My Lord Viking

by Ferguson, Jo Ann

  “Where did you find Barrington?” asked Randolph as she took his hand and curtseyed along with the other ladies.

  “As he told Mama and Papa, he found me. He saw the house from the road and came here.”

  “Do you always welcome strangers to a Sutherland Park wedding?”

  Following the pattern of the dance, she stepped away from him. She smiled at Martin as he twirled her about with enthusiasm heightened by wine. Too quickly, she had to turn back to Randolph.

  “Well?” he asked as if there had been no interruption.

  “Papa taught us to help those in need.”

  “You are taking this stranger’s side against me.”

  “Do not be silly. There are no sides to take.” She stepped away and took her brother’s hand to continue the pattern of the quadrille.

  Martin glanced past her. “Are you and Tuthill having a lover’s spat?”

  “Of course not.”

  “He looks very unhappy.”

  Linnea frowned. “His unhappiness is all of his own making.” She and Martin walked between the lines of dancers to the tempo of the music. Her steps faltered when she saw Nils standing in front of her. That he was next to a bench set beside the wall half the breadth of the garden away mattered little, for her heart lurched.

  “What is amiss, Linnea?” Martin asked.

  “Sorry. My slipper must have caught on something.”

  His eyes widened in puzzlement. “On this grass?”

  “I said I was sorry.” She wished she had remained silent when he frowned. Her tone had taken on a whetted edge.

  By the time the set was complete, Linnea wished she had not agreed to come back outside. She had been wise to seek a haven inside. Leaving Randolph in deep discussion with her older brother about the latest battle on the Continent, she slipped away toward the house.

  A shriek froze her in midstep. There were more shouts and the sound of breaking wood. What was going on?

  Linnea whirled and, gathering up her skirt, raced around the corner of the house. She was struck by people running in the opposite direction. They shouted to her to flee. She ignored them as she heard another crash and a shout in words she did not understand. Coming around the corner, she pressed back against the wall as a gun fired. More cries answered it, from every direction.

  Jack lowered the gun he held and turned, meeting her eyes. She rushed to him, then paused as she heard something crashing through the bushes in the garden. As she turned to follow, Jack grasped her arm.

  “Stay here, my lady. I’ll get some boys from the stables and halt the cur, I will.”

  She stared at the tables that were hacked into pieces. Food was scattered everywhere. Behind her, from the direction of the wedding gathering, shouted questions flew like birds scattered by a cat on the prowl.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “A man popped out of the bushes. Started screeching like a madman. Grabbed for one of the kitchen maids. When she cried out for help, he went berserk. Started going after the table with a big ax.”

  “Ax?” She tried to swallow past the fear clogging her throat. “What did he look like?”

  “Big man. Red hair.” He faltered, then said, “Dressed in clothes just like we found Nils—”

  “Lord Barrington,” she corrected quickly.

  “Really?” His surprise vanished as he said in a grim tone, “The clothes were the same. Do you think this could have been that Kortsson chap who attacked him?”

  “I don’t know, but we must be silent on that until we can be certain.” Linnea had no time to say anything else as the guests poured around the side of the house to stare at the destruction.

  Quickly she deflected their questions, speaking only of a crazy man who had apparently wandered onto the grounds of Sutherland Park. She looked among the guests to see where Nils might be. Why wasn’t he here? Her heart slammed against her chest. Could Kortsson have found Nils already and slain him?

  Her thoughts must have been clear on her face because Jack tapped her on the shoulder and said, “You may not have seen, my lady, but Lord Barrington has set off after that chap.”

  Linnea nodded, not sure if she was relieved or even more fearful. Nils was determined to stop this man who must have come forward in time with him. Neither man would rest until one of them was dead. Wishing she could go with Jack when he rounded up some of the stablemen and followed Nils, she hurried back to where her mother was trying to calm some of the women who had suffered from vapors.

  She glanced toward the house. Nils would not have left without a better weapon than his small knife. Had she mentioned to him about the old weapons in the great hall? If so, he might have gone to get one. She ran through the nearest door. The cool twilight of the interior was welcome when her face was so flushed with fear. She turned toward the mansion’s old section. As a child, she often had come back here with a book from her father’s library and an apron weighted with apples, but she found no comfort today as she envisioned Nils facing his blood-enemy.

  No elegant furniture or paintings of stiff-faced ancestors eased the stark stone walls here. Her footfalls, even in her soft slippers, echoed through the vacant corridor, but she found nothing forsaken about this place. As a child, she had thought the dusty corners carried the scents of ancient times. Not just of this house, but mayhap even from the sands of the pharaohs’ Egypt or when the Greeks had debated philosophy in distant Athens.

  Walking into the high-ceilinged room that had been part of the original keep, she paused when she saw someone else was here. For a moment, she feared it was Kortsson. Then she relaxed. She could not mistake those broad shoulders or the golden hair that claimed even the faint light from the windows near the roof. “Nils?”

  He smiled as he walked toward her, a plate in his hand. “I thought Niles was the name we had decided upon for this deception.”

  “What are you doing here?” She stared at the cake on the plate. She had not guessed that the wedding cake had been sliced. Blast Randolph for vexing her so much that she missed it! And doubly blast Nils...Niles! Double blast him for intruding and bringing his blood-enemy here to interrupt the wedding.

  “Your father was gracious enough to reveal where you would go when you wished to be alone.”

  “But why are you here? I thought you went after Kortsson with Jack and the other stablemen.”

  Nils took a deep breath and released it slowly. “Kortsson is too cunning to be found by them...or by me today. He had a good head start to find a place to hide where even I cannot trail him. I lost his tracks on the stones leading to the shore. I must wait for him to appear again.”

  “At least you know he is still nearby.”

  “Yes, and I will find him and put an end to his attempts to halt me.” His mouth quirked in an abrupt smile. “That is, however, for another day. Now it is time for you and me to speak.”

  “About what?” she asked, although she already knew.

  “I could see that you had questions when I greeted your father, Linnea. I thought it would be wise to come somewhere where we could speak of our hyggja.”

  “Will you speak English?”

  “I meant to say that we could speak of what we are thinking.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her. “You know quite well what I am thinking. You should have told me you planned this little surprise for my sister’s wedding.”

  “It would not be a surprise if you knew of it.” Niles looked up at the high rafters. “This is amazing.”

  Linnea recognized that change in his tone. During the past fortnight, she had come to discover it was useless to continue to speak of a topic when he no longer wished to. “It is the oldest part of the house.”

  “When was it built?”

  “Sometime at the beginning of the 12th century.”

  He handed her the plate and walked to the firepit in the center of the floor. “This is familiar. We had such places to heat our homes, unlike the odd hearths you have pressed a
gainst the walls.”

  “It is easier to build a chimney when the firebox is by the wall.”

  “Chimney? What is that?”

  She pointed to the smoke-stained chimneypiece on the hearth between the two largest windows. “That is all that you can see from inside the house.”

  “The English stopped building good firepits simply so they could decorate the fronts of their hearths?”

  Going to the thick doors that led outside, she set the plate on a table beside them. She put her shoulder against one and shoved. “Ouch!” she exclaimed when the door refused to move.

  Nils laughed and went to help Linnea who was trying a second time to open the door. “Do you always act like a battering ram to get what you want?”

  “No, not always.”

  “Odd, for it seems to me that you have since we first met.”

  “Mayhap,” she said crisply as he pushed the door aside, “it is because you fail to heed me unless I am forceful.”

  “I have heard you seldom be mistaken, but you are about this.”

  She tried to push past where he stood in the doorway. He clasped her shoulders and held her so that she could not escape him. In the delicate dress she wore for her sister’s wedding, she might have donned strands of moonlight. The light fabric swirled around his legs like sea foam.

  Her eyes widened when he edged forward to pin her back against the door frame. “Don’t, Nils...Niles,” she whispered.

  “Don’t touch you? You quiver when I touch you. I thought it was because you fancy my touch as I fancy touching you.”

  “Why are you making this more complicated?”

  He smiled as he ran his finger along her shoulder. “You ask as if you believe that I have any choice.”

  “Of course, you have a choice. You could treat me as a gentleman should.”

  “Or I could kiss you.”

  She shook her head. “It is different now.”

  “Because we are in your father’s house?”

  “Yes, partly.”

  “And the other part?”

  She slid out the door and took a deep breath. For a moment, he thought it was in relief at having escaped his embrace—a thought that sliced through him like a well-whetted blade—but then she said, “I love the scents in this back garden at this time of year. The pungent green of the earth mixes with the salt from the sea.”

  “Linnea, there is much we need to speak of.” He resisted the compulsion to bring her back into his arms. Then he would be able to think only of her and how much he wanted her. Dressing up in an Englishman’s finery to come to the house had not been to seduce her, but to show her that it was time to continue with their plans to recover the knife.

  “That is the chimney.” She clasped her hands behind her. “It draws the smoke from the fire up and out of the house. It is much preferable to living in a cloud of smoke as was done before chimneys were invented around the 13th century.”

  “Linnea, heed me. We must speak of our journey to London. Now that I am well, we must not delay.”

  Her eyes, as dark as freshly tilled soil, lowered from the roof to meet his. “You should go, Niles.”

  “I am ready to leave for London when you are willing to go with me.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Why not?”

  “A woman does not travel with a man who is not her husband or related to her by blood.”

  “Another silly rule among all the rules you live under?”

  Linnea walked back inside, pushing aside the door that had not completely closed. She paused by the table and said, “I tire of you telling me all that is wrong with my time and my life. Your time was not perfect, either. Or maybe you thought so when you were enjoying your barbaric raids on innocent villagers. People here lived in intolerable conditions.”

  “With their pigs.” He grinned.

  She wanted to be angry with him, but she smiled. “You are the most exasperating man I have ever met.”

  “You know that is not true.” He let the door close, leaving them draped in shadow again. “I have met Tuthill now, too, do not forget.”

  “I daresay you could match him, count for count, on any scale of exasperation, and you would still be labeled the most exasperating.”

  Closing the distance between them with slow, studied steps, he said, “And I daresay that you like being exasperated, Linnea.”

  “You are mad!”

  “Am I? I observed the wedding celebration before I made my presence known.” His voice deepened to a husky roughness. “I observed you. Your eyes did not sparkle when you spoke to Tuthill as they do now.”

  “Mayhap even after a thousand years your head was battered enough so that you do not recognize the difference between vexation and...and...and—”

  “Satisfaction?” he whispered, taking her hand and lifting it to his lips. He brushed it with a light kiss. Raising his head, he smiled. “I trust that is the proper way to greet a lady whose attention a gentleman wishes to obtain.”

  “Yes.” She could barely hear her own answer over her feverish heartbeat.

  “And this?” He raised her hand again. With a motion as slow as his steps had been toward her, he slid his tongue along the inside of one finger, across the sensitive skin at its base, and up her other finger.

  Something shimmered deep within her, something unfamiliar, yet something splendid. When he tipped her hand over and stroked her palm with the moist fire of his lips, she grasped the lapel of his coat, fearing that her knees would fail her. He closed her hand within his and drew her even closer.

  “That is not proper,” she whispered.

  “However, neither is it exasperating.”

  “No.”

  “Share my quest with me, unnasta, and I will gladly share this with you.” He bent toward her.

  “No!” Linnea pushed against his chest. She could not free herself from the iron band of his arm around her waist, but he released her when her cry bounced off the walls of the great hall.

  “Linnea, I need your help in London to fulfill my blood-oath.” His hands framed her face. “And, now that I can hold you without that sling between us, I can admit that I need you in my bed to satisfy this desire that you cannot deny.”

  “I do not deny it.” She stepped away from him again. “But I do not intend to cede my good sense to it. That is the difference between you and me.”

  He laughed coldly, even though his eyes continued to blaze with the need that resonated through her. “That is not the only difference between you and me, unnasta.”

  “Will you stop calling me that or explain what it means?” She walked away.

  “It means sweetheart,” he called after her.

  Linnea knew she should keep on walking. This conversation had crossed too many boundaries, leading her thoughts into intriguing places where they should not go. She closed her eyes, savoring the memory of his brazen caresses. Without looking back, she said, “I will leave you here to eat your wedding cake, Niles.”

  “Cake? Confound it, feila!”

  “Feila?” She faced him. “What does that mean?”

  “It means woman, and you are the most confounding one I have ever met. I—” Abruptly he laughed and picked up the plate. As he walked to where she was standing, he ran a finger through the frosting.

  “Nils!”

  “Niles,” he corrected with another laugh.

  “Whatever you call yourself, you should not be eating cake with your fingers. I thought I had explained that we do things differently in this time.”

  “So you did, but there are some things I hope will never change.” He stopped in front of her, and his voice deepened to a low growl, “Such as this.”

  She gasped as he placed a sticky finger against her cheek. When he licked the sugary sweetness from her skin, a warmth burned in the very depths of her body. Gripping his coat, she swayed with the strength of her desire as he painted her lips with the frosting. Her breath came fast and shallow when he kissed awa
y every bit of the glaze, teasing the flavor from her. His tongue darted into her mouth, daring her to tell him to stop.

  Running her fingertip through the icing, she touched his lips as he had hers. He grasped her hand and licked the sweetness from her fingers. At her soft moan of yearning, he smiled with the gentleness that tugged on her heart.

  So many questions remained in her mind, but she forgot them while his lips caressed the curve of her ear. His finger moved along her face in a parade of sweet sensations coming from her heart.

  “Come with me,” he whispered.

  “To London?” Her voice was breathless.

  His laugh swirled through her like flotsam on the sea. “To London later. With me now.”

  “I can’t.”

  “More stupid rules that keep you from doing what I know you want as I do?” His flaxen brows slashed down to match his scowl.

  “Yes.” She raised her chin as she added, “But you have rules that constrain your life, too, Niles. Rules I think are silly.”

  “Such as?”

  She did not quail before the fury in his terse question. “Such as an oath that has ripped you from your own time and deposited you here.”

  “There is nothing silly about my oath. It is not a rule imposed on me. It is an obligation I take on freely.”

  “Just as I accept the obligations of my place in this family. I would no more shame my father than you would your chieftain.”

  “I will shame no one when I speak of my desire for you.” He caught her shoulders and tugged her to him. “You are a beautiful woman, and I would gladly welcome you into my bed while I search for my chieftain’s knife.”

  “And then?”

  Again his brows lowered, but this time in puzzlement. “I do not understand why you are asking that. You know I shall return it to my chieftain after I have made the man who kept it from me sorry.”

  “What?” She pushed herself out of his arms. “You never mentioned anything about vengeance!”

  “It is part of my vow.”

  “A rule of yours?”

  He nodded slowly. “If you wish to call it that.”