THE RELUCTANT VIKING By Sandra Hill

At least five hundred men and women, dressed in the finest garments and jewels, tried to find their places at the tables, arguing with servants about why they were not closer to the dais where the king sat with his highest nobles and visiting heads of countries.

Ruby held tightly to Thork’s and Selik’s arms, not wanting to get lost in the mob. Eirik had been sent off with two servants to find his young uncle Haakon.

There were no wood trenchers at this banquet. Instead, matching ivory-handled gold and silver spoons and knives lay at each place setting, flanking intricately wrought sterling platters shared by each couple.

Enormous subleties, towers of pastries in the shape of castles, complete with battlements and arrow-slitted windows, garnished with nuts and almond paste and topped with sugar knights, were placed on the high table and several lower ones, as well. Who would ever dare to eat them and mar the magnificent culinary works of art? As if reading her mind, Thork reached over and popped a whole knight in his mouth, then winked at her.

Ruby shook her head in disgust and turned to Selik at her other side, but he was engrossed in the daughter of a Saxon ealdorman beside him. When he finally turned to Ruby, he raised his wine cup in toast and said in a low voice, “I think I may get lucky tonight. What think you?” He jiggled his eyebrows for emphasis.

Ruby laughed and looked around the huge hall with its many beautiful women, a large number of whom had already noticed the handsome Viking with the dancing eyes. “The odds are in your favor,” she remarked.

Then Selik leaned in front of her to address Thork. “Think you, friend, that you will get lucky tonight?”

“I think you will be lucky if I do not slit your loose tongue,” Thork said as he sipped his wine.

“Ah!” Selik persisted. “The man dost refuse to answer my question. Methinks he will not be lucky.”

Thork laughed good-naturedly at his friend’s baiting. “Methinks there is naught of luck in it at all, but expertise, which you must lack, or you would not make such an issue of it.”

Selik pretended mock offense. “You wound me with your words.” Then he turned once again to the maid on his other side.

Thork and Ruby laughed at Selik’s humor. Then Ruby jumped when Thork squeezed her thigh under the table.

“Stop that.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so.”

“Oh! If you wish,” he said too quickly, then twined the fingers of her right hand with his left and proceeded to torture her by making slow, sensuous circles in her palm with his thumb, all the time looking toward the dais as if he didn’t know damned well what effect he had on her.

Ruby tried to pull her hand away, but Thork held her firm and whispered in her ear, “Nay, do not pull away from me or I swear I will draw circles on a part of your body that will draw gasps from the women around us and cheers of encouragement from all the men, even the virgin king.

Ruby blushed at his risqué comment and slapped his hand away. Then she asked, “A virgin king?”

” ‘Tis rumored Athelstan has taken a vow of celibacy and will groom his young atheling half-brothers for the throne. Since he is illegitimate and they are marriage-born, he wants to preserve the royal blood lines.”

“Do you believe that?” Ruby was skeptical that such a handsome, virile man would remain celibate.

“Who knows?” Thork shrugged, then grinned. “Mayhap he would be interested in some of your birth control information. He could achieve his goals without the gelding—so to speak.”

Ruby and Thork shared the same platter and cup of wine throughout the sumptuous feast, far grander than any Viking fare. The food and drink flowed endlessly.

“So, how many multiple orgasms did you have in one night with that fantasy husband of yours?” Thork asked suddenly in one of the conversation’s lulls, showing Ruby exactly where his mind was. She coughed on the wine she’d been drinking, and he clapped her on the back jovially.