The Reluctant Viking Read online

  When absolute silence overtook the cavernous room, he proclaimed, "The thrall's fate will be decided at the Althing next month. In the meantime, I place her in the able care of Thork Haraldsson."

  Sigtrygg stared stonily at Thork, daring him to disagree.

  "Guard her carefully, Thork," Sigtrygg continued, "but treat her with the respect due Hrolf's granddaughter—just in case her story be true."

  Granddaughter! She'd never said "granddaughter." Oh, well! A moot point, really. Hopefully, she'd wake up before she ever had to prove her case.

  She would wake up soon, wouldn't she?

  People dispersed into milling groups throughout the hall, and the Viking men chugged down huge draughts of ale, Thork included. Thork's eyes pierced her over the rim of his drinking horn, warning her of a future reckoning. Then he motioned to Olaf, who handed Ruby her clothes and shoes.

  "We will take the wench to your home where I yearn to see my..." Thork's words to Olaf trailed off as the two men exchanged guarded looks. "I will give you an hour or two to show your wife how much you have missed her," Thork continued with a lascivious grin. "Then we must return to the harbor to oversee the ships' unloading."

  "Yea, if I know Selik, even now he lays betwixt a woman's thighs, 'stead of at the wharf where he should be."

  Thork and Olaf both laughed.

  "I must go to my grandfather's home in Northumbria on the morrow. Dar expected me weeks ago. I know you will guard the wench well until my return."

  "Will you sleep at my home tonight?"

  Thork hesitated. "Nay, 'twould be unwise." Again, he and Olaf shared a secret understanding with knowing nods.

  "When do you return?" Olaf's face betrayed none of his feelings about having Ruby dumped in his lap.

  "Two... three days."

  Three days! Ruby cringed at the prospect of a life without Thork, even for only a few days. "Thork, you can't abandon me like this. We must talk. You're my husband. You really are. Take me with you."

  "In a pig's eye!"

  Tears welled in Ruby's eyes at his cruel treatment. She swiped at them with the back of her hand. "Don't you care at all what happens to me?"

  "Not a whit!"

  The slimebucket! How could she be so attracted and repulsed by this man at the same time? Ruby wondered. "You're not at all like Jack."

  "Good."

  "Come to think of it, you're not even as good-looking," Ruby lied in childish petulance.

  "Think you I care if I appeal to a homely chit like you? Methinks you are the runt of a low-breed litter and should have been drowned at birth like the scrawny cat you are."

  "Why, you... you..."

  "Lost for words, sweetling?" Thork asked as he tweaked her bottom impudently in passing. "Thor's toenails! Your silent tongue has got to be the best thing that has happened to me all day." He opened the door and called over his shoulder to Olaf with a laugh, "Good fortune, my friend. I will meet you in the courtyard after I say my farewells to Sigtrygg. Methinks I do you no favor putting her in your care."

  "Friend?" Olaf grumbled. "There's naught of friendship in this chore you lay on me. More like punishment."

  Thork's chuckle echoed after him as he departed, abandoning both Ruby and Olaf.

  Ruby's heart ached as she watched Thork walk away. He was going to desert her. Oddly, despite the insufferable nature of this Viking version of her husband, it felt just like Jack leaving her all over again. The pain didn't get any better the second time around.

  Thork probably wasn't her husband. He couldn't be her husband, but Ruby felt bereft, nonetheless, when it appeared that her only link with reality would splinter with Thork's departure from Jorvik.

  Seeing the disappointment on Ruby's face, Olaf warned, "Your eyes reveal your heart's leaning, little one. Best you guard your emotions better with such as Thork. Women mean little to him beyond the bed linens."

  Ruby looked up at Olaf, in whose hands her fate seemed to lay now, and asked hopefully, "Did I tell you I come from the future?"

  Olaf literally snarled, grabbed her forearm and pulled her toward the door.

  "Tell it to my wife Gyda. She will likely bang you on the head with her cooking ladle. Perchance then we will all get some blessed relief."

  Chapter Four

  Ruby practically ran to keep up with Olaf's and Thork's long strides as they walked along the streets to Olaf's home. Apparently it was on the edge of the town.

  She tried to ask them questions about the intriguing things she saw—the crude, thatch-covered buildings with exquisitely carved wood eaves, the pan pipes and board games being played by fair-haired children in open doorways, the craftsmen turning out fine furniture and jewelry, and everywhere a busy, industrious populace—but they either answered in monosyllables or not at all.

  A sharp object rubbed the bottom of Ruby's aching foot, and she stopped. Stubbornly plopping down on a bench at the shaded side of a woodworker's shop, Ruby waited for Thork and Olaf to notice she lagged behind. It didn't take long.

  "What mischief do you brew now?" Thork asked menacingly.

  "No mischief. Just a stone in my shoe, a sore side and two men who think we're in the Boston Marathon."

  "Marathon?"

  "Never mind."

  Ruby replaced her running shoe with a sinking feeling she'd be saying that phrase a lot before this dream ended.

  Thork stood with legs splayed, shifting impatiently from foot to foot. "Put on the damn shoe and stop dawdling."

  "Don't be so darned cranky," Ruby muttered.

  Olaf watched them both with amusement.

  "Those shoes—naught would they be worth in a storm or in the midst of battle," Thork commented, disdain ringing his voice. "A sword could slice right through the fabric."

  Ruby couldn't help but smile. "You're right. They wouldn't be worth much in battle, but they're great for jogging."

  "Jigging? What the hell is that?"

  "No, silly. I said jogging. I'll show you. Come on." Ruby took off onto the street in the direction they had been heading. It took Thork and Olaf several stunned moments before they realized she was running away from them. A few seconds later, they caught up with her. Grabbing her forearm tightly, Thork pulled her to a halt.

  "Think you to escape from me? Wouldst you leave me to answer to Sigtrygg?"

  "No," Ruby protested. "I was just demonstrating jogging to you. It's what people—men and women—do for exercise in my country." Aware of his annoyance, she goaded him by pulling her arm out of his grip and jogging around him in a circle to demonstrate.

  "Thor's blood!" Thork exclaimed. "Why would people do such? Do your men not use their bodies each day in hard work or military drills? And women! 'Tis unseemly that women would run so!"

  Ruby started to answer but knew it would be impossible. How could she explain that men in her time often worked in offices where they sat all day, that service in the military was voluntary and that the most exercise some men got was to hit a small ball with a stick on a field of grass? Or that modern women did a lot of things that would appear unseemly to Viking men? She shrugged.

  Thork looked her over with disgust.

  His cool appraisal hurt Ruby. "You don't believe we're married, do you?"

  Thork made a rude, snorting sound. "Humph! Best you forget that lie. Granddaughter to Hrolf, some might believe, but marriage to me? Never!" He flashed a mocking smile at her. "Mayhap you lust after me. Verily, many women do. Perchance your hot blood caused you to follow me from your land to ours. But I never married any women, least of all the likes of you."

  "Why, you egotistical chauvinist! What's wrong with me?"

  Thork gave her a disdainful once-over from head to foot. "Thor's toenails, girl! You be mannish, with your short hair and bold manner. And little flesh have you on your bones—nothing to cushion a man when he sinks into your sheath. A man likes softer, more feminine women."

  "I saw the look in your eyes when I stood in the hall," Ruby argued, despite her em
barrassment. "You weren't immune."

  "Hah! Didst thou expect anything less? Thor's blood! You raised the staffs on every man in Sigtrygg's hall when you removed your clothing and flaunted those scandalous undergarments." His glittering eyes assessed her frankly, reminding her he knew exactly what lay beneath her shirt and pants.

  "Staffs! Flaunted!" Ruby sputtered. Then she grinned and gave him the same once-over. She knew this man inside and out. She'd learned his sexual tastes from years of practice. Who was he kidding? "You're wrong if you think I can't attract you," she challenged with her chin raised haughtily. "Or that you'd never marry me. I know more about your sexual libido, buster, than any woman alive. Would you like to make a little bet?"

  "A wager?" Olaf hooted, laughing at the two of them. "Do you not see what Thork means, wench? Men make wagers, not women."

  "By all the gods, I must admit, never have I met the likes of you afore." Thork shook his head in wonderment.

  "Well, is it a bet?"

  "Nay, I do not wager with women, especially when it is a sure win for me."

  Ruby was pleased to see a speck of uncertainty in his eyes, despite his cocky words.

  "Come," Olaf urged impatiently. " 'Tis two years I have been gone from Jorvik and sore anxious I am to see my wife again." He jiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

  After walking about a mile through the narrow city streets, they came to a less-populated area where the buildings were larger and set farther apart. They stopped before the biggest of these—wattle and daub sides with a thatch roof like the rest, but distinguished from the others by a carved oak door and eaves and immaculately cared for outbuildings. A long, clipped grassy plot led down to the river.

  Suddenly the door swung open and a horde of shrilly squealing young people swarmed out—all girls—ranging in age from about five to fifteen, with every shade of red hair in the spectrum.

  "Father! Father!"

  "At last! At last! You came home!"

  "What did you bring me?"

  "How long will you stay?"

  "Pick me up. Pick me up."

  "Will you take me for a boat ride like you did afore?"

  With one girl in each arm and the others clustered around him, hugging tightly, Olaf smiled widely, trying to answer each of their questions in turn with fatherly patience. Finally, as he put the two youngest girls on the ground gently, he said, "Girls, I would introduce you to our guest."

  He motioned Ruby forward and said proudly, "Ruby, these are my daughters." One by one he pointed them out in order of size, starting with the youngest. "Tyra, Freydis, Thyri, Hild, Sigrun, Gunnha, Astrid."

  Seven! He had seven daughters!

  A woman standing quietly in the doorway, watching the joyous reunion of father and children, motioned to Thork and whispered something to him. He walked to the side of the building and disappeared out of sight. Then Gyda turned to her husband with a warm smile.

  Olaf's pretty wife had blond braided hair wound into a coronet atop her head. About the same age as Olaf, who seemed to be in his late thirties, Gyda was short, slightly plump and feminine—definitely the womanly ideal Thork and Olaf had spoken of earlier.

  "Welcome home, husband," Gyda said softly as she stepped forward.

  "Good it is to be home again," Olaf responded with a wide grin and a gleam in his eye.

  With a whoop, Olaf scooped Gyda into his arms and swung her in a circle, hugging her warmly. Gyda buried her face in his neck, holding on to his shoulders tightly as her skirts swung high off the ground. When she raised her misty eyes, Olaf kissed her soundly, put an arm under her knees and carried her resolutely into the house, leaving them all alone outside.

  Ruby turned embarrassed eyes to the children who stood near her, hoping they hadn't heard Olaf ask his wife meaningfully, before the door closed, "Would you like to see the present I have for you?"

  But the girls weren't self-conscious at all. The oldest girl, Astrid, told Ruby unabashedly, "They like to welcome each other in private." There was no question the girl knew exactly what her parents were doing.

  "Do you wanna see the ducks in the river?" the littlest girl, Tyra, who was about five years old, asked hopefully. When Ruby nodded, the child smiled enchantingly, showing two missing front teeth. She put a small hand in Ruby's and pulled her to the side of the house.

  Ruby's heart lurched. She'd always wanted a little girl of her own, one just like the gap-toothed Tyra who innocently offered Ruby her first real welcome to this foreign land—a daughter she could pamper with frilly dresses and flowery bubble baths, a daughter who would weep with her at sad movies, share her love of sewing.

  She and Jack should have had another child. That sudden thought jolted Ruby. They'd always planned to have more children, but once she'd started her lingerie business and the recession had hit the real estate market, there never seemed to be enough time. Ruby couldn't remember the last time they'd even talked about it.

  Was it too late now? Was she too old? Did Jack still want more children? It was a moot point, really, unless Jack came back to her. Or if she never returned to the future.

  Ruby's headache slammed back in full force. She shook her head to halt her straying thoughts.

  They circled the house and walked past a well and a covered garbage cesspit, then down the cushiony slope to the river. Tyra's curious sisters followed closely behind them, like ducks themselves in their long, vividly colored dresses covered by crisp white pinafore-style aprons.

  Ruby sat on a sturdy wood bench at the riverbank as Tyra reached deep in her apron pocket and pulled out a heaping handful of bread crumbs.

  "Do you wanna feed the ducks?"

  "Oh, yes," Ruby answered enthusiastically, noting idly how such little things made children happy. What happened to people when they became adults, that they lost this ability to savor the little gifts of life—a beautiful sunset, a laughing child, ducks waddling on a summer afternoon, the love of a good man?

  Dozens of ducks soon converged on the scene. The girls laughed delightedly at the antics of the gluttonous animals who shoved each other aside in their efforts to get the food.

  The girls slowly inched closer to the bench, and finally Astrid, the oldest girl, perched at the other end from Ruby and asked, "Did Father say your name was Ruby?"

  Ruby smiled. "Yes. Ruby Jordan."

  "Like the jewel?"

  "Yes."

  "Oh. Never have I heard that used as a name afore."

  "Lots of girls are named after jewels in my country," Ruby explained, "like Emerald, Opal, Pearl, Garnet and Jade. But actually, I wasn't named after the jewel. My mother named me and my sister—" She never got to finish her explanation because a wild squawking commenced and Tyra came clambering quickly up the riverbank, complaining that a duck had almost bitten her, just because she held the last crust out of its reach.

  "You know, Tyra, your bread crumbs remind me of a story my children used to love about a boy and girl who got lost in the forest even though they had a plan involving—can you believe it!—bread crumbs. Would you like to hear the story?"

  "Yea! Yea! Yea! I love stories ever so much! Almost as much as ducks! Or puppies! Or strawberry tarts!"

  "Shush, Tyra," one of her sisters said. They'd all moved closer, and it seemed Tyra wasn't the only one who loved storytelling. Some slid onto the bench beside her and others sat on the grass in front.

  "The name of my story is Hansel and Gretel," Ruby began. "Once upon a time..." When she finished the beloved children's story, the girls begged her to tell it again.

  "Will you be staying with us long?" Tyra asked.

  "I don't know. King Sigtrygg has a foolish notion that I might be a spy for some enemy called Ivar."

  "Ivar the Vicious!" several of the girls gasped simultaneously and moved away from her in horror. "A spy!"

  "Actually, the king is more interested in investigating my claim of kinship with the Viking Hrolf in Normandy."

  "You're related to Hrolf?" a once-again
fascinated Astrid asked. "I saw him years ago in Hordaland. Massive built he was. Even taller than my father. And handsome as all the gods." She blushed then at her overexuberance.

  "Girls, your mother needs your help," Olaf called from the back of the house. His daughters turned and ran up the yard to hug him once again. Ruby laughed to hear certain names mixed in their excited chatter, like Hansel, Gretel, Ivar, Hrolf and Ruby.

  Olaf raised questioning eyes to Ruby after the girls went into the house by a back door. He sauntered down the yard, looking very pleased with himself, and sank down onto the bench beside her, legs outstretched, totally relaxed.

  Men! They were the same throughout the ages. Give them a little love and they became putty. Out of the blue, a niggling idea crept into Ruby's mind. Maybe she should have done a lot more of that with Jack during the past year. In fact, there was no question about it.

  Shelving that guilty thought to the back of her mind, Ruby turned to Olaf and said, "So, it's that good to be home again?"

  "Better," he countered and smirked. Then he added, "In my excitement over being home, I neglected to take precautions over you. 'Tis my good fortune you did not escape. In the future, one of my servants will guard you at all times."

  "Humph! That's not necessary. Where would I go? Down to the harbor? I can see it now, me trying to stowaway on a ship bound for America. It probably isn't even discovered yet, for heaven's sake!"

  Olaf shook his head at her strange words. "Ever do you persist with these far-fetched stories. Did Sigtrygg not warn you about it?"

  "Yes, but I didn't think you would mind."

  "That I do and especially with my children."

  Olaf stood to return to the house when Ruby's attention was caught by Thork, who approached from downriver, accompanied by two small boys with fishing lines over their shoulders.

  When the boys, about eight and ten years old, saw Olaf, they dashed forward, calling out his name. As the dark-haired boys got closer, Ruby's heart started beating wildly. It couldn't be possible! Oh, my God! They looked just like her sons did at that age.

  Ruby jumped from the bench and ran toward them. "Eddie! David! How did you get here? I'm so happy to see you!"