Page 76 of The Outlaw Viking

Gyda’s face brightened and she leaned forward, grasping Rain’s hands. “This is what I think you need to do…”

After hearing Gyda’s lengthy plot, Rain stared at her incredulously. “Are you crazy? Kidnap Selik! Restrain him for several weeks until Gravely is gone into hiding once again! Why me? Why not your daughter?”

“Hah! She is too small and fainthearted to handle such a task.”

Small! That was all Rain needed—another reminder of her size and deficiencies.

“Were you expecting I could wrestle him to the ground and rope him up? I may be tall, but Selik has more than a hundred pounds on me.”

“Your sarcasm ill becomes you. Really, you should try to curb such unfeminine traits.”

Rain could barely hold back the sneer that wanted to curl her lips. “Bottom line—even if I agreed to your insane plot, I am physically incapable of kidnapping Selik.”

“Perchance you know of some herbs that could put him to sleep ’til he could be restrained,” Gyda suggested slyly.

Rain shut her eyes wearily for a second, then stared directly at the elderly woman’s questioning face. “Maybe I do, but I must be going mad to even consider such an outrageous thing. Where would he be kept, by the way? Here?”

“Oh, nay!” Gyda exclaimed, putting a hand to her cheek in horror. “’Tis dangerous for Selik to be here even now. I fear that the king’s men watch my house.”

“I’m sure you have some ideas, though, on where I could imprison him. Oh, Lord, I can’t believe I even said that.”

“Yea, I was thinking mayhap that Ella would help you.”

“Ella?”

“She was a friend of your mother’s. She is a prosperous merchant now in the city, due to your mother’s help. We shall go see her later today.”

“Tell me, Gyda, do you want me to do the dirty work so I can hand Selik over to Tyra on a silver platter?” Rain asked suspiciously, not sure she could trust the woman entirely.

“Mayhap,” Gyda said, “but then, if you love him, I think you will do whate’er you can to save him, regardless.” She eyed Rain expectantly for several long moments. “Well, what do you think?”

“I think you would have made a wonderful politician.”

For the next few hours, Rain cooled her heels under the close guard of two surly men who shadowed her every move, even when she went to the privy to relieve herself. It was that or go back to her locked bedchamber, Gyda informed her firmly.

With absolutely nothing to do, Rain solved the Rubik’s Cube twenty-seven times, walked from one end of the hall to the other sixty-three times, and recited the Hippocratic oath silently sixteen times. Bored stiff, her mood progressively worsened.

So when Selik and Tyra came sashaying merrily through the front door, laughing at some shared joke, Rain forgot all the directives Gyda had given her for the great master plan to save Selik. They looked so blasted beautiful together—Selik in a midnight-blue tunic over black leggings, his narrow waist accented by a gold-linked chain, and Tyra in a green silk, belted, pinafore-type garment worn over a cream-colored chemise that perfectly set off her luscious, wind-blown, strawberry hair.

An unreasonable fury took over, and Rain picked up the nearest object—an apple sitting in a bowl of fruit. Taking careful aim, she threw it directly at Selik’s head. But he saw her at the last moment and ducked; the apple splattered against the door directly behind him.

Incredulous, Selik looked first at her, then back to the apple which had barely missed him, then back to her again. His eyes narrowed angrily as he advanced on her.

“I do not believe you are a pacifist at all,” he snarled. “What if you had hit Tyra with that apple? She could have been hurt.”

“Or you could have ruined my new tunic,” Tyra complained, primping prettily before a square of polished metal that hung on the wall.

“Or maybe I could have hit you square in the middle of your cocky Viking face,” Rain snapped at Selik while she backed away, on the opposite side of the table from him.

His eyes glittered with anger and his fingers flexed at his sides, probably itching to strangle her. “This ‘cocky’ has a sound to it I mislike. I take it ‘cocky’ is not a compliment.” Selik continued to walk down the other side of the table in a predatory fashion, keeping exact pace with her, his alert eyes watching her every move, waiting for her first slip. “What bee flew up your arse this morn to turn you shrewish? I thought I had taught you a lesson good and well yestereve. Are you perchance taunting me into another demonstration of my mastery?”

Rain’s face flushed at his vulgarity and his reminder of the intimate manner in which he’d chosen to punish her. She didn’t think she could withstand another such demonstration of his superior skills in that arena. “Save it for your fiancée, Tyra.”

“Fiancée?” Tyra interrupted. “What is that?”

“Betrothed, you dumb twit,” Rain retorted. “When is the wedding anyway? Maybe I can be the maid-of-honor.” Rain couldn’t believe her loose tongue. Where was the self-control that helped her survive the awkward adolescence of ridicule, the stringent academic regimen of medical school, failed love relationships, a lifetime of insecurity?

Selik grinned.