Page 76 of A Tale of Two Vikings

“Why?”

“I have been…uh, noticing you of late.”

“Why?”

“Do not be coy, m’lady,” he said, tweaking her chin. Nobody ever tweaked her chin, but she was too surprised to react before he went on, “I have been getting your hidden messages.”

“What hidden messages?”

“Oh, the sway of your hips. The licking of your lips. Your jutting bosom.”

Helga could understand how he might have misunderstood the signals she had been sending to Vagn.

“Besides, Vagn said—”

She dropped the threads she’d been sorting. “Vagn said what?”

“Well, he didn’t precisely say you were hot for me, but the way he worried over your attentions to me, ’twas obvious…you know.”

“Nay, I do not know. What precisely did Vagn tell you?” I will kill the lout. I swear I will.

“‘Stay away from Helga’—that is what he said.”

“Vagn said that to you.” An odd thrill rippled through Helga. Mayhap the lout did care for her, after all.

“Yea, and I figure that he would not admonish me so if he didn’t suspect you are attracted to me. Many women are, Helga; so do not blush. As to Vagn, he obviously envies me my fine beard, and you know what they say about men with mustaches, don’t you?”

The waggle of his eyebrows, which appeared to be plucked into a perfect arch, should have told her that further questions could be perilous. But did she listen to her intuition? Nay. “What do they say about men with mustaches?”

“They are better able to please ladies in the bedsport.” Now he was twirling the other end of his mustache.

She frowned, unable to picture how a mustache would figure in the coupling in any woman-pleasing way.

Finn must have interpreted her frown of confusion as permission to elaborate. “More friction when the man’s mouth is engaged down below.”

Helga gasped. She’d never heard anything so outrageous in all her life. Could it be true?

Finn preened as if he’d informed her of some great personal talent. Mayhap it was.

“Methinks that Vagn envies my finesse. After all, I have a fine mustache and he does not. It’s all in the bristles, you know, and the wax.”

This is more information than I want or need. How did this conversation go so far afield…like into the midden?

She decided to let him down gently and tell him she was not really interested in him. But just then, Vagn came storming in.

“I thought I told you to stay away from Helga,” he shouted at Finn, fists raised.

“Try and make me,” Finn countered, raising his fists, too.

She jumped between the two just in time.

Vagn and Finn were of the same height and build, but to her way of thinking, Vagn was a much more handsome man. Today he wore dark brown braies tucked into low boots and a leather tunic belted at the waist. His long blond hair was tied back off his face—a face with high cheekbones, strong jaw and cleft chin. Eyes as clear as a summer sky glared at her icily. This was a man who needed no mustache to enhance his masculinity. He was man enough without adornments.

But handsome didn’t matter in her present situation. The man was interfering in her life.

“Who are you to make decisions concerning my life, Vagn? ’Tis none of your affair whom I associate with.” She did not stop to consider the irony of the fact that she’d planned to get rid of Finn herself and was now defending her association with him.

“Hah! You made it my affair when you concocted that scandalous proposal.”