Page 114 of The Bewitched Viking

“Please?”

“Nay! Nay! Nay!”

“Ple-eee-ase?”

“Well, mayhap one. Or two. But that’s all.”

The huge smile she flashed at him then told him he had been bested good and proper. There would be more than two sheep.

Alinor turned to the others then. “Since Rurik is willing to take me back to Dragonstead—”

Hah! Who said aught about “willing”?

“—’tis not necessary for all of you to accompany me.”

Well, finally, someone has an intelligent thought here.

Everyone demurred, though. Lackwits, all!

“But why do you all need to come?” Alinor asked.

“Good question,” Rurik piped in quickly.

“Do you think we would miss Tykir’s wedding?” they all said, except for a slack-jawed Rurik, who thought Tykir might have something to say about that important event, and except for a slack-jawed Alinor, who began to cry again.

Chapter Seventeen

Tykir had been on the Samland Peninsula of the Baltic coast for only three sennights and he was driving everyone as hair-pulling mad as he himself was.

Flesh was melting from his body for lack of appetite, and even when he tried to drink himself senseless as an ale-head, the brew could barely pass over the lump in his throat. Drumming through his brain with an incessant refrain were the selfsame painful thoughts.

Alinor. God, how I miss her!

She must have bewitched me.

But she’s not really a witch.

How could she have left me?

How could I have let her go?

I should have told her how I felt.

How do I feel?

Aaarrgh!

He was so racked with confusion over his turbulent emotions that he could not think or work or sleep.

God, I miss her so!

Then Adam arrived to add to the madness. He’d changed his plans, claiming a concern for Tykir’s well-being.

By the gods, who named Adam and Bolthor his protectors? Even as he’d strived to hold people at a distance all these years, some seemed to have ignored his signals. He did not need them. He did not need anyone, not even the fickle Alinor. That was what he told himself. What he thought was: I am dying inside.

“I got off my ship at the first watering stop on the way to the Arab lands,” Adam told him. The fool, who’d been sleeping on a makeshift pallet in the single bedchamber in his lodging, had heard him rise at dawn. Now he professed a yen to ride alongside him and the amber harvesters on the Baltic shores. That, after being up half the night…tumbling half the maids in all the Baltic, no doubt. He’d surely hit the first half the night before.

“Like a thorn in my privates, you are, Adam. Go back to snoring and leave off with your nosing in my affairs.”