Page 81 of The Bewitched Viking

“By the by, why has a lock been put on the chicken coop? Can you open it for me?”

He started to laugh then and began to walk toward the outer bailey.

“Answer me,” she demanded to his back.

He didn’t stop walking away, just kept on laughing.

“I’ll show him,” he thought he heard her mutter, just before something hit him on the back of the head with a wet splat.

He turned with disbelief. The wench was dancing from foot to foot, taunting him with a fat lump of snow in each extended hand. She had dared to strike him with a snowball?

He took two steps toward her, exiting the castle grounds again.

She backed up two steps. “Now, Tykir, I was just doing you a favor.”

“A favor?” he hooted. “What kind of feminine illogic is that?”

“You said just several days past that you never had any playmates as a child…no one to have snowball fights with.”

His eyes grew wide at that. Then he chuckled. “You wish to play with me?” He took two more long steps closer.

She dropped her snowballs and ducked behind a wide tree. Peering around, she replied, “Nay. ’Twas just a joke…because you were ignoring me.”

“So, now you want my attentions?” He skirted around the tree and smiled.

“Not those kinds of attentions, you lout.” She skipped to the other side.

He stalked her, feinting one way, then the other.

She turned tail and ran for the open gates of the castle ramparts.

He meant to grab her by the waist from behind but his foot slipped in the snow and he ended up tackling her to the ground, falling on top of her.

“I can’t breathe, you big oaf,” she said in a suffocated whisper.

He lifted himself slightly, allowing her to turn onto her back, then immediately pressed his body over hers, holding her fast to the ground. He took both her wrists in one hand and held her arms above her head. “Now you have my attention,” he said, also in a suffocated whisper.

And she did have his attention.

Her hood had come off in the struggle and her bright red hair lay in cascades over the white snow, like silken flames. Her face was wind-flushed under her creamy, freckled skin. Her lips parted and she breathed heavily from their exertions. She stared at him through clear green eyes, framed with blondish-red lashes and brows.

She was the same near-homely woman he’d first seen on the Northumbrian moors tending her sheep. And she was different. Now she was beautiful to him. How could that be?

“So, the Saxon wench wants to play with a Viking, hmm?” he teased, taking a handful of downy snow in his free hand and rubbing it into her face.

She struggled and sputtered, to no avail. “You have me at a disadvantage, Viking…being as big as a war horse. Release me.”

“Nay, not till you pay forfeit for your misdeed.”

“Hah! And what might that be?” she said, sweeping her tongue over her top and bottom lips to remove the lingering flakes.

He felt that sweep over every nerve ending in his body, and one in particular.

“You have already refused my coin. And I am not going to gift you my prize ram, even though your land is well suited to raising sheep.”

He laughed. “Never once did it occur to me to ask for a bloody lump of mutton as forfeit.”

“What then?” she asked, still struggling against his hold.