for your offer, but I have my own plan.”
“We will both be your champions,” Bolthor added. “We will be Lady Esme’s knights.”
“Nay! Definitely not!” she said. “I am in enough of a stew without adding two misguided Vikings to the broth.”
Misguided? Who’s misguided? “Mayhap you could write a saga about it,” Toste suggested to Bolthor sarcastically.
“No sagas about my family dispute! Definitely not!” Lady Esme glared most charmingly at the two of them.
“Good idea, Toste,” said Bolthor, who was unable to recognize sarcasm even when it smacked him in the face. Really, couldn’t the thick-headed Bolthor see that he wanted to be the one and only champion for the lady?
“Is anybody listening to me? I told you I can handle this myself,” Lady Esme screeched. “Violence is not the answer here, even though my father does not hesitate to follow that path. I must use my head and outwit my father. ‘Tis the only way.”
“You are not to worry, m’lady. Violence is the one thing we understand. We are Vikings,” Toste said, as if that said it all.
Lady Esme muttered a very vivid expletive, which caused two sets of male eyebrows to rise in surprise. Almost immediately, she grumbled, “To confession again.”
Yeah, right!…
As Lady Esme walked away, unaware of the seductive, totally unpious sway of her hips, Bolthor commented to Toste, “Nice arse.” And Toste replied, “I hadn’t noticed.”
But then he kissed her…
“I have mixed feelings about the two Vikings,” Esme told Mother Wilfreda.
The abbess raised her eyebrows in question as the two of them sipped small mugs of mead before retiring for the night. They sat before one of the two giant fireplaces in the great hall of the abbey. The pedestal tables had been removed following the evening meal, and now the various nuns sat about, mending threadbare habits, weaving at small looms, praying their beads, or in the case of those at the other hearth, listening raptly to Bolthor as he spun tales about famous Vikings performing extraordinary feats, like Ragnor Hairy-Breeks and Eric Blood-axe. The other Viking, Toste, sat listening as well, with his long legs propped on the hearth rail, but every so often he glanced toward Esme and gave her a disconcerting scrutiny, which invariably caused her to glance away, flustered.