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“That Gunter Ormsson is a mean buzzard. Good gods, we will have all the Vikstead warriors attacking us now,” Rafn said.
“Why would the man attack us when the jarl did not want the baby to live?” Drifa asked.
Rafn shook his head at her. “Drifa, Drifa, Drifa, you do not understand men.”
Well, that was obvious.
“A man may not want something for himself, but he will fight to the death to hold that something if someone else wants it,” Rafn explained.
“That is pure male drivel.”
“Plus, pride may be involved, if Gunter thinks his honor is involved,” Adam added.
“The man has no honor,” she said hotly.
The three men in the room just shrugged.
“Well, that settles it then. Return the baby to Vikstead,” her father said on a long sigh, his hopes for the marriage of his last daughter being dashed.
“I cannot do that. Ormsson plans to kill the baby,” Drifa told him.
The king put fingertips to his forehead and rubbed. “All this thinking is giving me a head megrim.” He turned to Adam. “Dost think I need another head drilling?”
“Nay. What I think you need ... what I think we all need is,” Adam said with an exaggerated pause, “a beer.”
Soon she stood alone in the solar, wondering how she’d gotten herself into such a mess. This was almost as bad as the time she and her sisters had killed the earl of Havenshire and buried the brute in the bottom of a privy. Except now she was stuck with the evidence of her crime. Living, breathing, squalling evidence.
Just then, Rafn stuck his head back in the doorway and grinned at her. “Sidroc did have a message of sorts regarding you afore he left.”
She arched her brows at his mischievous expression.
“He said, ‘Bugger the bitch!’ ”
Drifa threw a ball of yarn at his retreating back.
Oh well. She was sure to find Sidroc soon and he would joyfully take the baby off her hands.
Oddly, she could swear she heard laughter in her head. Was it the Norns of Fate making mirth at her destiny?
Mayhap she was the one needing a head drilling.
On the other hand, mayhap not. One of her body parts might enlarge, or she might grow one she did not want.
Chapter Three
Five years later, on the way to Byzantium
There are passions, and then there arepassions ...
“Wake up, princess. Time to smell the roses. Ha, ha, ha!”
Princess Drifa turned over on her pallet under the canvas shelter in the center of the longship, and pretended to be napping.
“I smell flowers. Does anyone else smell flowers? Ha, ha, ha!”
Do not react, Drifa. Do not react.
“Mayhap it is your armpits, Arne. Seems to me I saw grass growing there. Ha, ha, ha!”
