Page 21 of The Bewitched Viking

Bloody hell! When did I start thinking of her as mine?

The witch blinked at him through green cat eyes, as if she was held in the same spell that immobilized him. Mere seconds had passed since he’d opened the door, but it seemed like a lifetime. Only then did he admit what he’d already come to suspect earlier.

He was bewitched.

And he didn’t care.

Chapter Four

“Stop it,” Alinor hissed at Tykir.

They were sitting on long benches in the vast great hall of the Norse palace, along with hundreds of other noble, and not so noble, personages. Everyone of high station in Northumbria, whether Norse or Saxon by birth, had come with their entourages to pay self-serving homage to the newly reinstated king, Eric Bloodaxe Haraldsson, and his wife, the witch-queen Gunnhild.

The royal couple was ensconced at the high table up on the dais with those of highest rank. Tykir, his friends and family, along with Alinor, his captive, sat just a short ways below, definitely a position of favor.

“Stop what?” the insufferable Viking knight inquired with exaggerated concern, as if he cared what was bothering her…which he did not, of course. The troll braced his shoulders back against the wall behind them, sipped at his goblet of mead and regarded her with lazy amusement.

Alinor felt as if she’d landed in a Viking version of hell. Especially since she was practically joined at the hip, and other places, to the man who had become her nemesis of late.

“Stop moving your hand about, for one thing.” She glanced pointedly at their bound hands—his left tied at the wrist to her right. At the moment, the pair of appendages were sitting high on his thigh. Very high!

“Oh! I beg your pardon, my lady,” he said solicitously. Then, with total lack of social grace, he raised his hand to scratch his belly. Which placed her hand just about square on…

“You crude clod!” She jerked her hand away from his…bulge. “You dumb dolt! You slimy swine! You…you…”

“How about loathsome lout?” Eadyth offered from across the table. “It always works well for me.”

Her husband looped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed. Presumably in punishment, but more like affection. Married couple though they be, the two could not seem to keep their hands off each other’s persons. Alinor had never witnessed such spousal behavior. For a certainty, she’d never yearned to touch any of the slimy maggots she’d been handed in matrimony.

Well, mayhap she would feel differently if she was as beauteous as Eadyth, with her luxurious silver-blond hair lying wimpleless about her shoulders under a gossamer-thin headrail of palest lavender, held in place by a gold circlet of twisted flowers. Her headrail matched her misty violet eyes and her darker lavender gunna, which was embroidered at the edges in the orphrey style with gold thread.

Then, too, she might feel differently if she’d ever been wed to a man as young and roguishly handsome as Eadyth’s husband, Eirik, who was a few years older than his brother Tykir. God’s mercy! He was a sight to behold, with his black hair and blue eyes, bedecked in a deep blue wool tunic over black braies, belted at the waist. A short mantle was pinned back off one shoulder with a most unusual gold brooch in the form of a twisted dragon with amber eyes.

Tykir made a coughing noise, recalling her attention to him. “’Tis not polite to ogle another woman’s spouse.”

“I was not ogling. I just wondered how such a comely man as Lord Eirik could have such a homely troll as you for a brother.”

“Some women like my looks.” The grin on his face told Alinor how much he cared whether she considered him ugly or not. And she had to admit that even with a blackened eye and bruised nose, he was far from ugly.

“Some women cannot see past a man’s money pouch. And speaking of looks, I would appreciate it if you would stop looking at me in that manner.” She said this in an undertone. Ever since he’d come barging into Gyda’s bedchamber, he’d been staring at her in the strangest way. And smiling.

“What manner?” he asked with a knowing chuckle.

She must have spoken louder than she realized because Rurik, who sat on the other side of Tykir, leaned forward around the buxom Viking maid who sat on his lap and commented, “Yea, Tykir, you have been gaping at the witch like a tasty sweet from a sultan’s harem. Are you drunkkinn?”

“Not yet,” Tykir said, taking another long swig of mead from his cup, his eyes holding Alinor’s the entire time. No man had ever looked at her in quite that way before, and she found it discomfiting.

Even more annoying was Tykir’s appearance. No man should be so beautiful. Or so rascally.

He was wearing a buttery brown tunic of the softest wool over a pair of dark brown braies. The star-shaped amber pendant hung by a gold chain against his chest. She assumed that he had bathed in the palace bathhouse that afternoon because the flaxen strands in his light brown hair glistened, resembling threads of spun gold. One side of his hair was braided so that his thunderbolt earring was exposed, as it had been the first time she had seen him. His sword was in the scabbard at his hip, and his sable-lined cloak lay on the bench, on his other side.

Tykir winked at her.

And Alinor wished she could sink into the rushes to hide her mortification. It was one thing to be caught ogling Eirik of Ravenshire, but quite another unacceptable thing to be caught ogling the troll.

“You must not let the witch cast her spells on you, Tykir,” Rurik warned. “Are you still wearing your cross?”

In answer, Tykir pulled the wooden cross on a leather thong from inside his tunic and settled it on his chest next to the amber pendant.