Page 120 of Viking in Love

Hugh looked around the small space. There were piles of blankets. Plenty of candles, including some that were already lit. Food and pottery jars of fresh water. Buckets of water, with soap and drying cloths, for bathing. Even a screen taken from one of the bedchambers with covered bowls for privy matters behind it.

“Father is going to kill us for this,” Mina pointed out.

“Or mayhap he will thank us,” Hugh said. “We all agreed that we want Lady Breanne for our mother.”

“Yea. Think how bad things were afore she arrived,” Oslac added.

“I like to sit on her lap.” Six-year-old Alfred sighed.

“Me, too.” This from his twin Aidan.

“She smells good.” Mina sniffed the air as if she could actually smelly Breanne’s rose-scented soap.

“And father wants her, too, I am convinced of that, or I would not have been involved in this.” Hugh was the oldest and most responsible. He would be the one to suffer if the plan did not work.

“I agree.” Beth patted him on the arm. “Father is not so grumpy since she arrived.”

“Mayhap we should have involved Rashid. He is the one who gave us the idea when he told us about all those knights of old,” Joanna reminded them. “They kidnapped their brides and made them fall in love.”

“Either that, or they lopped off their heads.” Kendrick elbowed Joanna, who elbowed him right back.

“Behave,” Hugh cautioned.

Kendrick’s response was to break wind, loudly.

“Phew! You stink,” Joanna said.

Kendrick pretended to fan air from his backside toward her.

“If this does not work, I am going to run away and live with the fairies,” Angus said, sticking his lower lip out with belligerence.

“There is no such thing,” Oslac hooted.

Angus head-butted Oslac, and the two of them wrestled about on the dirt floor.

The twins, Aidan and Arden, just watched, in between yawns. If they did not leave soon, the two would be asleep.

“Let us go now,” Beth suggested. “We accomplish naught standing about here.”

“Yea, we must give Father plenty of time to tup Breanne silly so that she will want to stay with him forever.” Kendrick thought he knew everything about grown-up things.

“Eeew!” Mina exclaimed. “Why would any lady want to do that?”

“What is tup?” Arden asked.

Hugh felt like pulling his own hair out, one strand at a time. In some ways, he could understand why his father abhorred having any more children. He could not stand them himself, and he was one of them.

“Listen. One more time.” Hugh looked at each of them, one at a time, to get their attention, which had a tendency to wander. “Aidan and Arden will stay here to open the door for us.” It was a door slanted on an incline to open upward, exposing the underground room. It could be locked from the outside. “Angus, you will keep guard outside. Joanna, you will make sure the wheelbarrow is ready near the back door of the keep and that no one sees you. The rest of you will come with me. Do we have the ropes and gags?”

They all nodded.

“To victory!” Hugh shouted with an arm raised, as he had heard some chieftains did before battle.

The rest of them just gaped at him as if he had lost his mind.

“When this is all over, I will get the last of those honey cakes from the storeroom, and we will celebrate,” Hugh offered.

That did the trick, because his brothers and sisters then yelled, “To victory!”