Page 13 of Viking in Love

No sense of humor.

“You are surely the most loathsome lout I have e’er encountered.”

Whaaaat? He had not been expecting an attack. In fact, he needed a moment for his sleep-hazed brain to take in this apparition before him.

“Your keep is filthy, pigs broke through the sty fence and are all over the bailey, I saw dozens of mice scampering in your great hall, thatch needs replacing on the cotters’ huts, you beget children like an acorn tree gone wild, your staff take their ease like high nobility, there are several blubbering servants arguing over who will bury the priest who is laid out in your chapel, and you…you slothful sluggard, you lie abed, sleeping off a drukkin night, no doubt.”

Whoa! One thing was for certain. This would not be yet another woman trying to crawl into his bed furs. “Stop shrieking. You will make my ears bleed.” Caedmon rolled over on his side, tugging the bed linen up to cover his lower half, then sat up.

“Bestir thyself!”

“Nay!”

“Have you no shame?”

“Not much.”

“Are you lackbrained?”

“No more than you for barging into my bedchamber.”

“Even if you have no coin, there is no excuse for the neglect.”

“Not even the fact that I have been gone nine long months in service to a king undeserving of service?”

“Where is the lady of this estate?”

’Tis just like a woman to think a woman is the answer to everything! “There is no lady.”

“Hmpfh! Why am I not surprised?”

Now he was getting annoyed. “Sarcasm ill suits you, m’lady. Have you ne’er been told that?”

“The blade goes both ways, knave.”

His eyes went wide at her foolhardy insults. “Who in bloody hell are you?”

“Breanne of Stoneheim.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“She’s a princess,” someone called out from the corridor. He saw now that a crowd of people were standing just outside the open doorway, being entertained by this shrew’s railing at him. Geoff and Wulf were in the forefront, of course, laughing their arses off.

“Well, Princess Breanne, what do you in my home and my bedchamber?”

She had the grace to blush. “My sisters and I came here, on our way…as a stopping-off place…for a…uh, visit…on our journey. Your castellan offered us hospitality.”

He could tell by the deepening red on her cheeks that she was either lying or stretching the truth.

“Sisters?”

“She has four sisters,” Geoff offered. “All princesses.”

Five princesses? Here? Oh, Lord!

“And they are accompanied by two scowling Vikings who are about this tall,” Wulf added, holding a hand high above his head. And Wulf was a big man by any standard.

“They were only scowling because your archers aimed their bows at them,” the lady declared, doing her own good job of scowling.