Page 94 of The Reluctant Viking

Ruby wanted Thork to understand why she was so hurt and why his actions had sealed her future—a future without him in it. “We are soulmates, Thork. Whether you accept that we knew each other in another life or not, I believe you and I were meant to be together just as much today as we were in the future. At least, I did before you announced your wedding plans.”

Thork ignored her reference to Elise. “Feeling like a soulmate, you let your husband leave. Nay, you drove him away.” His forehead creased in puzzlement.

Ruby felt her face flush with heat. She brushed a wisp of hair off her face distractedly. “I didn’t realize my mistakes then. I would change things if I could go back.”

“And so, even as you proclaim I am some vital part of your life, you yearn for your husband.” Thork’s eyes searched her face intensely.

“You don’t understand. To me, you and Jack are the same man.”

He shook his head despairingly at her refusal to face the facts.

“Hah! What I understand, and you do not, is that there never was a husband. Ruby, you have been caught in lie upon lie. You are a virgin, unwedded and unbedded. But know this, sweetling, the latter will soon be remedied the first private moment we have.”

“No, it won’t. Your engagement to Elise changes all that.”

“I am not wed yet,” he countered, moving closer.

“But you will be,” Ruby pointed out and put more distance between them.

“What difference does the betrothal make to you?”

“A lot! Oh, Thork, how can you even ask such a question? I can’t…I won’t be a one-night stand for you.”

“Hah! More like a one-month stand! Besides, why all the scruples when a week ago you came to my sleeping chamber more than willing?”

“That was different.”

Thork arched an eyebrow. “How so?”

Ruby turned to face him directly, her eyes pleading with him for understanding. “A woman needs to think a man makes love with her because he cares for her, that there is at least the possibility of commitment. When the man is promised to another woman, they don’t make love. They make lust.”

Thork laughed. “Lust sounds pretty good to me. Yea, methinks I will settle for that.”

“I won’t.”

“’Tis out of your hands now, soulmate,” Thork declared with a low laugh, turning to walk back to his shipmates. “Best you accept that here and now. The course has been set and cannot be changed.”

Ruby suddenly realized that she had a rapt audience. The men snickered and looked to Thork to catch his reaction to her shrewish behavior. Clearly, many of them could not understand Thork’s attraction to her, especially when she behaved in such an unfeminine way.

“Thork, if you cannot handle a simple wench, I would be glad to take her on this ship,” a grinning Selik called out from the rail of his ship, which rode close beside theirs in the wide river. He goaded Thork with further taunts, egged on by the cheers of his shipmates.

At first Thork frowned, but then he laughed and directed his friend to do something very vulgar to himself. Then he asked Selik, “Why do you not pick up an oar and work off some of that misplaced mirth?”

“’Tis much more fun watching you be snaggled by a mere wench.”

“You are one to talk of being made the fool by a woman! The wenches lead you around by that tail between your legs.”

The sailors laughed lustily at the ribald exchange.

“Oh ho! Now I learn the truth,” Selik hooted. “You are envious of my male prowess.”

“You witless whelp! We shall see who has what when the ships are pulled ashore tonight.”

Late that afternoon, when they entered the mouth of the Humber River and the five boats pulled toward shore for the evening’s campsite, Thork deftly jumped from the rail of his ship to that of Selik’s. In the blink of an eye, having the advantage of surprise, he picked up Selik, who equaled him in size, and dumped him in the shallow water. The men in all five ships laughed at the spectacle of Selik coming up sputtering out of the water, shaking his hair like a shaggy dog.

Thork jumped back to his own ship and bragged loudly to Selik, “’Tis a cool head you need to match wits with a man, my boy.” Then he turned and flashed a dazzling smile Ruby’s way and teased, “’Twould be a pleasure to feed you to the fishes, as well, if you cannot curb your waspish tongue.”

“You and twenty other men!” Ruby challenged, disgusted with his childish behavior and this whole time-travel experience. She walked back to the canopy area for her personal belongings to be taken ashore.