“David? It was my brother, Thor, I was beating. ’Tis rare he will fight me anymore. Send me back now, woman. I wish to finish—”
She had failed to note that the anger was there again in his expression. She couldn’t mistake it in his voice, however, because his unusual accent was more pronounced with it. Joke or no, it was disconcerting to have a man of his size in her bedroom, and sounding so vastly annoyed—with her. She would, in fact, have been truly frightened, if she weren’t so angry herself.
So she cut him off with “Put a lid on it, mister. I don’t care how long it took you to rehearse those lines, you’re not playing to an appreciative audience. This foolishness has gone too far. I’ll have you and Barry both brought up on charges if you persist—”
He did some interrupting himself. “You summoned me, lady. I do not come willingly to your command.”
Her eyes narrowed on him. “So you’re not going to drop it? Do you really think I find this amusing? Barry has misinformed you if he told you I would.”
His expression suddenly changed to one of curiosity. “You have berries that speak here?”
That caught her off-guard. “What?”
“I am partial to blue.”
“Blue—?”
A sound of pure frustration escaped her when she realized he was talking about blueberries. But before she could verbalize it, he said, “On second thought, lady, if you have summoned me for a bedding, my brother can wait.”
He was staring at the towel around her as he said that, and the few inches of her upper thighs that were visible to him from where she stood on the other side of the bed. Her face flooded with color over what he had just plainly insinuated.
She had been holding the sword so that it rested against the mattress. It was purely an instinctive reaction for her to lift it up in front of her. His reaction was demoralizing.
He laughed, his head thrown back, the sound one of genuine amusement.
And when that amusement wound down, he was still grinning at her. He did have dimples, she noted irrelevantly. And he didn’t mind telling her what he found so funny.
“My sword cannot draw my blood. Only the gods can do that now—and Wolfstan the Mad, if he ever finds me.”
Roseleen heard nothing beyond the words “my sword,” and every bit of the possessiveness that she had developed for the weapon in question came rushing to the fore. “Your sword? Your sword! You’ve got two seconds to get out of my house, or I’m calling the police!”
“No bedding then?”
“Get out!”
He shrugged. He grinned again. And then he disappeared before her eyes—and again, thunder cracked in the distance with a flash of lightning on its tail.
For five minutes, she continued to stare at the space where he had stood. Her heart was pounding. Her thoughts were frozen. Her skin was covered in gooseflesh.
When her mind began to function again, she carefully put the sword away and tucked the box beneath her bed. She put her nightgown on, yanking the towel out from under it only after it fell to her knees, something she’d never done before—or felt she had to do.
Her eyes kept returning to that empty spot in the corner that remained empty. Even after she crawled into bed, she still sat there and stared at it for a long while. She didn’t even consider turning off the lights that night.
When she did finally lie back against her pillows, it was with a weary sigh. In the morning, she’d have a logical explanation for what had just occurred. In the morning, she wouldn’t be too tired to figure it out. Just now, all she could think was that she really was losing her mind.
6
A dream. Roseleen had her explanation for what had occurred last night—or rather, what she’d thought had occurred. Somehow her subconscious mind had combined her curiosity about the sword with Barry’s joke to give her some answers, but as dreams go, she hadn’t gotten around to asking any questions.
A dream. It was the simplest explanation, and the most logical. It was a shame, though, that the one time she got a handsome man into one of her dreams, she had to go and get all huffy and send him away. Curiosity about the sword wasn’t the only curiosity he could have appeased, and he’d been willing to appease that other curiosity. He’d even mentioned it: bedding her. All she would have had to do was say, “Yes, that would be nice,” and…
She smiled to herself, thinking about it. You couldn’t find much safer sex than sex in a dream. Morals, guilt, regret, even your own personality, all could be set aside while you enjoyed doing something that you wouldn’t consider doing outside a dream. But she, of course, had to remain true to form and bring her morals, her indignation, and her testy temper along in what had to be one of her most unusual and interesting dreams ever. Truly a shame.
Roseleen was satisfied with her explanation—but only after she’d spent an hour thoroughly searching the bedroom for wires and hidden cameras that might have been capable of projecting a lifelike image into her room. She found nothing out of the ordinary. She hadn’t really thought she would.
Getting that complicated was beyond Barry Horton’s imagination, after all, not to mention that he was too tightfisted to cover the expenses for the kind of sophisticated equipment it would take to pull off such a hoax. His idea of an extravagant gift during their courtship was to bring her whatever flowers happened to be in bloom on his route to campus. Heaven forbid he should ever enter a florist’s shop. The less it cost, the better, was his motto.
Obviously, his joke had begun and ended in the States, a onetime shot for him to get a good laugh. But she supposed it had made a bigger impact on her than she’d thought, for her to dream something similar a month later, and to have her subconscious recall every exact detail about Barry’s handsome accomplice.
David was leaving her his London car for the duration of her vacation, which meant that she had to take him to the train station tomorrow. Today he was accompanying her to the next town, where there was a large grocery that imported many of the American staples they were both used to at home. She drove in order to get used to driving on the opposite side of the road again, with someone in the car to remind her if she happened to forget, which she usually did for the first few days each time she came here.
On the way back to the cottage, she decided to tell David about her strange dream. When she finished, he was grinning at her.
“Blooddrinker’s original owner, and you kicked him out before you could ask him about the curse?”
“I didn’t realize I was having a dream, David. I thought I was experiencing another break-in by Barry’s friend, who only pretends to be the owner of that sword.” And then she grinned herself. “Besides, had I asked him, whatever answer he gave would actually come from my own subconscious, and I still haven’t a clue what that supposed curse is all about.”
“Ah, but it would have been interesting to find out what your subconscious would have come up with for a plausible answer. An amazing thing, the subconscious. Those who believe in reincarnation say every life you’ve ever lived is buried somewhere deep inside it.”
Roseleen rolled her eyes and ended up swerving off the curve on the narrow country road. By the time she got the car back in her lane and they both finished laughing over the minor mishap, she said, “It’s bad enough that we’re discussing a ridiculous curse. Let’s leave reincarnation out of it, if you please.”
“By all means, but you know, that thunder and lightning you mentioned wasn’t part of your dream. I was just dozing off myself last night when it woke me.” She was starting to frown when he added, “But then sounds that we hear while we’re asleep can be transferred to our dreams.”
“True,” she replied, yet his remark made her realize something that hadn’t occurred to her before. Both times the Viking had appeared to her, in her classroom and in her dream last night, it had been right after she’d touched the sword. And she’d been under a damn compulsion to touch that sword ever since she got it. Was it possible—?
&
nbsp; She shook herself mentally to stop the fanciful direction her thoughts were taking. And to prove just how fanciful they were, as soon as they reached the cottage, she left David to bring in the groceries while she marched straight upstairs to her bedroom. Without any hesitation this time, she slid the box out from under her bed, placed it on the mattress, and opened it, then lifted the hilt of the sword just enough to get her fingers around it.
The thunder cracked. She didn’t look toward the windows to see if lightning was going to follow. She looked straight at the corner where Thorn Blooddrinker had stood last night, and there he was again, this time with a fat poultry bone in his fist that was heading toward his mouth.
Oh, God, this wasn’t happening. She didn’t have the ghost of the sword’s original owner standing in her bedroom, in broad daylight. Not a pretend Viking, but a real one. A real dead one. A ghost. She didn’t believe in ghosts—but what else could he be? And somehow, he was connected to the sword…his sword. No, this simply wasn’t happening.
His eyes were already narrowing on her in that accusing way she was beginning to realize meant he didn’t appreciate being there. “You have taken me from Odin’s feast, lady. Send me back, or feed me, for I have a large appetite that needs appeasing right quickly.”
“Go away,” she said in a very, very small voice.
His eyes narrowed a little more. In one bite, he ripped all the meat from the bone he was holding, then tossed the bone behind him, where it hit the wall and fell to the floor. He didn’t disappear. He stood there and chewed the meat, then licked his fingers.
“If I did not enjoy one of Odin’s feasts so well, I would stay, for you are vexing me sorely with these summonings. But I give you fair warning, lady. You can send me back and I will go—but only because I choose to go. If I chose to stay, there is naught that you can say or do to be rid of me.” And then he grinned suddenly, again showing her those beguiling dimples that sent a giddy rush of feeling straight to her belly—a sensation at odds with her present fear. “Summon me again, lady, and I may prove it to you.”
He was gone, just as he’d come, instantly, no slow fading away, wisps of smoke, or eerie sounds one might associate with ghosts—unless one could associate thunder and lightning with ghosts, because those both came again with his departure. But he was definitely gone—and Roseleen was left staring at the poultry bone he’d left behind, still lying on the floor where it had fallen.
A ghost who could leave things behind? A ghost who could eat—with a large appetite? But she didn’t believe in ghosts any more than she believed in curses.
She started to laugh, but it ended in a groan. She was still dreaming, obviously. She let the sword drop back onto the velvet lining, slammed the box shut, and curled up on her bed—to hurry the process of waking up.
7
Roseleen went downstairs in somewhat of a daze, holding the poultry bone, which had still been in her bedroom when she woke from her nap, between two fingers as if it were a dead rat she had to dispose of. She was heading for the kitchen to do just that, and that’s where she found David, starting to prepare their dinner. His back was to her, and an array of vegetables was spread out on the counter beside him.
Seeing him, she said the first thing that came to her mind. “Pinch me, David. I think I’m still dreaming.”
He turned, took one look at her, and said, “For God’s sake, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
She almost laughed, had an hysterical urge to do so, but managed to restrain it. That he happened to choose that phrase to describe her pallor was just too ironic for her present state of mind. But fortunately, his eyes dropped to what she was holding so far out in front of her, and he added, “Did Elizabeth’s cat misplace that?” jolting her back to what was sane and rational.
Of course, another logical explanation. Elizabeth Humes had a cat that got into the house occasionally, and cats loved bones just as much as dogs did, poultry bones in particular. She wasn’t going to quibble about the fact that she hadn’t seen that bone until she’d seen it in his hand. Obviously, she must have noticed it before she took the nap she just woke from, but was too tired to register what it was, otherwise, it wouldn’t have been included in her dream.
Now she walked over to the kitchen trashcan and dropped the bone into it. She was smiling when she asked David, “Need some help?”
He grunted at the way she had of ignoring subjects she didn’t want to discuss. She treated them as if they hadn’t been mentioned.
“I’m glad to see some color back in your cheeks, but what I need is to hear why you were so pale a second ago. You’re not getting sick, are you, Rosie?”
“No—at least, I don’t think so.” And then she shrugged, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to admit, “I just had another dream, this one almost identical to the one I had last night, with that Viking ghost, Thorn Blooddrinker, materializing in the corner of my bedroom again, the sound of thunder accompanying his appearance.”
“Why do you call him a ghost now?”
“He’s a thousand years old,” she replied, “and yet he’s showing up in this century, even if only in my dreams. What else would that make him?”
“Immortal?” She gave him the snort that remark deserved, which made him chuckle before he asked, “So, did you question him about the curse this time?”
“I was too frightened by his appearance again even to think of the curse. I simply told him to go away. But—he did volunteer a warning before he vanished, something about how I could send him away and he would go, but only because he wanted to go. If he chose to stay, he said there was nothing I could do to get rid of him.”
“At least until you woke up.”
That simple statement brought a wide grin to her lips, and some very definite relief. She hadn’t realized she was still wound up so tight with nervous tension until it drained from her now.
“It’s too bad I didn’t think of that while I was having the dream.”
“Now that you have, maybe it will occur to you next time, and you can—”
“I do not intend to have that particular dream again, David,” she interrupted him, her tone more determined than certain.
“If you do, keep him around long enough to find out about the curse. I’m curious to know what your subconscious will come up with for an answer.”
Roseleen wasn’t. Her conscious thoughts had become too fanciful as it was, since she’d had that first dream. She would just as soon not know how much more fanciful her subconscious could get.
“And by the way,” David continued, “I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the thunder this afternoon that triggered your dream again. The storm that didn’t show up last night has arrived, if you haven’t noticed.”
She hadn’t noticed, but she looked out the kitchen window now to see that it was indeed raining, and no small drizzle but a downpour. Her smile, on the other hand, was as bright as sunshine.
“I never thought I’d welcome the sight of rain,” she said, “but I have to tell you, having thunder and lightning show up in cloudless skies twice lately was beginning to get a little spooky. At least this time it appears to have heralded a perfectly normal storm.”
He burst out laughing. “Getting a little superstitious, are we?”
She blushed slightly but still grinned. “Maybe just a little.”
Somehow, she managed to put thoughts of ghosts and Vikings and thousand-year-old curses from her mind for the rest of the day, so she could enjoy David’s company while she had it. It wasn’t easy.
She would be starting her research next week. She had museums to visit, as well as bookstores, the older libraries with their wealth of books no longer in print, and, of course, ancient battle sites. She had no time to devote to the analysis of dreams that couldn’t really satisfy her curiosity about that curse. Whatever answers her subconscious could come up with wouldn’t be the real answers, and…
Roseleen still ended up giving it some thought later that night whi
le she lay curled up in her bed, trying to sleep, but knowing it would be impossible with that one little kernel of doubt still floating around in her head—what if she hadn’t been dreaming?
It was a very big if, one that her logical stick-to-the-facts mind was leery of exploring, because if she hadn’t been dreaming, and she hadn’t found anything to prove that she was the victim of a hoax, then she’d been talking to a ghost. And that led to a wealth of other questions.
Thorn Blooddrinker had left each time she’d told him to leave, but what if what he’d told her was true—that he could stay if he chose to? What did she know about ghosts, anyway, except that she didn’t believe in them, or she hadn’t believed in them. Was that the curse on the sword, that its original owner came part and parcel with it?
The previous owner had been warned about eternal damnation if the sword fell into the hands of a woman. Because only a woman could “summon” the ghost? Was she going to be stuck with a ghost for as long as she owned the sword? That possibility was terrifying and fascinating by turns. If she had to be stuck with a ghost, having one as handsome as—
She groaned into her pillow. She wasn’t really starting to believe this nonsense, was she? But what if…what if Blooddrinker really was a ghost, a thousand-year-old Viking ghost…?
Her heart started pumping as another possibility occurred to her. Had he been a witness to all the centuries since his death? Could he tell her about the Middle Ages in actual detail? Give her facts that were unknown? Actually assist her in her research?
The mere possibility of that was so exciting to her, she started to throw off her covers to get the sword, but stopped herself with another groan. It had to be her exhaustion. She really should have gotten some rest before she came to England, instead of promising herself that she’d rest once she was there. That was the only reason she could think of for why she was letting her imagination run amok like this.
Well, there was one other reason, her enthusiasm for historical research. But still, that was no excuse for getting so fanciful. There were no such things as ghosts. Curses weren’t real either, for that matter. Weird dreams were, however.