Page 57 of My Fair Viking

"What makes you think I want the man?" Tyra was wiping sweat off her brow with her forearm. Two hours of spear throwing and she still couldn't stop thinking about the rogue who had lured her to the stables. And that stupid kitten kept following her around. She'd had to lock it in the stable finally when it kept wandering onto the exercise fields, where it would have surely been speared.

Not that she cared about the mangy little cat. Even if it was named after her.

"Please, Tyra, give me some credit. You came back from the stables last night with your hair looking like a haystack, and Adam was no better. I do not mean to embarrass you, sister, but I swear there were whisker burns on your chest. And both of you were panting."

Oh… my… Valhalla!

Rafn was about to stroll by, a battle-ax in one hand and Alrek in the other. He carried the squirming boy by the scruff of his neck. Tyra didn't even want to know what Alrek had been doing now. Nor did she want to know where Thork, that wild son of Tykir and Alinor, was at the moment. What Alrek did not need was mischievous ideas planted in his head, and Thork was mischief himself. Mischief and Mayhem… that's what those two were. Bolthor ought to write a saga about them.

"Good day to you, Vana," Rafn drawled.

"Good day to you, Rafn," Vana drawled back at him.

Rafn winked at Vana.

Vana fluttered her blond eyelashes at Rafn.

Tyra was thinking seriously about tossing up the contents of her stomach.

Once Rafn was gone, Tyra told Vana, "If you think for one moment that I am going to start batting my eyelashes at a man like a mush-brained maid, then you are surely demented. Flirting! Hah! That is not in my nature."

"Tyra, Tyra, Tyra," Vana sighed. "Flirting is in every woman's nature. But it does not just have to be fluttering your eyelashes, though that always works for me. Try this sometime."

Tyra's eyes nigh bulged out at the sight of Vana pursing her lips. "What is that supposed to accomplish? You look like a puffy fish."

"Tsk-tsk! Open your mind to suggestions, Tyra. When a woman makes a moue of her mouth this way, men think of kissing."

"Are you sure they do not think of fishes… or that you have eaten a sour apple?"

"And you have got to stop that scratching business. Really, Tyra, what could you be thinking to engage in such a vulgar touching of your female parts?"

"Men do it."

"Aaarrgh! Are you even listening to me? I am trying to make you more womanly, not manly."

"Why?"

"Dost really need to ask that question? So you can seduce the man and get married so the rest of us can have lives of our own."

"In other words, the same old blather."

She could tell that Vana wanted to throw her hands in the air with disgust, but her sister took several deep breaths for patience. "One last thing… and, yea, I know I should not toss too many bits of feminine wisdom your way at once, but, Tyra, you must change your walk."

"My walk? What is wrong with my walk?"

"You swagger, dear. A woman should sway gracefully when she walks." Vana looked left and right, then picked up one of several bricks that Drifa had arranged around a newly planted cherry tree. "Watch this," Vana instructed. Then she placed the brick on her head, held her arms out from her body, and proceeded to walk a straight line, first in one direction, then back again. Vana did, indeed, appear graceful, and, blessed Thor, her hips did sway mightily.

"I could never do that," Tyra asserted.

"Yea, you could," Vana insisted, pushing the brick into Tyra's hand. "Practice."

Tyra had a hard time concentrating on spear throwing the rest of the morning when all she could see in her imagination was herself with a brick on her head. No, that wasn't all she saw. She also saw a too-handsome-to-be-true Saxon doctor with his mouth on her breast.

Could I really learn to flirt? And walk like a longship riding the waves? And purse my lips? Never! Never ever! Well, mayhap once. Nay, never, never, never!

Save me, Odin, she prayed.

But all she heard in her head was Loki laughing.