“What difference does the betrothal make to you?”
“A lot! Oh, Thork, how can you even ask such a question? I can’t… I won’t be a one-night stand for you.”
“Hah! More like a one-month stand! Besides, why all the scruples when a week ago you came to my sleeping chamber more than willing?”
“That was different.”
Thork arched an eyebrow. “How so?”
Ruby turned to face him directly, her eyes pleading with him for understanding. “A woman needs to think a man makes love with her because he cares for her, that there is at least the possibility of commitment. When the man is promised to another woman, they don’t make love. They make lust.”
Thork laughed. “Lust sounds pretty good to me. Yea, methinks I will settle for that.”
“I won’t.”
” ‘Tis out of your hands now, soulmate,” Thork declared with a low laugh, turning to walk back to his shipmates. “Best you accept that here and now. The course has been set and cannot be changed.”
Ruby suddenly realized that she had a rapt audience. The men snickered and looked to Thork to catch his reaction to her shrewish behavior. Clearly, many of them could not understand Thork’s attraction to her, especially when she behaved in such an unfeminine way.
“Thork, if you cannot handle a simple wench, I would be glad to take her on this ship,” a grinning Selik called out from the rail of his ship, which rode close beside theirs in the wide river. He goaded Thork with further taunts, egged on by the cheers of his shipmates.
At first Thork frowned, but then he laughed and directed his friend to do something very vulgar to himself. Then he asked Selik, “Why do you not pick up an oar and work off some of that misplaced mirth?”
” ‘Tis much more fun watching you be snaggled by a mere wench.”
“You are one to talk of being made the fool by a woman! The wenches lead you around by that tail between your legs.”
The sailors laughed lustily at the ribald exchange.
“Oh ho! Now I learn the truth,” Selik hooted. “You are envious of my male prowess.”
“You witless whelp! We shall see who has what when the ships are pulled ashore tonight.”
Late that afternoon, when they entered the mouth of the Humber River and the five boats pulled toward shore for the evening’s campsite, Thork deftly jumped from the rail of his ship to that of Selik’s. In the blink of an eye, having the advantage of surprise, he picked up Selik, who equaled him in size, and dumped him in the shallow water. The men in all five ships laughed at the spectacle of Selik coming up sputtering out of the water, shaking his hair like a shaggy dog.
Thork jumped back to his own ship and bragged loudly to Selik, ” ‘Tis a cool head you need to match wits with a man, my boy.” Then he turned and flashed a dazzling smile Ruby’s way and teased, ” ‘Twould be a pleasure to feed you to the fishes, as well, if you cannot curb your waspish tongue.”
“You and twenty other men!” Ruby challenged, disgusted with his childish behavior and this whole time-travel experience. She walked back to the canopy area for her personal belongings to be taken ashore.
In a flash, Thork scooped her in his arms and jumped up on the rail, weaving back and forth precariously. Smiling from ear to ear, enjoying the spectacle he made of her, Thork asked his shipmates loudly, “What say you, men? Wouldst she not make good fish bait?”
“Put me down! Stop being so immature,” Ruby demanded. She wasn’t afraid of the water, but heights had always alarmed her. When he refused to release her and continued to rock forward and backward on the rail, Ruby did the only thing a woman in peril could do. Keeping her left arm wrapped tightly around Thork’s neck, she reached down between their bodies with her right hand and pinched his groin area as hard as she could, hoping he would put her back on the deck.
“Arghh! For the love of Freya!” Thork shouted in pain. He lost his balance on the rail, and they both spilled over into the river, lucky to land on their feet.