Page 72 of A Tale of Two Vikings

She jerked into a sitting position and tugged at her gown so that her breasts and lower region were at least partially covered. “You never intended to stay, did you?”

“Now, Esme, you are being unreasonable.” He sat up and watched helplessly as she adjusted herself more fully. Once, he reached out a hand to pick some straw from her hair and she slapped him away.

“Unreasonable?” she shrieked. “I’ll tell you what is unreasonable. You thinking that I would allow you to do all those…things to me without the possibility of your staying. You tricked me.”

“You enjoyed those things,” he said accusingly.

“Yea, I did,” she admitted, standing clumsily and brushing off her gown as best she could. “But it will never happen again. Never.”

“Yea, it will. When I return, we will finish what we started here tonight,” he argued. Then: “Where are you going?”

“Off to find Eadyth and Alinor and tell them to start their parade of prospective bridegrooms,” Esme said without turning. She would not want him to see the tears brimming in her eyes.

“I will be back,” he threw out to her backside.

Hah! I’ve got news for you, Viking. You are not leaving. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not for a good long while. Not if I can help it. “You will pay for this, Toste. You will pay.”

Esme went off, not to find the ladies of Ravenshire, but to put her own plan into motion. Two could play at this game. Toste Ivarsson was soon going to find that he’d met his match.

The lull before the you-know-what…

By the time Toste reentered the keep, Esme was out of sight and almost everybody had gone to bed, except Eirik, Tykir and Bolthor, who still sat before the low fire in the solar. They took one look at Toste, then a quick second look and burst out laughing.

“Look, look, look! Ha ha ha!” Abdul squawked.

“Someone ought to make parrot porridge out of that dumb bird,” Toste said.

“You’re not the first person to suggest that,” Eirik commented.

Bolthor immediately began spewing forth one of his poems, “This Is the Tale of Toste the Torn.”

“Toste was a man torn

As ever was a Viking born.

Did he want her?

Did he not?

Should he swive her,

Should he not?

In the end, the maid would take

Things into her own hands,

So Toste would no longer be torn.”

“You have straw on your crotch,” Eirik pointed out.

“And your lips are red and puffy. Did someone punch you?” Tykir asked with false innocence.

“Methinks I detect a lump in his braies. So he might still be a bit tormented…and torn,” Bolthor concluded.

They were all grinning at him as they sipped their horns of mead. Vikings—and half Vikings, for that matter, as Eirik was—ever did enjoy teasing each other, and Toste did not mind all that much.

Still, he soon changed the subject. “I must needs leave on the morrow at first light with Sister Margaret.”