“A looking glass?”Her father, who lovedinventions of all kinds, set down his fork.“I’ve only ever heardof one.Did he seem able to see from a distance?”
“He did.”She recalled his reaction to herstopping and staring at him.
“How far?”
“His ship,The Rover, was the closestto shore, so maybe fifty fathoms.”
Her father’s blue eyes lit with excitement.“I’ll have to seek out this man and his looking glass.”
“No need,” Anders said from his seat to theirfather’s right.“I met the owner ofThe Rovertoday at thetrade market and invited him to sup with us tomorrow noon.”
Alina’s twin, Anders was tall, blond, andblue-eyed like their father, with a smile and a body that madegirls swoon, and a personality as outgoing as his smile.Incontrast, Alina was of medium height and build with brown hair andgreen eyes like her mother, though without her mother’s sweet andopen disposition.She was, as her mother often said, born an oldsoul, a bit of a loner who preferred the natural world of sky, sea,earth, and animals to most people.She would never have invitedsomeone she’d only met today to sup with her family tomorrow.Evensomeone as interesting as the man onThe Roverpromised tobe.
“What’s his name?”she asked Anders.
“Leif.”
“That’s a Northman’s name,” her father said.“Doesn’tThe Roversail out of the Green Isles?”
Anders nodded.“It does.”
“What does he look like?”Alina asked.
The head of every person at the high tableswung in her direction.She seldom asked about any of the hundredsof sailors who came to Sea Ridge to trade, and then she’d only askabout the goods they were trading rather than the men themselves.At ten and nine years of age, she was old enough to have wed andthen some.
It wasn’t that she was indifferent to a good,intelligent, handsome man: it was that she’d never met one who’dcaught or held her attention in a way that made her want to marry.Her mother had met her father when she was only eight years old andhad proposed marriage to him then and there.Until Alina met such aman, she was content remaining single and unwed.
“Why do you ask?”Anders said.
“Oooh, Alina liikes Leeif,” her youngerbrother, Aaron, sang.
“Leave Ali alone,” her youngest brother,Aleksi, said, shoving Aaron.
“Boys,” their mother scolded.
“I’m interested in the man’s looking glass,”Alina answered Anders and ignored Aaron.“I was wondering if thisLeif is who I saw on the ship with it, is all.”She gave Aleksi aquick wink.
“Tall, blond, blue eyes, short beard,” Anderstold her.
“Then he’s not the man I saw on the ship,”she said, disappointed, though she couldn’t have said why.Otherthan the strange pulse of recognition she’d felt when she’ddiscovered him watching her.
“Is he bringing the looking glass with himtomorrow?”her father asked.
“I’ll send word in the morning to make surehe does,” Anders assured him.
CHAPTER 2
Spring’s Eve
Alina smoothed the soil over the cabbageseeds and glanced out the window facing west into the courtyard forabout the hundredth time.The higher the sun rose in the sky, themore edgy she became, which was ridiculous.This man Leif wascoming to sup with her brother and her father, not her, and wasn’teven the man who’d been watching her from the ship, according toAnders’s description.
Still, she couldn’t shake the nervous energythat had kept her awake half the night and up at the first light ofdawn.She kept telling herself it was the change from winter tospring, and the excitement of the upcoming festivities.But evenshe didn’t believe it.
She ran her fingertips across the featheryleaves newly sprouting from her fennel plant, a gift from a healerwho’d traveled to Sea Ridge from the southern shores of the MidEarth Sea last spring festival, and concentrated on working compostinto the soil around the bulb without injuring it.She heard men’svoices outside and turned to the door as it opened and her fatherwalked in, the looking glass in his hand, followed by Anders and atall, blond man who looked more Northman than Green Isler.
“Leif MacKinnon,” her father said, “meet mydaughter, Princess Alina.”
“It is an honor, Princess,” Leif said in theNorthern tongue with only the slightest hint of an outsider’saccent.He stepped forward, holding his hand out and smiling as ifhe expected her to swoon at his feet.
