you have to see, there’s no point in my running off to your family castle with you. Oh, Finn. I have a life, important work that I need to get back to. Even if I am pregnant, I won’t be marrying you.’’ She expected him to cut in about then and argue with her. It didn’t happen. Vaguely nonplussed by his sudden complete lack of resistance, she babbled on. ‘‘A marriage between us would never work. I mean, honestly, we hardly know each other. We come from truly, uh, diverse backgrounds. There’s no…commonality. Is there, really?’’ He didn’t answer, so she did it for him. ‘‘None at all. We had a lovely, um, summer fling. I truly did, er, enjoy it. But really, what happened between us on Midsummer’s Eve is hardly a basis for marriage, now, is it?’’
For several uncomfortable seconds, he didn’t say anything. There was a lull—in the music on the radio, in the news on the TV. The ticking of the gilded French clock on the mantel seemed to rise up loud and gratingly insistent.
She was just about to ask him what kind of scheme he was hatching now, when the music swelled again and the newsmen began chatting and Finn inquired softly, ‘‘What will you do?’’
She almost asked, You mean, if I am pregnant? But she stopped the words just in time, drawing back, thinking, I will not start making plans that probably won’t even be necessary.
She told him in a tone that allowed no room for argument, ‘‘I’m going home, Finn. Today. And no matter what results I get, if it turns out I have to take that pregnancy test, I’m not going to marry you.’’
He rose—a portrait of purest male grace. ‘‘I see.’’
She looked up at him, narrow eyed. ‘‘What is that? ‘I see.’ What does that mean?’’
In lieu of an answer, he offered his hand. Warily she laid hers in it. He gave a gentle tug and she was on her feet beside him.
He raised her hand and kissed the back of it, just the faintest, most incredibly seductive brush of his lips against her skin. ‘‘Necessity, Fate and Being,’’ he whispered. ‘‘May the three Norns of destiny show you the way.’’
Lovely, she thought. Yet another of those archaic Gullandrian sayings. She’d heard a lot of them in the past week. What, exactly did he mean by this one? Damned if she was going to ask him.
And really, men didn’t kiss women’s hands anymore. Yet, when Finn did it, it seemed so perfectly natural, so right.
He was such an anomaly: kissing her hand, whispering baroque Norse axioms; determined to win her to his way one minute, bowing himself out the next. She simply could not figure him out.
And so what? It didn’t matter. It was okay. Let Finn Danelaw remain a mystery to her, a tender, naughty memory to bring a secret smile now and then as the years went by.
‘‘Come,’’ he said, guiding her fingers over his arm. ‘‘Walk me to the door.’’
Finn was hardly in his rooms five minutes when the summons came from the king. He returned to the private audience room, where His Majesty and Prince Medwyn awaited him.
The king wasted no time on amenities. ‘‘Well? Will she marry you?’’
‘‘Your Majesty, she says not. She says she’s returning to America today, as planned—and alone.’’
‘‘You used all your skills of persuasion?’’
Finn nodded. ‘‘I am ashamed, Your Majesty, to admit they were not enough, not at this point. She is too wary. I need time.’’
The king’s usually kind eyes grew hard as agates. ‘‘She’s leaving, you said. That means you have no time.’’ Osrik began to pace back and forth between the leaded windows and the archway to the antechamber. Finn and Medwyn waited, deferentially silent, until he chose to speak again. Finally His Majesty stopped and turned. ‘‘Liv is too proud. Too opinionated. Her tongue is as sharp as the beak of a raven. There is, in the end, no reasoning with a woman like that.’’ Those dark eyes leveled on Finn. Finn met them, unblinking.
The king said, ‘‘You will have to take her. I regret the necessity for such a move, but I see no other way. My grandchild will not be born a fitz. Have her car waylaid en route to the airport and transport her to a tower room at Balmarran. Keep her there until she agrees to the marriage.’’
Finn felt a tightness in his chest. Regret. ‘‘She will hate me.’’
‘‘It can’t be helped.’’
‘‘As soon as she gets the chance, she’ll divorce me. Our own laws make it so.’’ No Viking woman could be held to a marriage against her will.
‘‘Keep her at Balmarran until the child is born. Then let her do as she pleases. Your child will be legitimate, and that’s what matters above all.’’
‘‘Your Majesty,’’ Finn said respectfully.
The king looked at him, narrow eyed. ‘‘I don’t like the sound of that.’’
‘‘I would prefer, sire, to capture my wife in my own way.’’
‘‘What way? With Liv, there is no other way than force.’’
‘‘Sire. I assure you. There is a way.’’
Osrik waved a dismissing hand. ‘‘Come now. Listen to your king. Distance has not kept me from watching over my daughters as they grew to womanhood. I know their lives, the choices they’ve made, the men who swarm around them, like bees to hollyhocks in high summer. Liv’s men? Every one of them, soft and giving. Tender as women themselves. They talk with her of changing the world—and they do as she tells them to do.’’ The king’s look turned crafty. ‘‘Did you know she’s got one of those poor fools squirming on the hook of her considerable charms right now?’’
‘‘Yes,’’ Finn said dryly. ‘‘Simon Graves is his name. She spoke of him once or twice in our time together.’’
Osrik strode to his desk and lowered himself into the velvet-padded, intricately carved chair behind it. He laid his hands flat upon the inlaid desktop. The bloodred ruby in the ring of state caught the light streaming in the beveled windows behind him and glittered like fire in a dragon’s eye. ‘‘Finn, we all know that no woman can resist you. As a rule, they don’t even try. But Liv is not a woman in the sense that any true man can understand.’’
‘‘I know that, Your Majesty.’’
The king studied him for a long, uncomfortable moment. ‘‘She’s not like Elli, who understands her womanliness in the deepest way. And not like Brit, who is wild and willful, yes, but still knows herself as a woman and glories in the fact. Liv’s spent her life training herself to assume high office, shuffling her womanhood aside. And that means this may be one game of love you can’t hope to win.’’
‘‘My lord, that’s altogether possible.’’
‘‘You’ll end up with the ashes of regret in your mouth, bitter that you played at all.’’
‘‘Perhaps so.’’
But Finn didn’t
