My Lord Viking (25 page)

     
“Your father was gracious enough to reveal where you would go when you wished to be alone.”

     
“But why are you here?
 
I thought you went after Kortsson with Jack and the other stablemen.”
 

     
Nils took a deep breath and released it slowly.
 
“Kortsson is too cunning to be found by them...or by me today.
 
He had a good head start to find a place to hide where even I cannot trail him.
 
I lost his tracks on the stones leading to the shore.
 
I must wait for him to appear again.”

     
“At least you know he is still nearby.”

     
“Yes, and I will find him and put an end to his attempts to halt me.”
 
His mouth quirked in an abrupt smile.
 
“That is, however, for another day.
  
Now it is time for you and me to speak.”

     
“About what?” she asked, although she already knew.
 

     
“I could see that you had questions when I greeted your father, Linnea.
 
I thought it would be wise to come somewhere where we could speak of our
hyggja
.”

     
“Will you speak English?”

     
“I meant to say that we could speak of what we are thinking.”

     
She crossed her arms in front of her.
 
“You know quite well what I am thinking.
 
You should have told me you planned this little surprise for my sister’s wedding.”

     
“It would not be a surprise if you knew of it.”
 
Niles
looked up at the high rafters.
 
“This is amazing.”

     
Linnea recognized that change in his tone.
 
During the past fortnight, she had come to discover it was useless to continue to speak of a topic when he no longer wished to.
 
“It is the oldest part of the house.”
 

     
“When was it built?”

     
“Sometime at the beginning of the 12th century.”

     
He handed her the plate and walked to the firepit in the center of the floor.
 
“This is familiar.
 
We had such places to heat our homes, unlike the odd hearths you have pressed against the walls.”

     
“It is easier to build a chimney when the firebox is by the wall.”

     
“Chimney?
 
What is that?”

     
She pointed to the smoke-stained chimneypiece on the hearth between the two largest windows.
 
“That is all that you can see from inside the house.”

     
“The English stopped building good firepits simply so they could decorate the fronts of their hearths?”

     
Going to the thick doors that led outside, she set the plate on a table beside them.
 
She put her shoulder against one and shoved.
 
“Ouch!” she exclaimed when the door refused to move.

     
Nils laughed and went to help Linnea who was trying a second time to open the door.
 
“Do you always act like a battering ram to get what you want?”

     
“No, not always.”

     
“Odd, for it seems to me that you have since we first met.”

     
“Mayhap,” she said crisply as he pushed the door aside, “it is because you fail to heed me unless I am forceful.”

     
“I have heard you seldom be mistaken, but you are about this.”

     
She tried to push past where he stood in the doorway.
 
He clasped her shoulders and held her so that she could not escape him.
 
In the delicate dress she wore for her sister’s wedding, she might have donned strands of moonlight.
 
The light fabric swirled around his legs like sea foam.
 

     
Her eyes widened when he edged forward to pin her back against the door frame.
 
“Don’t, Nils...
Niles
,” she whispered.

     
“Don’t touch you?
 
You quiver when I touch you.
 
I thought it was because you fancy my touch as I fancy touching you.”

     
“Why are you making this more complicated?”

     
He smiled as he ran his finger along her shoulder.
 
“You ask as if you believe that I have any choice.”

     
“Of course, you have a choice.
 
You could treat me as a gentleman should.”

     
“Or I could kiss you.”

     
She shook her head.
 
“It is different now.”

     
“Because we are in your father’s house?”

     
“Yes, partly.”

     
“And the other part?”

     
She slid out the door and took a deep breath.
 
For a moment, he thought it was in relief at having escaped his embrace—a thought that sliced through him like a well-whetted blade—but then she said, “I love the scents in this back garden at this time of year.
 
The pungent green of the earth mixes with the salt from the sea.”

     
“Linnea, there is much we need to speak of.”
 
He resisted the compulsion to bring her back into his arms.
 
Then he would be able to think only of her and how much he wanted her.
 
Dressing up in an Englishman’s finery to come to the house had not been to seduce her, but to show her that it was time to continue with their plans to recover the knife.

     
“That is the chimney.”
 
She clasped her hands behind her.
 
“It draws the smoke from the fire up and out of the house.
 
It is much preferable to living in a cloud of smoke as was done before chimneys were invented around the 13th century.”

     
“Linnea, heed me.
 
We must speak of our journey to
London
.
 
Now that I am well, we must not delay.”

     
Her eyes, as dark as freshly tilled soil, lowered from the roof to meet his.
 
“You should go,
Niles
.”

     
“I am ready to leave for
London
when you are willing to go with me.”

     
“I cannot.”

     
“Why not?”

     
“A woman does not travel with a man who is not her husband or related to her by blood.”

     
“Another silly rule among all the rules you live under?”

     
Linnea walked back inside, pushing aside the door that had not completely closed.
 
She paused by the table and said, “I tire of you telling me all that is wrong with my time and my life.
 
Your time was not perfect, either.
 
Or maybe you thought so when you were enjoying your barbaric raids on innocent villagers.
 
People here lived in intolerable conditions.”

     
“With their pigs.”
 
He grinned.

     
She wanted to be angry with him, but she smiled.
 
“You are the most exasperating man I have ever met.”

     
“You know that is not true.”
 
He let the door close, leaving them draped in shadow again.
 
“I have met Tuthill now, too, do not forget.”

     
“I daresay you could match him, count for count, on any scale of exasperation, and you would still be labeled the most exasperating.”

     
Closing the distance between them with slow, studied steps, he said, “And I daresay that you like being exasperated, Linnea.”

     
“You are mad!”

     
“Am I?
 
I observed the wedding celebration before I made my presence known.”
 
His voice deepened to a husky roughness. “I observed
you
.
 
Your eyes did not sparkle when you spoke to Tuthill as they do now.”

     
“Mayhap even after a thousand years your head was battered enough so that you do not recognize the difference between vexation and...and...and—”

     
“Satisfaction?” he whispered, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips.
 
He brushed it with a light kiss.
 
Raising his head, he smiled.
 
“I trust that is the proper way to greet a lady whose attention a gentleman wishes to obtain.”

     
“Yes.”
 
She could barely hear her own answer over her feverish heartbeat.
 

     
“And this?”
 
He raised her hand again.
 
With a motion as slow as his steps had been toward her, he slid his tongue along the inside of one finger, across the sensitive skin at its base, and up her other finger.
 

     
Something shimmered deep within her, something unfamiliar, yet something splendid.
 
When he tipped her hand over and stroked her palm with the moist fire of his lips, she grasped the lapel of his coat, fearing that her knees would fail her.
 
He closed her hand within his and drew her even closer.
 

     
“That is not proper,” she whispered.

     
“However, neither is it exasperating.”

     
“No.”

     
“Share my quest with me,
unnasta
, and I will gladly share this with you.”
 
He bent toward her.

     
“No!”
 
Linnea pushed against his chest.
 
She could not free herself from the iron band of his arm around her waist, but he released her when her cry bounced off the walls of the great hall.
 

     
“Linnea, I need your help in
London
to fulfill my blood-oath.”
 
His hands framed her face.
 
“And, now that I can hold you without that sling between us, I can admit that I need you in my bed to satisfy this desire that you cannot deny.”

     
“I do not deny it.”
 
She stepped away from him again.
 
“But I do not intend to cede my good sense to it.
 
That is the difference between you and me.”
 

     
He laughed coldly, even though his eyes continued to blaze with the need that resonated through her.
 
“That is not the only difference between you and me,
unnasta
.”

     
“Will you stop calling me that or explain what it means?”
 
She walked away.

     
“It means sweetheart,” he called after her.