My Lord Viking by Jo Ann Ferguson Page B

returning from the house with that soup for Mr. Bjornsson?”
          “And leave you with him and his beastly manners?”
          “Mr. Bjornsson will not forget himself again.”   She gave Olive a tight grin.   “Or you shall hear me slap him again.”
          “Yes, my lady.”   She shot Nils a fearsome frown before going to the stairs.   At the top, she paused, her mouth moving with whatever she was mumbling.   He waited, not sure if she would obey and leave her lady with him.   She did, her head vanishing below the bannister.
          “You may find,” Linnea said, her voice still rigid with rage, “that you would do better not to vex everyone you meet, Mr. Bjornsson.”
          “You may find that you would do better to call me Nils, for your English tongue cannot speak my name correctly.”
          “Only if you realize that such informality does not allow you carte blanche to—”
          “What?”
          “It is French.”
          “French?   What is that?”
          “The French are the residents of the land on the other side of the Channel.”   When he continued to frown in bafflement, she added, “Where the sea narrows between this island and the continent.”
          “You speak of the Franks.”
          “Yes.”
          He nodded.   “Many of the Norrfoolk live in the land of the Franks.”
          “As a child, I learned that the Vikings gave their name to Normandy , the section of France that reaches out toward England .   The Normans won the English throne in 1066, and their descendants have held it since.”
          He laughed as he threw open the shutters on the window.   “So it would seem that the Norrfoolk claim to this island was eventually won and long held.”
          “Indirectly.”   She faltered before a sigh sifted past her stiff lips.   “Dash it!   Can you stop playing a Viking lost in time?”
          “I am being honest, my lady.   All I have spoken to you about King Ethelred and Britannia is true.”   His brows lowered.   “You think I am mad with an injury to my skull.”  
          “You were struck viciously.”
          “True.”
          “You claim to have seen things that no one else has.”
          He cupped her chin as he had in the doorway below.   “My blood-enemy exists.”
          “You cannot be sure.”
          “I am.”   He reached under his tunic and tossed the knife to the floor at her feet.   “I swear on the blood you saw on this that I drew it from my blood-enemy, not myself.   You may not have seen him,   but that does not change what I know is true.”
          “But...”   She hesitated, then asked, “Do you realize what you are saying?   That you have come forward in time from your millennium to mine?”  
          “It is not easy to believe.”   He touched the sill where Loki had laughed at him.   “Yet I know it must be true.”   Leaning against the sill, he pointed to the ocean that was visible as a silver line through the trees.   “If we were in my time, you would be watching from here and shivering in fear at the very idea that a drakkar and its crew of warriors would sail toward this shore.”
          “My ancestors fought to hold here, and they did.”
          “Are you so sure of that?”  
          “I know what I have been told.”   Her chin rose in a pride as enticing as her splendidly feminine body.  
          He laughed to conceal the longing that bounced through him.   Kissing her had been foolish, for it had honed his craving for the delights he had denied himself in the months of his journeys on behalf of his chieftain.   Months or centuries?   He could not think of that now.   He must learn more of this woman and this place and this time so he could defend himself—and her, for he owed her a life-debt—from Kortsson.  
          “But your very name