“Yea, if I know Selik, even now he lays betwixt a woman’s thighs, ‘stead of at the wharf where he should be.”
Thork and Olaf both laughed.
“I must go to my grandfather’s home in Northumbria on the morrow. Dar expected me weeks ago. I know you will guard the wench well until my return.”
“Will you sleep at my home tonight?”
Thork hesitated. “Nay, ‘twould be unwise.” Again, he and Olaf shared a secret understanding with knowing nods.
“When do you return?” Olaf’s face betrayed none of his feelings about having Ruby dumped in his lap.
“Two… three days.”
Three days! Ruby cringed at the prospect of a life without Thork, even for only a few days. “Thork, you can’t abandon me like this. We must talk. You’re my husband. You really are. Take me with you.”
“In a pig’s eye!”
Tears welled in Ruby’s eyes at his cruel treatment. She swiped at them with the back of her hand. “Don’t you care at all what happens to me?”
“Not a whit!”
The slimebucket! How could she be so attracted and repulsed by this man at the same time? Ruby wondered. “You’re not at all like Jack.”
“Good.”
“Come to think of it, you’re not even as good-looking,” Ruby lied in childish petulance.
“Think you I care if I appeal to a homely chit like you? Methinks you are the runt of a low-breed litter and should have been drowned at birth like the scrawny cat you are.”
“Why, you… you…”
“Lost for words, sweetling?” Thork asked as he tweaked her bottom impudently in passing. “Thor’s toenails! Your silent tongue has got to be the best thing that has happened to me all day.” He opened the door and called over his shoulder to Olaf with a laugh, “Good fortune, my friend. I will meet you in the courtyard after I say my farewells to Sigtrygg. Methinks I do you no favor putting her in your care.”
“Friend?” Olaf grumbled. “There’s naught of friendship in this chore you lay on me. More like punishment.”
Thork’s chuckle echoed after him as he departed, abandoning both Ruby and Olaf.
Ruby’s heart ached as she watched Thork walk away. He was going to desert her. Oddly, despite the insufferable nature of this Viking version of her husband, it felt just like Jack leaving her all over again. The pain didn’t get any better the second time around.
Thork probably wasn’t her husband. He couldn’t be her husband, but Ruby felt bereft, nonetheless, when it appeared that her only link with reality would splinter with Thork’s departure from Jorvik.
Seeing the disappointment on Ruby’s face, Olaf warned, “Your eyes reveal your heart’s leaning, little one. Best you guard your emotions better with such as Thork. Women mean little to him beyond the bed linens.”
Ruby looked up at Olaf, in whose hands her fate seemed to lay now, and asked hopefully, “Did I tell you I come from the future?”
Olaf literally snarled, grabbed her forearm and pulled her toward the door.
“Tell it to my wife Gyda. She will likely bang you on the head with her cooking ladle. Perchance then we will all get some blessed relief.”
Chapter Four
Ruby practically ran to keep up with Olaf’s and Thork’s long strides as they walked along the streets to Olaf’s home. Apparently it was on the edge of the town.
She tried to ask them questions about the intriguing things she saw—the crude, thatch-covered buildings with exquisitely carved wood eaves, the pan pipes and board games being played by fair-haired children in open doorways, the craftsmen turning out fine furniture and jewelry, and everywhere a busy, industrious populace—but they either answered in monosyllables or not at all.
A sharp object rubbed the bottom of Ruby’s aching foot, and she stopped. Stubbornly plopping down on a bench at the shaded side of a woodworker’s shop, Ruby waited for Thork and Olaf to notice she lagged behind. It didn’t take long.
“What mischief do you brew now?” Thork asked menacingly.
“No mischief. Just a stone in my shoe, a sore side and two men who think we’re in the Boston Marathon.”
“Marathon?”
“Never mind.”
Ruby replaced her running shoe with a sinking feeling she’d be saying that phrase a lot before this dream ended.