Page 24 of The Bewitched Viking

Tykir began to choke on his ale. “A bit? A bit? I am only five and thirty.”

“Ah, well,” Alinor declared with a shrug, “men do deteriorate quickly. ’Tis why they buy young wives, to put on a false front to the world that they are still virile.”

Tykir’s face flushed with affront.

Eadyth reached across the table and patted Alinor’s hand. “I am developing a fondness for you, Alinor. You and I appear to be cut of the same cloth.”

“You must admit that the maid had a fine set of breasts,” Rurik commented with his usual crude bluntness.

“Rurik! Mind your tongue in the presence of ladies,” Eirik cautioned.

Rurik ducked his head. In truth, the wretch was so often in the company of men that he probably forgot himself. And Alinor didn’t mind all that much. She’d heard much worse in the company of Egbert and Hebert’s troops.

But she quickly changed her mind when Rurik added, “Do not be gloating so, Tykir. You were the one back at Graycote who said that the Lady Alinor had a chest so flat her breasts probably resembled two eggs on a hot rock.”

It was Tykir who chastised Rurik now. “Such talk is not becoming amongst ladies, Rurik.” To Alinor and Eadyth, he apologized for Rurik by saying, “’Tis just the mead talking.”

“Did you say that?” Alinor blurted out, and immediately wished she could take back the words.

Tykir shrugged. “Mayhap. But if I did, I have surely changed my mind.”

“I never have been able to understand a man’s over-fascination with the female breast,” Alinor opined, before she had a chance to bite her tongue. “Really, if you men are so fascinated by that particular portion of the female anatomy, I have a good milch cow with a fine set of udders that would no doubt set you to drooling.”

Rurik reared up, as if he would strangle her.

Bolthor held him back, chuckling.

Tykir saluted her in congratulation for having won this particular bout of cross-wills.

Meanwhile Eirik and Eadyth were laughing heartily.

Eadyth wiped tears of mirth from her eyes with the edge of her headrail. “Yea, Alinor, I do believe you would suit.”

She didn’t say for what precisely Alinor would suit. Still, her words heartened Alinor.

But then, their attention was drawn to another quarter.

“Wouldst look at that,” Eirik said suddenly, pointing to the high table, where a group of Saxon nobles were talking animatedly to the king and his castellan. “The nerve of the villains!”

It was Egbert, Hebert and Cedric, along with a few of their high-born associates.

Alinor groaned.

“’Tis naught of concern.” Tykir waved a hand airily in voicing that opinion. “The king told me earlier that Alinor’s brothers are protesting her abduction to the Saxon King Edred.”

Alinor should have known that her brothers would not give up so easily. “That’s Edred’s Northumbrian toady, Earl Oswulf, who is addressing Eric Bloodaxe’s son Maccus over there to the side,” she informed them.

Everyone gawked at her with surprise, wondering how she would know such.

“Edred is my cousin.”

“The king of England?” Eirik exclaimed and gave a reproving glare at his brother.

“Oh, Tykir!” Eadyth said on a sigh. “When will you learn to exercise caution?”

“You didn’t tell me that the king of all bloody Britain, excepting Northumbria, was your cousin,” Tykir accused her.

“Well, he’s my cousin thrice-removed,” Alinor amended.