Page 31 of The Reluctant Viking

“It’s about time you got back,” Ruby accused him.

“What trouble do you stir now, witch?”

She assessed his figure with deliberate disdain, but Thork could see in her clear eyes, now more green than gray, that she reluctantly liked what she saw.

He grinned.

She glared.

Embarrassed, Ruby took the offensive. “I have a few things I would like to tell you about your neglect of our sons. I can’t believe—”

Thork raised a hand to halt her shrewish words.

“Do you never yield? Your refusal to heed Sigtrygg’s warning, and mine, as well, about lying and the future bodes ill for your fate. We are not wed, and my sons are no one’s business but mine.”

“And so you take no one’s advice about their suffering?”

“Suffering!” Thork slitted his eyes cynically. “Who harms them?”

“You do.”

Thork threw up his hands in resignation. “Say one more word and by the sacred sword of Thor, I swear, I will—”

“What? Imprison me?” Her eyes flashed a feisty challenge.

Thork gritted his teeth, willing himself not to rise to her baiting. Finally he said stiffly, “You deserved the punishment and will get that and more if you do not change your ways. Go play your children’s games now and think not of trying to escape again…or goading me into rage.”

As Ruby turned to go, she tossed back at him over her shoulder that famous Anglo-Saxon vulgarity that even Thork in all his travels had rarely heard used by a woman.

The woman was beyond belief!

Thork grinned and shook his head. He would show the saucy tart! Reaching out a long arm, he did what he’d been dying to do ever since he had seen her bending over with the young children by the river.

He tweaked her enticing behind.

Ruby yelped and practically shot off the ground, shooting daggers at him with her fuming eyes. “How dare you?”

“I dare much, wench. And remember it well afore you try me farther.”

“That’s the second time you’ve done that to me,” she raged. “The next time I just might do the same to you, and it won’t be your backside I’ll pinch. You would do well to remember that.”

Thork threw back his head and laughed heartily at the wench’s quick retort.

Ruby continued her games and stories with the children, all the while rehearsing in her mind the tirade she intended to unload on Thork once she got inside. She was disappointed, however, to learn that Thork and Olaf had gone to the harbor and that Thork would be staying at the palace while in Jorvik.

“Ruby, come quickly. We must find garments to wear tonight. We go to the palace for a feast,” Astrid told her excitedly. This was the first warmth she’d shown Ruby since her punishment.

“Me?”

“Yea, the king asked specifically that you come. Father could not refuse. And I am permitted to go, too.”

“Why does Sigtrygg want to see me again?” Ruby asked nervously. Even though Thork would probably be there and she might find an opportunity to discuss his sons with him, Ruby preferred to stay home. “I would rather not go.”

Gyda overheard and advised sternly, “’Tis not for you to decide. We go.”

The male servants brought wooden tubs for bathing while caldrons of water bubbled over the hot fires, stoked up for the occasion. When the three women had bathed, the men dumped the tubs and poured fresh water for Olaf’s bath.

Upstairs in the master chamber, Gyda clucked over the several gowns she’d laid on the bed for Astrid and Ruby, first selecting, then discarding each in turn as inappropriate—too bright, too dull, too long, too worn, too tight, too loose. Ruby’s expert sewing eye saw that these Viking tunic dresses were little more than two rectangles of fabric held together at the shoulder with brooch-clasped straps.