Page 48 of Viking in Love

“Coarse lout!” she muttered. Then turning back to Caedmon, she smiled.

A smile from the witch? I do not think so. “Why are you smiling?”

“Can a lady not smile if she wants?”

I smell the devious turns of a vixen’s mind. “Do I have boar meat betwixt my teeth?”

“Nay! Stop picking your teeth. I was just smiling because…because I just want to talk with you. Pleasant talk.”

Talk, talk, talk. She is ever chirping about talk. “You are never pleasant to me. Must be you are up to something. What?” Look how she is gritting her teeth to stifle her temper. How odd! “Did you go up on the roof again?”

“Of course not.”

There is no “of course not” with you, m’lady. “Did you rethatch the entire village betwixt building me a new chicken coop? Or did you just make me a dozen benches in your spare time?”

“Do you enjoy making mock of me?”

Tremendously. “You wound me with your accusations.”

“You make it very difficult to carry on a pleasant conversation.”

Jabber, jabber, jabber. “Let us put aside all this flummery. What do you want from me?”

“A few weeks’ respite.”

Respite? That is a new word for being a bloody nuisance. “Explain yourself.”

“My sisters and I need…I mean, want…to stay here a bit longer.”

“Nay.”

“Can we talk about it?”

“Nay.”

She picked up the table knife and examined it closely, then glanced up through half-lidded eyes at him.

“Are you thinking about putting that through my heart?”

“Do you have a heart? I am weapon-skillful, you know.”

He laughed.

“I could spear you through your laughing mouth.”

“If you want a quick death, best you aim for the fat line. That is the section betwixt neck and crotch.”

“Who says I want a quick death for you?”

Her sister Vana rushed up. “Breanne! You are supposed to be nice to him, not kill him.”

Huh?

Another sister, Drifa, was shaking her head at Breanne as if she were a lost cause.

Ingrith, who had just come from the kitchen, assessed the situation from across the hall, then came running up. She, too, chastised Breanne. “That is not what you are supposed to do.”

Huh?