Page 48 of The Viking’s Captive

“How do you know I was … am … aroused?”

“Your eye color lightens, your nose flares, and your lips part.”

What could a man say to that? All he could think of was, “Oh.”

Tyra clomped over to the door and swung it open so hard it crashed against the wall. Just before she left, though, Adam decided he would get the last word in.

“One thing, Tyra,” he called out to her back. “You have a very nice arse.”

His life couldn’t get any worse. Could it? …

That morning, Alrek had decided to iron Adam’s best tunic. Now there was a hole over the heart.

Kristin had made up his bed, but the linens were so twisted that when he tried to arise, he fell to the floor. Now he had a goose egg on his forehead.

Tunni brought a pitcher of water all the way from the scullery and spilled most of it along the way. The chambermaid was chasing him right now.

Besji almost fell down the hole in the garderobe. Adam caught her just in time.

“Can’t you put these children to work?” he begged Breanne, who was working alongside some cotters that afternoon. “After all, what trouble could they get in while helping you apply wattle and daub to those huts?”

At the end of the day, Breanne showed up in the great hall where he was about to share an ale with Tykir and Rafn. She was madder than a bull in mating season. Without ceremony, she dumped the children in his lap. “You try cleaning them up. And take note of this, Saxon, that was the last favor you ask of me.”

And she stormed off. Thorvald’s daughters were wonderful at storming off, he was beginning to notice.

He and Rafn and Tykir looked at the children more closely. They were covered from head to toe with mud and straw … even little Besji. At least there weren’t any injuries that he could see. He had taken to counting small blessings these days.

Tykir was, of course, laughing uproariously … even when he caught sight of a white, devilish grin under the thick layer of daub on one of the stragglers and noticed his own son, Thork. Adam doubted that Alinor would be so amused.

To cap off the moment, Bolthor walked up, took in the whole scene with his one good eye, and announced, “Adam, you give me the best ideas for new sagas. I think I will title this one ‘How Adam the Rooster Gained a Brood.’”

The sly king had plans …

Thorvald awakened in the evening, feeling weak as a newborn babe. But alive! Praise be to the gods!

“Drink,” he said, pointing to his mouth.

Rafn, the only one in the bedchamber, jumped with shock. “You are alive! You are alive!”

Thorvald would have laughed if he were not weak as dragon piss. Instead, he squeaked out, “Of course I am alive, you lackwit. Now give me a drink.”

Rafn raised the king’s head slightly from the pillow, then lifted a goblet of water to his parched lips. Water! What kind of drink is that for a Viking lord? But he had not the strength to argue, and in truth the water tasted wonderfully delicious.

He dropped back down to the pillow and choked out, “What happened?”

Rafn told him, “You were hit in the head with a mace ball by that Danish rat, Ivan the Ugly. Your brain apparently swelled up, and you have been unconscious for weeks.”

He still didn’t understand. He raised a trembling hand to his throbbing head, where linen cloths seemed to be covering some wound.

“Adam the Healer was brought here from the Saxon lands. Yestermorn he drilled a hole in your skull to relieve the swelling. ‘Twould seem that it worked.”

Drilled a hole in my head? Amazing!But then something else Rafn had said jarred him. “Brought him here? Who brought him?”

“Tyra. Whacked him over the head with a broadsword, she did, and carried him off over her shoulder.” Rafn was grinning as he spoke.

Thorvald grinned, too … or tried to. That’s my Tyra. Just like her father.

“I suppose the healer is hell-bent on killing her now,” he mused.