Page 92 of The Blue Viking

“I do not beat women,” Rurik told the boy flatly.

Jamie let out an exaggerated sigh of relief. “Guess I’ll be goin’ a-Viking with ye after all, then.”

Rurik had to laugh at that. “What would make you think so? That is the last thing on my mind.”

The child blinked at him several times before blurting out shakily, “Don’t ye … don’t ye want me?”

Rurik put his face in one hand and rubbed his fingertips across his creased forehead. When he looked up, the boy was gazing at him as if he’d asked the most important question in the world. “Of course I want you.” And, to Rurik’s amazement, he realized the truth of his statement.

“Well, then?” Jamie asked, putting his hands on his tiny hips with impatience … just as his mother was wont to do on occasion.

“Well, then, what?” Rurik asked.

“Don’t ye want to hug me? That’s what me mother always does when she gets teary-eyed.”

Before Rurik could register the fact that the rascal was accusing him of weeping, or that he’d asked him for a fatherly embrace, he was standing and his son was hurling himself high into his arms.

With the child’s face nestled in the crook of Rurik’s neck, and his skinny arms wrapped around his neck like a vise, Rurik hugged his son for the first time. And it was a glorious, glorious feeling.

His life would never be the same again.

And Cailleach had been right… his life was turning upside down.

It was after midnight and Rurik was making his way through the trestle tables in the great hall, which still bore the remnants of the night’s feast. There would be much cleanup work to do on the morrow.

Well, that was none of his concern. Rurik had more important things on his mind. Like his son, whom he’d just tucked into a pallet in an alcove off the great hall with promises that he would be there when the boy awakened. There were a hundred things Jamie wanted of him. Lessons in archery and swordplay. Trout fishing. A walk to his favorite mountain peak. Horseback riding. An exploration of the cave where Jamie had been hiding for weeks on end. And talk, talk, talk about every subject that would be of interest to a small boy, and some things that should not be of interest to a small boy.

How was Rurik going to do all this … deal with Maire … have the blue mark removed … and leave for the Hebrides and his wedding?

“Are you all right?” a male voice asked out of the darkness.

Rurik had just stepped from the hall doors into the courtyard, and he jumped with surprise. It was not one male, but four of them. Bolthor, Stigand, Toste, and Vagn. All waiting to accost him. All with worried frowns marring their faces.

“Nay, I am not all right,” he grumbled, sinking down to the stone steps.

They sank down beside him.

“How long have all of you known?” he demanded of them.

After a short bout of silence, Bolthor spoke for the group. “Several days … from when the scamp first got a bath and wore braids similar to yours.”

Rurik snorted with disgust.

“We figured that you must know, deep down, or that you would soon discover the truth,” Toste revealed. “After all, Jamie is a mirror reflection of yourself.”

Rurik turned on Stigand. “You above all others knew how I would react. You saw firsthand, when we were children, how I hated being the subject of mockery. How could you have withheld the news from me?”

Stigand shrugged. “I did not think you would care.”

Rurik’s head reared back with affront.

“You always said bringing children into a world of pain and degradation was not to your taste. I thought you would not want the child.”

“You are a fool to think such,” he declared hotly. “As much a fool as I for not seeing the truth.”

Anyone else who proffered such an insult to Stigand would be holding his severed head in his hands by now, but his old friend just shook his head sadly.

“Ah, but now that you know,” Vagn opined, “is it not a grand feeling to have a son? Leastways, I always imagined that it would be the highest accomplishment for a man.”