Page 41 of Viking Unchained

“And your point?” Whilst they talked, he was already walking back toward the scullery, where he’d last seen the telephone. She muttered as he led her by hand after him, grinning to himself, enjoying the ease with which he could rouse her temper.

Lydia tapped in the numbers and began rummaging through the cold chest, searching for provender. He sat on a high stool, listening to the ringing sound from the phone pressed up to his ear. Every once in a while, he gave her an exaggerated lustsome look, just to annoy her. This whole time-travel nonsense must be causing his brain to regress back to childhood if he got his pleasures in such boyling pranks.

“Hello!” Torolf barked into the phone.

“Greetings.”

“Son of a bitch! Is that you, Finn?”

“My mother was not a bitch, and well you know it.”

“Where the hell are you? Are you all right?”

“Of course I am all right. I am here, spending time with my love slave.”

“Oh. My. God!”

Lydia threw eye-daggers his way.

“You’re going to get yourself arrested!”

“Arrested? Dost mean by the law men? Nay, that will not happen. The wench made me her love slave first.”

“Oh. My. God!”

“You are repeating yourself, cousin.”

“You are the dumbest arrogant brick-for-brains idiot in the world. Give me your address, and I’ll come pick you up.”

“Nay. Not yet. I still have much love-slaving to do yet.”

Lydia muttered something a lady should not say.

“Give me your damn address,” Torolf yelled into the telephone.

“Nay, I do not think that would be wise.”

“Let me talk to your . . . to the woman.”

“My love slave is busy.”

“Doing what? Shit! You’re not getting a blow job while we’re talking, are you?”

He moved the phone away from his ear and asked Lydia, “What is a blow job?”

Her face went bloodred, and her eyes fixed on the region of his male parts.

He frowned, then figured it out himself. He was not a total lackwit, despite what Torolf thought. “Nay, not just now,” he said into the telephone. “But last night, for a certainty, praise the gods!”

“I am going to kill you.”

“For getting a blow job? Hey, I blew her, too. Do you and your sweet wife not blow each other?” ’Twas hard for him to picture Hilda engaging in such acts. If it were him, he would not allow her teeth within biting distance of his manparts.

“Don’t you dare ever ask Hilda that question. She would draw and quarter you.”

“She could try. Really, Torolf, you need to exert some authority over your woman. She gives new meaning to the word shrew. Dost want to be considered a milksop like Ivan the Woman-Whipped?”

After Torolf gave him the telephone numbers for his tutor, with Thorfinn repeating them aloud so Lydia could write them down, his cousin asked, “How long do you expect to be with your . . . um, love slave?”