Page 87 of The Bewitched Viking

“Why did you not go?”

“I have more important things to do here at Dragonstead.”

There was blessed silence for a moment as she pondered that news, and he proceeded through the kitchen and into the roofed outdoor passageway leading to the bathhouse. Girta and Bodhil and the other kitchen maids, who had been chattering as they worked to prepare the day’s meals, looked up, their conversations suspended. Then they burst into a giggling fit.

“I’m going to kill you for this humiliation,” Alinor swore.

“I’m shivering in my braies,” he said, dropping her to her feet in the steam chamber, where he already had a strong fire going and the rocks heated to red-hotness.

She glanced about her, then stabbed him with a glare. “How long did you say your men would be gone?”

“Two days,” he said.

And he did not even try to hide his smile.

“I love combing your hair,” Tykir said as she sat on a stool before his bedchamber fire. He sat on a chair behind her, running an ivory comb through the thick strands of her wet waist-length hair.

Alinor rolled her eyes up into her head at his words, which he intended to be seductive. Hah! She was unseducable.

“’Tis a sensual experience, do you not agree?” he continued in a husky voice, unaware of her eyes rolling.

Sensual? Huh? “Oh, certainly,” she said. Then, “Do you comb women’s hair often?”

He laughed…a low, masculine rumble, which was not entirely unattractive. “Nay, this is a first for me.”

“How fortunate for me,” she remarked drolly. Next he will want to pare my toenails, and deem it ecstasy.

“You could say I’m a virgin of sorts,” he chortled.

“Of sorts being the key words, I presume.”

He rapped her on the shoulder with the comb. “Sarcasm ill becomes you, my lady.” Then he placed one hand on top of her head and with the other hand continued to run the comb ever so slowly down the length of her hair. “Does the hair combing arouse you as much as it does me, witchling?”

This time she did not roll her eyes. Her eyes nigh popped out of her head.

The Viking had gone mad. And he would find a way to blame her for this latest calamity once he came to his senses. Start harping on the witchcraft nonsense again. But she refused to take responsibility for his present bizarre actions.

Mayhap it was a long life of some pain that had been eating away at his brain. Mayhap it was an excess of lust in his bloodstream. Mayhap it was the fever that had pushed him over the dividing line from sanity to insanity. Mayhap it was just too much damn gammelost.

Hair combing! The man had requested that she comb her hair afore the fire in his bedchamber…naked. Now, if that was not mad, she did not know what was.

She had refused, of course

To which he had offered a compromise. He would comb her hair for her and she could wear the linen chemise, which was near transparent from the wetness of her recent bath.

Bathing and hair combing as the first installment of a punishment plan? Yea, the man was demented.

Being no fool, she’d acquiesced. After a lifetime of trying to argue with her dunderhead brothers, she knew how to pick her battles and when it was the wiser choice to yield.

Not that she intended to surrender to the brute’s lascivious demands, unquestionably the next step in his punishment plan. Had he not mentioned his outrageous plan to make her his love slave? Blessed St. Beatrice! She was not even certain she knew what being a love slave entailed.

Well, that was not her immediate concern. Nay, she bided her time till the right moment. Then she would make a dash for the door and a hiding place she’d discovered these past few days at Dragonstead. She figured this madness that had overcome Tykir would pass, as surely as his fever had. Then she would be able to negotiate a more just “punishment,” more in the line of reparations. Some logical arguments…a little groveling…a few coins…mayhap an ell or two of her prized woolen fabrics thrown in for good measure…and everyone would be happy.

She inhaled deeply for patience, screening out the droning sound of Tykir’s chatter—something half-witted about punishment sometimes being sweet—and the surprisingly pleasant rhythm of the comb passing through her drying hair. Concentrate, Alinor. You must come up with a plan for escape…how to get out of this bedchamber without the big oaf lumbering after you.

Her eyes latched onto a high-backed chair on the other side of the hearth—the one Tykir had purchased in Hedeby—that matched the one on which he sat. It was a beautiful work of craftsmanship, with carved Nordic designs and a series of interlacing oval holes along the top.

Alinor smiled with sudden inspiration.