Page 28 of The Viking’s Captive

Silence permeated the room then as her sisters harumphed their discontent and murmured such comments as “Tyrant!” or “She never wants us to have fun,” or “Who named her master?” Tyra ignored the muttering and began washing her long hair with the aid of one of the kitchen thralls.

When she came up from rinsing the soap from the heavy strands, it was to hear that her sisters had given up on one objectionable subject only to move on to another equally objectionable one.

“What is he like?” Ingrith asked.

“Who?” Tyra answered, as if she didn’t well know whom her sister referred to. Adam was the subject of everyone’s conversation at Stoneheim. She stood and wrapped one linen towel around her head turban style and began to towel off her body with another.

“The healer, of course,” Ingrith said.

“Arrogant,” she replied flatly.

“Really?” Ingrith was leaning over the shoulder of the heavyset cook, Signe, who was kneading the flat, unleavened manchet bread dough for baking. The cook’s assistant, Arva, also got her attention. Ingrith watched closely as Arva ground grain—rye, barley, and even peas—on the large round stone known as a quern. Little by little, Arva poured grain through a hole in the top, then turned the top stone around and around with the handle, thus squashing the grain between the two stones and eventually turning it into flour. It was a long, tedious process, especially in a keep this size, where at least one hundred loaves were consumed per day. Meanwhile, Ingrith continued to talk. “Seems to me I heard Rashid say something like ‘Confidence is a great aphrodisiac.’”

I am really, really going to wring Rashid’s neck… and his tongue, as well.

Vana stopped her flower arranging and tilted her head, as if pondering some great question. “So, you say Adam is arrogant? Hmmm. Arrogance is not such a bad thing … especially in a handsome man.”

“He is not all that handsome,” Tyra lied.

“Are you demented, Tyra?” Breanne exclaimed. She had finished peeling apples and set her knife down. “The man is godly handsome, and you well know it.”

Tyra felt her face heat with embarrassment. In truth, she’d had the same thoughts about him being godly handsome.

“Did you notice the way he moves?” Vana asked Drifa. “So smooth and … well, sensual, rather like a large cat.”

Her other sisters agreed with a communal, “Yea.”

Moves? He moves sensually? Holy Thor! Now I will be watching the way he moves.

“And his hands,” Breanne added. “I like a man with competent hands. Long-fingered. One could just imagine what those hands could do when …” Her voice drifted off as she bit her bottom lip and got a dreamy look in her eyes, imagining the gods only knew what.

Drifa, Ingrith, and Vana all sighed. Their eyes glazed over, too.

That’s all I need. To picture the rogue’s fine-fingered hands doing sinful things to me. For the love of Frigg, I wager that image is now firmly planted in my feeble brain.

“Gilly, that new maid from Erin, was in the sweat-house where he went to bathe a short time ago,” Ingrith confided in a whispered voice that bespoke some secret about to be divulged. “She said he has a very big—”

“That’s it! Enough! No more about the healer!” Tyra interjected before Ingrith could finish whatever observation she was about to make about the brute’s anatomy.

I am not thinking about what is big on his body. I am not thinking about what is big on his body. I am not thinking …

“She’s blushing! Tyra is blushing!” Vana said with a hoot of glee.

I am not blushing. Not, not, not!

“You know what that means,” Vana said.

Tyra’s other sisters began to talk all at once, like a flock of cackling chicks.

“Oh, for the love of Loki! Could it possibly be?” Breanne said. She was staring at Tyra in the oddest way.

“What? What?” Tyra asked.

“Ooh, ooh, my prayers to Freyja have been answered,” Vana added. She was staring oddly at Tyra, too.

“What? What?”

Drifa glanced at Breanne and Vana, then at Tyra, and exclaimed, “Thank the gods!”