THE RELUCTANT VIKING By Sandra Hill

“Shush, sweetling. ‘Tis over now.”

“You beast,” she accused tearfully, “standing here like a statue, letting me think you didn’t care.”

“You deserve a little torture for all you have put me through,” Thork teased as he nuzzled her neck. When he pulled away slightly and looked down, he exclaimed with feigned horror, “Good Lord, woman, you are sopping my entire cloak with your tears.” Lowering her to the ground but keeping an arm looped over her shoulder, he said in an aside to Hrolf and Dar, who had moved closer, “Is this what I will have to put up with for the rest of my life—a weeping, slobbering woman?”

Hrolf gave his grudging congratulations, and Dar bear-hugged her, stating gruffly, ” ‘Tis all as I had planned.” Poppa joined them, and they discussed the ceremony to be held the next day.

Thork winked mischievously at Ruby and ordered with mock sternness, “I would like to have cheeseburgers and baklava for my marriage feast tomorrow, woman. Dost think thou could manage that betwixt your bouts of blubbering?” Then he followed with his now familiar, annoying pattern of tweaking her behind.

Ruby didn’t care. He’d said ‘for the rest of my life.” That was a promise she liked.

* * *

The hastily arranged wedding in the Rouen cathedral went off surprisingly well the next day, considering the small amount of time they’d had for planning.

Ruby did, in fact, supervise the making of cheeseburgers and baklava to supplement all the sumptuous foods Poppa ordered for the nuptial feast. It turned out to be a monumental task. The Vikings, known for their voracious appetites, consumed two hundred cheeseburgers and fourteen platters of baklava.

“Can you move?” Ruby teased, patting Thork’s flat but stuffed stomach.

“Yea, I can, and will show you just how well in a short time. Ne’er doubt it.” The heat in his eyes showed how much he wanted to do just that. Hrolf had infuriatingly refused to allow them to sleep together on the eve of their wedding.

“Well, I don’t know. You are an over-the-hill married man now, and—”

Thork gave her a quick kiss on the mouth to stop her devilry. That caused their guests to bang their goblets on the tables, calling for a more serious effort. He laughed, pulling Ruby onto his lap, and kissed her thoroughly.

Later, as he spoke to his grandfather on his other side, Ruby marveled at the contrasts between this wedding and her previous one, and the similarities. She still couldn’t separate the two men in her mind. In a way, she felt as if she’d married Jack all over again—an earlier, more primitive version, but her husband just the same.

And the biggest constant of all was her all-consuming happiness. Jack had been her perfect first love. He’d brought her everything new and hopeful in the world, and together they’d forged a life based on the youthful belief that anything is possible in the gift of life if the package is tied with the strings of love. Thork was the other side of the same coin. Not so young. Certainly jaded, seemingly without hope. Definitely not perfect. But he loved her, and that’s what real, mature love was all about, Ruby realized. When a man and woman love each other despite their flaws, despite the stumbling blocks life throws their way, that is true love.

“Why so pensive, sweetling?” Thork asked, running a rough palm caressingly up and down the sleeve of her silk dress.

“I was just thinking how happy I am,” she answered, pleased to see the joyous leap in his eyes at her words. “You know, I had a professor in college who was discussing the poet John Milton and his principle of ‘cloistered virtue.’ Milton contended that the truly virtuous person is not the one who hides from the world in a monklike fashion, but who lives in the midst of life’s muck and still manages to be moral—”

“Oh, Ruby,” Thork said with a laugh, pulling her onto his lap once again. “You make my mind fuzzy with all your confusing words. What have monks to do with love?”

Ruby slapped his arm playfully. “Let me finish, you rogue. I just meant that Milton’s philosophy could be extended to include ‘cloistered love.’ Don’t you think the stronger love is the one which has been tested and forged by adversity, rather than one which has been sheltered and based on unrealistic expectations?”