had first become clear to her that something was badly wrong with her parents’ marriage.
Juice was trickling down her chin. Lars said, ‘Hold still,’ and with a folded handkerchief swabbed her face. Then, taking her by surprise, he lowered his head and kissed her.
His lips were firm and tasted of cherries and flooded Kristine with bitter-sweet pain and an ache of longing. She pulled away, muttering frantically, ‘No, no—don’t do that.’
He said with a calmness belied by the rapid pulse at his throat, ‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since last night.’ Then, as if nothing had happened, he offered her the bag of cherries again.
She fought to steady her breathing. How could she make a fuss when for him the kiss was already in the past? Anyway, she was twenty-three years old and both Philippe and Andreas had kissed her before she had made it clear to them that she was not interested in that kind of travelling companion. Determined not to let Lars know that the blood was racing through her veins from that brief touch of his mouth to hers, she helped herself to another cherry.
They took the ferry back to Oslo, past the crowded marina and the bulk of Arnhus Castle, and window-shopped near the city hall. In front of a display of hand-knit sweaters Lars said, ‘Where would you like to have dinner?’
‘I can’t afford to eat out twice in one day,’ Kristine answered lightly.
‘I was inviting you to be my guest,’ he said with a careful lack of emphasis.
Almost glad that he had presented her with a genuine excuse, she said, ‘I can’t do that, Lars. Because I don’t have enough money to return the compliment.’
‘Your company is return enough.’
Not sure whether he was serious or joking, she said, ‘You may think so, I don’t.’
‘Kristine, you’re a visitor in the city I call home. Let me at least introduce you to the delights of sursild and rensdyr.’
‘I’d be using you if I did that, don’t you understand?’
He was clearly making an effort to hold on to his temper. ‘You have a conscience as scrupulous as a cardinal’s!’
‘I’ve met a lot of men in the last two years, and I’ve never wanted to be indebted to any of them.’
‘So I’m to be lumped together with everyone else?’ he grated.
He was startlingly different from everyone else. Which she was not going to share with him. ‘It’s a rule that’s stood me in good stead,’ she said obstinately.
‘Rules are made to be broken.’
‘Not this one.’
Two American tourists in loud checked shirts were listening unashamedly to this interchange. Muttering a pithy Norwegian word under his breath, Lars took her by the arm and steered her out of earshot across the cobblestones. ‘Let’s get something straight,’ he rasped. ‘Which is it—you don’t want to have dinner with me or you can’t afford to have dinner with me?’
Kristine let out her breath in a tiny sigh. It was a strange moment to remember the Viking vessel with its elegant curves and its aggressive crew, its unsettling combination of the feminine and the masculine. She said honestly, ‘I don’t know, Lars. I do know I’m not looking for a summer romance—’
‘Neither am I.’
‘Then what’s the point? I’ll be gone from here by Monday at the latest, and I won’t be back.’
‘I asked if you wanted to have dinner with me. Wanted, Kristine.’
She had never liked lying. ‘Yes, I want to! But—’
‘Then tomorrow night have dinner with me and my grandmother at Asgard. That’s free.’
He had cleverly undercut all her arguments. ‘Right now you look as though you’d rather pick me up and shake me than have dinner with me,’ she remarked.
‘Both,’ he said.
Surely there could be no harm in a family dinner. Besides, it might be her only chance to visit an old Norwegian estate. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘dinner tomorrow night.’
Lars said with a touch of malice, ‘You should be more than a match for my grandmother. I’ll pick you up at the apartment at six-thirty.’ He then wheeled and headed across the square.
Piqued that he should leave her so unceremoniously, angry with herself for minding, Kristine called after him, ‘You’re just not used to being turned down.’
He stopped in his tracks and looked back at her. ‘Kristine, if you’re picturing me as some kind of Viking Don Juan wallowing through a sea of women, you couldn’t be more wrong.’
Even across twenty feet of cobblestone she could feel the pull of his body. ‘Are Norwegian women crazy? Or does winter freeze the blood in their veins?’
A smile was tugging at his mouth. ‘You flatter me.’
Abandoning all caution, she said wickedly, ‘Clearly a female has to leave Norway at the age of two in order to develop a proper appreciation of a sexy man.’
His legs straddled, the sun glinting in his hair, Lars said, ‘Certainly leaving Norway at the age of two has turned this particular female into a raving beauty.’
Her jaw dropped. ‘Who, me?’
He looked around him. ‘No one else here.’
‘Raving beauties wear lots of make-up and elegant clothes and go to the hairdresser,’ Kristine argued. ‘I cut my own hair with my nail scissors—which, incidentally, I lost in the park last night.’
He said evenly, ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’
In the middle of a crowded public square was not an appropriate place for Kristine to be attacked by a sexual desire so strong that she was sure it must be obvious to every tourist within a hundred feet. Although she had never felt this way in her life, she could define exactly what she was feeling. She wanted Lars Bronstad, wanted him in the most basic way a woman could want a man. She said faintly, ‘I—I’ve got to go...I’ll see you tomorrow,’ turned, and ran away from him across the square. Her face was burning, her eyes feverish...what must he think of her?
He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.
She should never have agreed to see him again tomorrow. Never.
* * *
Kristine spent the next morning in the National Gallery, where two Munch portraits caught her imagination. The first was of a young woman in a high-collared black dress, hands submissively folded, hair scraped back; the second was of a wild-haired, half-naked Madonna. Which one was she herself like? Or was she like neither? Did travelling light mean that all her energies were confined to the cage of a narrow black dress?
She had no answers to her own questions. She only knew that the thought of seeing Lars tonight
