Page 81 of My Fair Viking

Tyra looked right and left to see who had spoken. The other occupants of the room were doing the same. Then all eyes moved to the unmoving figure in the bed.

"Father, was that you?" Tyra asked, taking one of his hands in hers… a hand which remained lifeless.

Adam pushed her aside with a rude swing of his hips, almost knocking her over. She was about to protest, vehemently, but she restrained herself when she saw that Adam was reacting as a healer. He was listening to her father's heart rate and lifting his eyelids. Under his breath, he murmured to Rashid, who had joined him and was helping to remove the head wrapping to examine the wound, "I have been suspicious for days now. Is it possible the king is not really unconscious?"

Rashid shrugged and took the soiled wrappings from him, handing him some clean ones.

"Looks deader'n a door hinge to me," Bolthor mused.

"Mayhap he is dead and 'twas his ghost speaking," Ingrith whispered in a voice of awe.

"I was saving some of my best dried flowers for his funeral." Drifa confessed.

"You could always stick a bouquet in the hole in his head," Rafn quipped.

"Rafn!" Vana chided and pinched him in the ribs.

Rafn just grinned at her.

"I was thinking that if father lives, he could put a jewel in the hole," Breanne said with a bite of sarcasm. "You know how much he likes to adorn his hair with beads and ornaments. He is ever so vain about his hair."

Suddenly Alinor punched Tykir in the arm. "You lout! You did that, didn't you?"

"Did what?" Tykir was rubbing his upper arm with great drama.

"Projected your voice to make it appear as if the king had spoken. Like you did that time with the sheep at Dragonstead. For shame! Making jest on such a serious occasion." She punched him again.

All of Tyra's sisters were listening raptly to the interchange between Tykir and Alinor. No doubt they saw them as an example of longtime lovebirds.

"For shame, Alinor! That you would make such false charges against me… your beloved husband. And you know why I pretended to be a ram speaking to you at Dragonstead. Dost recall the message?" He waggled his eyebrows at her.

Alinor giggled in response. "Willst thou never grow up, Tykir?"

"I hope not… and you should, too. Forever young, that is us." He waggled his eyebrows some more. "I at least have some decorum. You never heard me mention finger-pleasuring."

Every person in the bedchamber let loose an interested exclamation of "Finger-pleasuring?" except Tykir, who was beaming brightly, and Adam and Tyra, who were turning red with embarrassment, and the king, who continued to lie motionless.

"How could you, Adam? How could you? Did you have to tell everyone?" Tyra addressed Adam in a mortified whisper.

"Me? I said naught."

Tyra, even without a hole in her head, was developing the world's biggest headache. For a certainty, it felt as if her brain was leaking out.

"What exactly is finger-pleasuring?" Vana wanted to know.

Rafn whispered something in her ear.

Vana squealed with incredulity before she clamped a hand over her mouth. Tyra could tell she was smiling behind the hand.

Tyra groaned.

Adam groaned. Then he immediately seemed to pull himself together as he straightened and went over to a chest where he proceeded to wash his hands from the water in a pottery bowl and dry them on a linen cloth. When he was done, he declared, "It would be best for my patient if all of you would leave his sick chamber."

"How is he?" Tyra asked quickly.

He gave her a long look, as if to say it was about time she gave concern to her father.

"He is fine," he said, addressing everyone in the room. "Methinks he will awaken soon." In an undertone, Tyra thought he added, "if he hasn't already."