Page 35 of The Blue Viking

But Stigand was not to be placated. With one last glance of agony toward the roast pig, he ran from the great hall and out into the bailey. In the distance, his cries could be heard as one long, continuing wail.

“Shall we go to him?” Bolthor and Toste inquired of Rurik.

He shook his head. “Nay. He must be by himself. His rages are short-lived. Soon, he will return, on his own.”

“What was that about?” Maire asked Rurik finally, after everyone had sat back down and started eating.

Rurik wolfed down a good amount of food… none of it haggis … before he gave her his full attention. He smiled … a slow, sex-laden exercise … and reached over to finger the ends of her hair that had unfortunately dried into a mass of unfashionable curls. She should have pulled it back into a braid or a knot at her nape while it was still wet. “Like silk, it is,” he murmured, pulling one strand straight, then smiling when it coiled right back up.

She swatted his sinful fingers away. “Didst hear me? I asked what’s amiss with Stigand?”

His mischievous face went immediately gloomy, and he told her a condensed tale of the childhood he and Stigand had shared on some pigstead in Norway.

“I thought you said … or I had heard… that you were of noble birth.”

He shrugged, and told an equally preposterous story of being abandoned at birth because he had been born weak and undersized.

“You?”

“Me.”

A small tic worked in his taut jaw.

“Aha! You made this whole story up to win my sympathy. Well, I am not so easily fooled.”

“I take exception to your slander. Think you that I want your pity?” The tic was working even more rapidly now, and his eyes blazed blue ice at her.

“I think you would do anything to get me into your bed, Viking.”

He grinned at her. “That I own.”

“And keep a rein on your roving hands, or you may lose a finger or two to my dirk.” She tugged his palm off her upper thigh, where it had somehow crept, and pointed to the small knife sheathed on her belt.

“Oh, you will be in my bed furs, enticed or not. That is a fact, m’lady. Your pride is great, but my determination is greater.”

“Are all Norsemen as deluded as you?”

“No doubt.” With that, he tugged on the tasseled end of her belt and pulled her closer to him… so close she could smell the soap he’d used to bathe and the sprig of mint he’d chewed. “It’s the third best thing about us Vikings. Our delusions.” He jiggled his eyebrows at her, as if having delusions were a wonderful attribute.

The man was half-barmy.

“Dost know what your son did to me this eve?”

“What?” Alarm crossed Maire’s face… too extreme a reaction for his simple remark.

“He put dead tadpoles in my half boots. I discovered them after my bath in the loch.”

“The same boots that the cat relieved herself on?”

“Nay, another pair. I threw the soiled boots out in the midden.”

“You discarded a perfectly good pair of boots just because …” Maire was stunned at the waste, but she decided to keep her thoughts to herself and changed the subject. “Tadpoles, hmmm? Wee-Jamie did that? How do you know ’twas he?”

“Because there was cat fur all about… mangy black cat fur. Wherever your son goes, that cat is close by.”

Instead of making excuses for her boy, or claiming it could have been anyone, Maire promised, “I will make sure there is no repeat.”

He nodded. “By the by, where did that suckling pig come from anyhow? I did not see any pigsties about your keep. Plenty of sheep, but no pigs.”