“Shut it and eat yer breakfast, Freyr.”
“I’m just sayin’, it suits ye. Veryfetchin’. Perhaps almost…bonnie.”
Leif, seated two places down, was turning an alarming shade of red from the effort of not laughing. Beside him, Olaf studied Ragnar’s head with the same critical assessment he usually reserved for dubious fish.
“The lady did that tae ye, did she?” Olaf asked.
“Aye.”
“Hmm.” Malcolm said from behind his porridge. “Looks better than the last time ye tried tae tie yer own hair back. Looked like ye’d fought a rope and lost.”
A bark of laughter erupted from the lower tables. “That’s the spirit!” Freyr barked.
Ragnar felt Isolda’s hand press against his thigh beneath the table, a small, reassuring pressure.
“Careful.” Ragnar took a drink from his cup, meeting Freyr’s gleaming eyes. “I seem tae recall a certain person who let Liv braid wildflowers intae his hair after too much mead at the harvest feast. What was it the men called ye?Freyr the Fair?”
Freyr’s grin vanished. “That was different.”
“Was it? How so?”
“I wasdrunk.”
“And I’mmarried.” Ragnar set down his cup. “Which is the better excuse, then?”
The hall erupted. Warriors pounded the tables with their fists, howling with laughter, and Freyr dropped his head into his hands with a groan that only made them louder. Leif clapped him on the back, wiping tears from his eyes.
Ragnar let himself smile. Not the measured, controlled expression he wore for councils and negotiations—the real one, the one that lived in a place he’d kept shuttered for years and only recently pried open.
Let ‘em look. Let ‘em all see. It daesnae matter. All that matters is her.
Beside him, Isolda ate her breakfast with one hand and kept the other on his thigh, warm and steady.
He wasn’t taking the braid out. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not until she wove him another one.
