Page 20 of Viking in Love

“Now you will not have to. Are you not the lucky one?”

He muttered something under his breath about luck and women. She suspected there were several foul words involved.

“I was just being helpful.”

He arched his brows.

“I was bored.”

“And you could not go sew a tapestry, or stroll through the gardens, or strum a lute?”

“Bor-ing! I but wish to be useful. What harm is there in that?” Her eyes shifted to the right. Uh-oh! Now, she looked everywhere except to the right.

He, of course, had to glance at that very place on the far side of the bailey, which she was avoiding. “Do my eyes play me false? Could that be a fine-garbed woman on her knees planting something up against the castle wall? A prickle bush! God’s breath! Those are the bushes that snag on horses when riding through a forest.”

Breanne sighed deeply. Of course, there was a woman in fine garb, the gunna pulled up to her knees, the hem tucked into her belt. “That is my sister Drifa. She likes growing things, especially flowers. That is a wild rosebush she is transplanting.”

His eyes widened. “A noble Viking princess is crawling around my bailey, digging in dirt, planting a prickle bush?”

Nay, ’tis a dragon building a nest. Idiot! Of course it is a woman, my sister.

The woman stood and walked over to a wooden wheelbarrow. Digging a shovel into the contents, she then emptied it onto the spot she had been weeding.

“And that is…?”

“Manure.” What a dolthead! Does not even recognize animal waste, even when it smells to high heaven.

He put his face in his hands, counted to ten…then twenty, before inquiring in the sweetest voice he could muster. “Where did she get the manure?”

“Your cow byre.” What? You thought she was digging in your privy?

“Of course. How foolish of me not to know that.”

That goes without saying. “You have plenty.”

Something seemed to occur to him then. “Is this a jest? Did Geoff or Wulf put you up to this flummery? Are they off somewhere watching us, laughing their arses off?”

“I never met your comrades afore today.”

“Oh.” He seemed disappointed at her answer. “What are you doing here then?”

“That was not polite.”

“I ne’er claimed to be polite, nor do I aspire to such. Why are you and your sisters here?”

I wonder what he would do if I punched him on his lofty chin. “We were just passing and thought to stop and visit.”

“On your way to…where?”

Questions, questions, questions! “Uh, I am not certain. You should ask Tyra. ’Tis some distant kin of her husband.”

“As distant as my kinship?”

That chin is looking very tempting. “You are the rudest man I have ever met.”

“You have not traveled much then. I can name at least three ruder men.”

Do not punch him in his arrogant chin. He would probably punch me right back. She exhaled whooshily, tired of this verbal sparring. “Do you offer us hospitality, or not?”