“I would, and I will.”
“You have not seen the last of me,” Lord Blackthorne yelled.
Toste had not realized that Lord Blackthorne still lingered inside the abbey. “Yea, yea, yea,” he called back over his shoulder. Cowards always threw out threats when they thought they were outside the range of sword or arrow.
“And the banns for your wedding will be called, whether you like it or not, girl.” This threat was addressed to Esme, of course. Neither of them turned to look at her father, but pretended they did not hear.
“You are getting married?” Toste asked Esme.
“Over my dead body.”
“Good. I never lie with married women.” Or dead ones, for that matter.
She gasped again. “Your constant jests are… disarming.”
Hah! I will show you disarming when you are flat on your back, legs spread, with a smile on your face that only a Viking could put there.
“I’ll be back afore you can blink, Viking,” her father shouted.
“Holy Thor, is he still here? The man never gives up.”
“Nay, he does not. I know that better than any,” Esme said with a sigh.
“And with me will be a large troop of soldiers.”
Toste turned his head slightly so he could look back. Yea, her bullheaded father still stood at the open doorway with his two sons, all of them red-faced with frustration and anger.
“He means it,” Esme said.
“I do not doubt that, but we will be long gone.”
“We?”
“You, me and Bolthor.”
He could see hope war with distrust on her too-open face. “Where are we going?”
“Methinks ’tis time for a cart delivery of mead barrels to the trading vessels in Jorvik.” He and Bolthor had already discussed a preliminary plan, but the details were yet to be worked out.
“My father and brothers will recognize us.”
Women! They must know all the details. They must argue every point. Why can they not just let men, with their greater intellect, handle things? “Not if we are in disguise.”
“Disguise? What kind of disguise?”
Be quiet, m’lady, or I am going to abandon you here to your father. He decided to give her one last explanation, and that would be that. “Well, there is no disguising you. You will have to hide in one of the barrels, but Bolthor and I… hmmm… our best disguise would probably be as…”
“What?”
“Nuns.”
Big butts are timeless…
“My bottom is too big.” Esme’s voice was muffled, coming as it was from the inside of a barrel. Besides that, her brain was starting to feel fuzzy from the mead fumes still lingering in the oak staves.
“Try to lie straighter so that your buttocks go flat,” Mother Wilfreda advised.
“My buttocks never go flat,” Esme said. “Standing, bending, sitting, lying down—’tis all the same. My bottom is too big.”
It was barely past dawn on the morning after her father’s visit. Ravenshire, the estate owned by Toste and Bolthor’s friend Eirik, lay a considerable distance away. It would take a full day and mayhap more of hard riding in this cart, with unknown dangers in between, most especially her father’s troops. They must needs start soon.
But first, Esme had to fit inside a barrel, which was proving impossible. A barrel had been laid on its side in the back of a market cart. It was the biggest mead barrel they had, and still Esme couldn’t fit her whole body inside. First, she’d tried to back in, feet first, but when she’d gotten as far as her hips and buttocks, she’d had to crawl back out. Now, she was headfirst in the barrel, with her buttocks sticking out, and Sister Margaret and Mother Wilfreda shoving, to no avail.
“I do not think your arse is too big,” she heard Toste say.
Esme went stiff with embarrassment and stopped trying to squirm herself into the barrel. Ob, for the love of Mary, the Viking is here and he’s looking at my bottom.
“I agree,” Bolthor said. “A wench cannot have too big an arse, to my way of thinking. Gives a man something to hold on to.”
Sister Mary Rose giggled and Mother Wilfreda said in a droll tone of voice, “Nice disguises!”