LITMIR.BIZ

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wrapped her arms and legs around him, anchoring on him, and drew him down. He buried his silky head in her shoulder.

      The rhythm slowed, each stroke so long and hot and deep. And then, with a groan, he was moving faster again, she with him.

      She saw the heavens, exploding on the inside of her eyelids, stars going supernova, everything shimmering, a blanket of light thrown out to swallow the universe.

      A sense of falling.

      Of opening.

      Lilies, roses, water…

      Heat.

      Liv heard a shout of pure erotic joy. Several endless moments went by before she recognized it as her own.

       Chapter Eleven

      ‘‘Come home with me tomorrow,’’ he whispered. ‘‘We’ll be married in the Viking way.’’

      ‘‘Oh, Finn. I am home.’’

      He looked at her for a long time. She wasn’t sure she liked what she saw in his eyes. Finally he covered her mouth with his own in a savage, demanding kiss.

      She didn’t fight him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him right back, as hard as he was kissing her. Slowly, the kiss gentled.

      And then it turned to heat and hunger.

      They spoke no more of marriage that night.

      They got up much later, showered together and went out for a late meal. He stayed with her until morning.

      It was after nine when Finn returned to Ingrid’s house. Hilda came out on the back steps as he was emerging from his rental car. The housekeeper watched him, her long face set in a scowl as he came across the lawn.

      ‘‘Well,’’ he said cheerfully, ‘‘good morning to you, too.’’

      Hilda grunted. She opened the screen door and held it for him to go through.

      ‘‘Thank you, Hilda.’’

      ‘‘Humph,’’ said the housekeeper.

      ‘‘Is Ingrid already gone for the day?’’

      Another grumbling sound. He assumed it must mean yes.

      Finn turned and faced her once she’d joined him on the big service porch. ‘‘Something you’d like to say to me, Hilda?’’

      One side of her thin lip lifted in an expression very close to a sneer. ‘‘His Majesty called for you ten minutes ago. He asked if you’d returned yet. I said you were…still out. He said to tell you to call him back as soon as you got in.’’

      ‘‘All right. And you’re angry because His Majesty called?’’

      ‘‘I am only a servant,’’ the housekeeper said, aggressively humble.

      Finn knew that when good servants got surly, it was usually wisest to keep after them until they admitted what was bothering them, and then to immediately take pains to solve the problem. Otherwise, they tended to exercise their pent-up frustrations in inconvenient and unpleasant ways—they’d run off with the silver, or take to spitting in the soup.

      ‘‘Come on, hit me with your best shot.’’ He smiled to himself. He liked that expression. It came from an old song by an American rock star, Pat Benatar, a song that sounded especially satisfying when played very loud.

      ‘‘Too much scheming around here of late,’’ the housekeeper muttered. ‘‘The king knows where you’ve been. So does the queen. So do I.’’

      ‘‘And?’’

      The housekeeper shook her iron-gray head. ‘‘I don’t like it, that’s all. I’m not so blind as some. I have no stars in my eyes at the idea of a grandchild. I know what Liv wants from life. And I can see it’s not at all what you have planned for her. I know the ways of Gullandria. I know you will see to it, in the end, that she marries you—whatever you have to do to make it happen.’’

      ‘‘You know then why I’m here?’’

      Hilda knew. The servants always did. ‘‘Liv has shown the Freyasdahl signs. She carries your child.’’

      ‘‘And you are Gullandrian by birth?’’ He knew she was.

      She admitted it. ‘‘I am.’’

      ‘‘Then you should understand why a marriage has become imperative.’’

      ‘‘I understand more than you think. Liv is not like Elli. She’s not a woman to follow her man wherever he must go. You think to tame her to your will. Think again.’’

      Finn stared into Hilda’s piercing dark eyes. He wondered if perhaps she’d been raised among the Mystics.

      A chill crept up his spine.

      And why in the name of all the frozen towers of Hel was he standing here explaining himself to the housekeeper? He’d do better to leave her to spit in the soup.

      ‘‘Thank you for the advice, Hilda.’’

      Hilda took his meaning. The subject was closed. She brought a fist to her chest in the Gullandrian salute of respect for one’s betters. ‘‘Will you have breakfast, sir?’’

      ‘‘I’ll go up and make that call. I’ll be down in an hour to eat, if that’s convenient.’’

      ‘‘Of course. I’ll have it ready.’’

      ‘‘Well?’’ said the king.

      ‘‘Your Majesty, I am returning your call.’’

      ‘‘Stating the obvious is not answering my question. I know you spent the night with my daughter.’’

      ‘‘Sire.’’

      ‘‘Has she come to her senses?’’

      ‘‘If you mean, has she agreed to a marriage—no, she has not.’’

      ‘‘Is it your intention to stay there in America forever, catering to her every whim?’’

      Finn decided that silence was the most effective answer to that one.

      The king sighed. ‘‘In the end, you know, you’ll have to take her.’’

      Finn was thinking that Osrik Thorson, given his own marital situation, was the last person he ought to be listening to when it came to the question of what to do about a woman.

      But one did not remind one’s king of such things. ‘‘I’ll do what I must do, my lord.’’

      ‘‘Has she at least admitted there is a child?’’

      ‘‘No, my lord. But that time is coming.’’

      ‘‘When?’’

      ‘‘Very soon.’’

      That night, Liv took Finn to the Convention Center to hear the Lieutenant Governor speak on preserving coastal ecology. A five-hundred-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner followed. Liv and Finn found themselves seated at the same table as the state treasurer and his wife. When he learned Finn was Gullandrian, the treasurer asked him a few questions about the new European currency. Finn explained that Gullandria, like the other Scandinavian countries, was sticking with its national currency, the Gullandrian krone. They spoke of the offshore oil industry. Finn said that, because of it, the Gullandrian standard of living was much higher than it had once been.

      The treasurer’s wife wanted to hear of the recent wedding of Liv’s sister. So Liv and Finn took turns describing a Viking wedding.

      It was well after midnight when they returned to the T Street house. They paused on the porch for a long, searching kiss.

      Then she slipped the

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