Page 66 of The Last Viking

Meredith clamped her lips together, resisting the urge to ask Rolf to elaborate on his insane logic. But her eyes threw daggers at the infuriating man.

“If we were in my land, my father would go to your father and ask for your hand in marriage.”

She giggled at that ridiculous notion. A Viking jarl entering her father’s staid library? No doubt replete with furred mantle and battle axe. Then she inhaled sharply. Marriage? She hadn’t expected that. But she liked it. A lot.

“There is naught of amusement in formal wedding negotiations, Merry-Death. A legal wife is distinguished from a concubine by the bride price her husband’s family pays for her.”

Meredith didn’t like the sound of “price.” It made her feel like chattel. “And if my father refused?”

“I would have you anyway.” He grinned at her with heart-stopping arrogance.

“Are you…are you asking me to marry you?”

“Yea…nay. Damn, I am bungling this badly because I care too much.”

Bungling? This guy’s bungling could charm the socks off a nun.

He took a deep breath before resuming. “If we were in my homeland, I would get down on my knees—” he looked pointedly at his kneeling position—“and pledge you my troth…man to woman. The Viking way. ’Tis as valid in the eyes of the gods as any Christian marriage.”

“I want to touch you so badly.” She whimpered under the sweet caress of his words.

He denied her plea, soothing her with a butterfly stroke of his fingertips across her lips. “But that wouldn’t satisfy my family, especially my mother. Banns would be called up and down the fjords throughout Norway, and a grand wedding feast would be planned. Each week, I would send a new and more wondrous present to entice you to my bed—fine jewelry from Byzantium, sable furs from the North Seas, fine silks, a newly foaled Saracen colt, fragrant oils from the east. When the fated day arrived, we would wed in the loud and boisterous way of Norsemen throughout time, and then say our vows afore the priest who serves my mother’s chapel. The celebration would last two sennights.”

She smiled at the splendid picture he painted.

“But we are not in my time, or my land, and ne’er will be.” He sighed. “Leastways, not together.”

Ripples of panic drew her alert.

“So, I must improvise.”

“This is the nineties, Rolf. Couples today rarely wait till marriage to consummate a relationship, especially when engaged, or committed.”

“Ah, but I am not a man of the nineties.”

Geez, this is a new twist. A man insisting on celibacy before marriage. But I kind of like it. Yes, I do. He’d better not make me wait too long, though. “We could be married by a priest, or a justice of the peace, here in Maine.”

“Nay, I am the man. I must provide. We’ll have a wedding, to be sure, but it will be that of a Norse man and woman. A personal ceremony—man to woman—not a religious one. A ritual of the heart.”

A ritual of the heart? What a wonderful expression! God, this man is really smooth. Or he speaks from deep emotion, which is a soul-staggering prospect. She blinked back tears. “When?”

“Two, three days at most.”

She moaned.

He chuckled. “Anticipation is not a bad thing, sweetling.”

“Easy for you to say,” she snapped.

“Nay, not easy at all,” he said somberly. Then he released a breathy sigh of resolution. “But I must make preparations first. The wedding garments for us both. My bride gift. The ritual bed furs. The marriage longhouse.”

“I don’t need all those things, Rolf. And if you go out and kill some animal to give me a fur, I swear I’ll kill you.” But then she caught the last of his statements. “Oh, no, no, no. I told you before. No longhouses built on my property.”

He smiled and patted her arm. “We shall see. Mayhap just a small one. A few discarded planks from your ship, some wattle and daub, a thatch or turf roof, a center hearth, a bed—most important, a bed. A sweat-house would be nice, too…just a tiny one, a hut, really. I don’t want to anticipate too much.”

“You…you…you…” she sputtered.

“Overwhelmed, are you, dearling?”