Asgard, and she lacked the courage to tackle the operator with her minimal Norwegian. So she had to go to dinner tonight.
She set off down the street to the bookshop to buy a phrase book, trying to rationalise her dilemma. Lars was taking her mind off her grandfather. Once Harald returned—and providing the owner of the négligé did not object—she would spend some time with her cousin. And then she would be leaving Oslo. There was no need for her to panic.
Nevertheless, Kristine got back to the apartment in lots of time to get ready. Because she had only one dress, made of uncrushable jersey in a swirl of blues and lilacs, any indecision as to what to wear was eliminated. She shampooed her hair, soaked in more of the bubble bath, and made up her face with care. Her dress was designed for coolness, baring her shoulders and arms, hanging straight to her hips, then flaring out in graceful folds to her knees. Her shoes were thin-strapped blue sandals.
She looked at herself from all angles in the bathroom mirrors, remembering how she had gone dancing with Andreas in Greece and had flung the dress on without a second thought.
The doorbell rang. Her heart thumped against the wall of her chest and her wide blue eyes stared back at her as if they were not sure who she was any more. Taking a deep breath, Kristine went to open the door.
Lars was wearing a light grey summer suit with a shirt and tie; he looked handsome, formidable, and a total stranger. Her heart performed another uncomfortable manoeuvre in her breast. Ushering him into the foyer, she said weakly, ‘Hello.’
In silence he looked her up and down. The dress touched her gently at breast and hip. Her neck looked long and slender, her eyes huge. He put the bouquet he was carrying on the cherrywood table and rested his hands on her bare shoulders, stroking her flesh with his thumbs. ‘The reason I do not often touch you,’ he said formally, his accent very much in evidence, ‘is because when I do I want only to make love to you.’
The sensuous madonna and the black-clad woman rose in her mind. ‘I’ve never made love with anyone,’ Kristine said.
She saw his instant acceptance of her words. His hands stilled. ‘For whom have you been waiting?’
‘I—I don’t know...not for anyone. I—’
‘You are so beautiful I forget the rest of the world exists,’ Lars said huskily.
If he kissed her now, she would be lost. Kristine stepped back, stammering, ‘Lars, I—I told you I travel light—I don’t want involvement.’
He let his hands travel the length of her bare arms. ‘Sooner or later you’ll tell me why,’ he said.
The force of his will pushed against her defences. ‘I don’t owe you an explanation,’ she cried.
‘I don’t speak of owing or of debts—but of honesty,’ he said fiercely.
She took a deep breath. ‘Your grandmother can’t possibly be as difficult to get along with as you.’
His eyebrow quirked. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘By the way, these are roses from Asgard.’ He handed her a tissue-wrapped bouquet of old-fashioned blooms, heavy-petalled and fragrant, adding with his crooked smile, ‘They have thorns as sharp as your Swiss army knife—be careful.’
‘They’re beautiful, thank you.’
She arranged them in a lead-crystal vase, then she and Lars left the apartment. She was somehow not surprised that his car was a Jaguar, painted a sleek dark green. Within minutes they were in the countryside, winding up a low hill between tall, verdant trees. ‘My grandmother owns all this,’ Lars said. ‘The house is around the bend.’
The house was a stone mansion that somehow repelled Kristine by the heaviness of its design and the blank stare of its long ranked windows. ‘Do you live here?’ she asked non-committally as Lars pulled up by the door.
‘For now.’
Which was a less than satisfactory answer, she thought, getting out of the car and walking up front steps guarded by a pair of hideous griffins. A uniformed butler greeted them and led them into the drawing-room. Kristine had a quick impression of dark panelling, ornate furniture and gloomy oil-paintings before Lars said, ‘Bestemor, I’d like you to meet Kristine Kleiven. Kristine, my grandmother, Marta Bronstad.’
Marta Bronstad was seated in a high-backed wing chair, her crown of pure white hair held in place with diamond clips, her long gown of bottle-green taffeta instantly making Kristine feel underdressed. With swift intuition she knew Lars would ordinarily have worn a tuxedo for dinner and had not done so tonight out of deference to her restricted wardrobe.
Marta Bronstad was holding out one hand, palm down; the smile on her lips did not reach her faded blue eyes. She expects me to kiss her hand, thought Kristine, and knew this was the first test. She said politely, ‘Good evening, Mrs Bronstad, it’s very kind of you to invite me to your home,’ took the proffered hand in hers and shook it.
‘Fru Bronstad,’ the old woman corrected her.
‘I speak almost no Norwegian, I’m afraid.’
‘Yet you were born here, Lars tells me. Why did your father leave his home?’
A question to which Kristine would very much have liked the answer. As the butler offered her a glass of sherry, she said, ‘Perhaps he wished, like the Vikings, to find a new and different land.’
‘And what did he do in that new and different land?’
Kristine’s relationship with her father had never been easy, but she owed him more loyalty than she owed honesty to this inquisitive old lady. ‘He bought an orchard.’ She looked directly at Lars. ‘He grew cherries. Kirsbaer, you call them.’
Between them the memory of a kiss flared to new life. Kristine looked back at his grandmother and asked, ‘Have you always lived here, Fru Bronstad?’
‘Always. It will be the inheritance of my elder grandson, Lars.’
So this dreary mansion would one day be Lars’s. Somehow Kristine had not pictured him as a man content to wait around for his inheritance. She was almost relieved, because such a discovery lessened his attraction. Then Lars said levelly, ‘That is still to be decided, Bestemor.’
Marta Bronstad glared at her grandson, transferred the glare to Kristine, and said, ‘Are you here to visit relatives, Miss Kleiven?’
For the first time Kristine’s composure faltered. ‘Partly,’ she said. ‘I’m staying in my cousin’s apartment, and I’ll be meeting him on the weekend.’
‘Where did your father come from?’
‘Fjaerland.’
‘Ah, yes...farmers,’ Fru Bronstad said dismissively.
Anger licked its way along Kristine’s veins; she took a large gulp of sherry before she could say anything she might regret. As Lars described the history of some of the paintings in the room, Marta Bronstad sipped her sherry in a silence that was the opposite to repose. The butler made an announcement. In a rustle of skirts Lars’s grandmother stood up, took Lars by the arm and swept out of the room. Kristine perforce followed.
The dining-room
