Page 119 of The Bewitched Viking

She stood suddenly, pulling her hands from his grasp.

“Where are you going?”

“To the garderobe.”

He stood, as well.

“Where do you think you’re going?” she snapped churlishly.

“With you?”

“Do not be ridiculous,” she chastised him, walking off. Over her shoulder, she added, “I make this visit about fifty times a day. Willst thou accompany me each time, my lord of the privy?”

“Didst the wench need to slice me with her sharp tongue? All she had to say was she wanted to go alone. Men go to the privy together. Why not men and women?” he muttered to himself as he sat there staring at the loathsome concoction on the palm of his hand. Quickly, he dropped it to the rushes at his feet and scraped the sticky remains against the edge of the table. Beast and Alinor’s sheepdog, Beauty, ambled up, sniffed at the cheese, then turned up their noses and ambled away. Smart dogs!

Soon Alinor returned and sat down across from him with a long sigh.

He had no idea what the sigh meant…probably some offense he’d inadvertently committed. “Dost thou want more to eat, dearling?” he inquired, trying for a more tender tone and pushing the trencher closer to her.

She shook her head, shoving the trencher away with repugnance. “I would vomit if I took a bite of that now.”

Who wouldn’t? But, oh, she looked so beautiful sitting there with her hands folded in her lap. He wanted to take her into his arms and hug her and kiss her and tell her that he lo—lo—how he cared, but first he wanted to know what the hell was going on.

“Where are your brothers?”

She shrugged. “Wessex, I presume.”

“Why are you not with them?”

She stiffened at that terse question and would have left his clumsy presence if he hadn’t leapt over the table and sat beside her on the bench, forcing her to stay. “I can always go to them now,” she sobbed. She was back to weeping again.

“Alinor, you are never leaving again…not Dragonstead…or…or me.” There he’d said it…almost.

“I’m not?”

“Nay. Now, tell me why you went with your brothers if that was not your desire.”

“Because…oh, Tykir, they killed Karl. Well, leastways, their mercenaries did.”

“Mercenaries? Karl? Dost thou mean the young boy who works for me in Hedeby?”

She nodded, and the tears kept flowing. Like a waterfall, they were.

“I’ll kill those two, I swear I will.”

She told him the entire story then, and he got angrier by the minute. To think that her brothers would threaten Alinor so, in his very presence practically. To think that they had killed Karl. And to think that Alinor trusted so little in his expertise in protecting himself and those under his shield. But that was a bone he would pick with her later.

“And then they released me when they found out,” she finished.

He shook his head like a wet dog. So much information she had hurled at him, and still he was baffled. “Found out what?”

She looked at him through huge green eyes, like pale green emeralds, and waited for him to understand. He recognized the vulnerability in her quivering lips and wringing hands; he shared it. But…

Suddenly, everything came together in his thick head. The gammelost. The frequent visits to the garderobe. The vomiting. The need for sleep. And the weeping.

“Are you with child, Alinor?” he asked, and could not believe the words came, unbidden, from his lips.

She nodded. Oh, God, she nodded.