Page 19 of Viking in Love

Turns out it could.

There was a young man…nay, a woman in men’s braies and tunic…bending over between her bouts of pounding to present her nicely rounded backside to his laughing men, who stood about like idiots. She was mending a fence around the pigsty.

The pigs were not pleased.

Neither was he.

CHAPTER FIVE

Oink, oink…there are pigs, and then there are PIGS!…

Breanne, straddling the top of the pigsty fence, paused to discuss some ideas with the Larkspur woodworker.

“Methinks that the lintels of the doorway leading to the keep, as well as the eaves of all these outbuildings, should have a particular design—even the stables, the chicken coop I am going to build next, and, yea, the pigsty. Mayhap matching the twining larkspur carvings that abound in the great hall’s wood trim.”

“Huh?” Efrim said. “What be larkspur?”

Breanne smiled. “Larkspur is a flower…delphinium. Look out in the fields beyond the castle. They are filled with wild larkspur, no doubt the reason for this estate’s name.”

“You are not decorating my pigsty with flowers.”

Breanne jerked and almost fell off her perch, saved only by the strong hand that grasped her upper arm, then yanked her off the fence and to her feet. It was the loathsome lout of the big…arrogance. Caedmon of Larkspur.

Efrim had the good sense to scoot away.

“Your sty fence was broken and the pigs were running wild,” she snapped, bending over to place her mallet and a handful of nails into a wooden work bucket. When she began to straighten, she looked over her shoulder…and caught Caedmon staring at her buttocks.

“You really are a loathsome lout.”

“Thank you, m’lady.” He made an exaggerated bow from the waist.

“’Twas not a compliment.”

“Coming from the likes of you, it is.”

She bared her teeth at him. “You belong on the other side of this fence with the other pigs.”

“Dost think so?”

If he were closer, she would have given him a mighty shove to place him exactly there.

As if reading her mind, he folded his arms over his chest and said, “If I go over that fence, so do you.”

“Loathsome lout!”

“You are repeating yourself.”

“Donkey dolt!”

“Irksome shrew!”

“Troll!”

“Harpy!”

“Stinksome warthog!”

He lifted a hand high and sniffed at his armpit. Apparently satisfied at his smell, he smiled at her. And, oh, it was a dangerous smile. The kind that lured women to do things they should not. “I am capable of repairing my own fence.”