Page 18 of The Blue Viking

“What kind of mother are you that you entrust your son’s well-being to that ragtag guard? By thunder, woman! They have trouble enough holding on to their own bodily appendages, let alone those of a running child.”

“I am a good mother,” she declared hotly, “and don’t you dare say otherwise. You know naught about me, or my son, or my clan. Who are you to be my judge, Viking? Are you an expert on fatherhood now, as well as raping and pillaging?”

His only response was a raised eyebrow.

She decided to steer the conversation away from the dangerous subject of her son. “Exactly what was the nature of the proposition that Old John offered you?”

“You don’t know? The offer did not come from you?”

“Old John has the right to speak for me, on occasion. And I was unavailable to speak for myself, as you well know.” She shivered inwardly at remembrance of the wooden cage, which she planned to burn this morn in a joyous bonfire of celebration.

He waved a hand as if the details of the proposition were of little import. “I help you build up your defenses against the MacNabs. You remove my blue mark. Those are the essential details … all that you need to know for now.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What more could you ask?”

“Oh, lady, you owe me aplenty for what I have suffered these past five years. My time here is short, and my list of grievances is long.”

“You can see how poor my clanstead is. We have no coin or treasure to offer you in recompense.”

Rurik stroked his upper lip as he regarded her, then smiled—a slow, lazy smile that failed to reach his ice blue eyes. “Ah, then, I will have to take my payment in some other form.”

That was what Maire was afraid of.

A short time later, Rurik was standing at a low chest, splashing water onto his face from a pottery bowl, after having just shaved, when Maire came storming back into the bedchamber without knocking. The force of her entry was such that the heavy oaken door swung back on its hinges and hit the timber wall with a resounding crash. A battle shield, which had no doubt belonged to her father, fell to the floor from its wall hooks. The tapestry in the corner shook on its frame.

“Back already? That anxious to begin your punishment, are you?”

She glared at him. “Did you give an order that I was to be confined inside my own keep?” she demanded. “That huge warhorse of a guard of yours … the one with the battle-ax the size of a drawbridge … actually laid his hands on me when I attempted to walk through my own gates.”

“Laid his hands … Who, Stigand?”

“Aye, he’s the one. He had the nerve to lift me by the scruff of the neck—with one hand, mind you—and toss me back inside like a… like a pestsome dog.”

Rurik smiled at that image. Little did she know that she was fortunate to still have her head in place.

“I… need … to … see … my son,” she said, spacing her words evenly.

“Bring … him … here,” Rurik replied in like fashion.

“Nay,” she snapped, with no explanation whatsoever. Then her eyes dropped lower and took in his nakedness. In an instant, a rosy flush spread across her face, down to her neck, and beyond. He could tell that she wanted to bolt, but she stood frozen in place. “Have you no shame? Tsk-tsk. Don some garments, at once.” She turned away as if she expected him to comply immediately.

Hah! It will be a sorrowful day in Valhalla when I bend to the orders of a woman, and certainly not a woman who happens to be a witch. Just to annoy her, he took his time drying his face with a linen cloth, ran a carved-bone comb through his long hair, yawned loudly, and stretched widely. Only then did he pull on a pair of braies. “I am decent now,” he announced finally.

Her eyes swept over his hip-hugging, low-slung braies, which exposed his flat-ridged abdomen and the beginning of his navel. He had a good body, and felt no shame at her close scrutiny. “You are never decent,” she asserted.

He took that as a compliment and tipped his head in thanks.

She made a low, growling sound, which she intended to demonstrate her displeasure, but which he found oddly arousing. When she noticed the effect on him, she repeated the growl in a prolonged fashion, accompanied by the tugging of both hands at the roots of her luxuriant hair.

He surmised that she was getting frustrated.

’Twas always a good sign when women got frustrated, in Rurik’s opinion.

“Didst thou barge into my bedchamber for some particular reason?” he inquired sweetly.

“Your bedchamber?” she sputtered.

’Twas also a good sign when women sputtered over men’s superior actions, Rurik decided.