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 key in the lock and pushed open the door. ‘‘Will you…come in?’’
He swept her high in his arms and carried her inside, kicking the door shut behind him.
The next day was the Fourth of July. Ingrid, Liv and Finn went together to the picnic sponsored by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Sacramento. There was softball. Liv and Finn played on opposite teams. Twice, Finn put her out at third.
That night, after the fireworks at the fairgrounds and the more intimate pyrotechnics at home, she told him she didn’t at all appreciate the look of pleasure on his face those two times he caught the ball just as she was sliding in.
He pulled her close and kissed her hard. ‘‘Ah, my love. Leave a man his petty triumphs, won’t you?’’
‘‘Why? Your team won.’’
For that, she got a maddening low chuckle.
She grumbled, ‘‘I’ll bet you’re a lousy loser.’’
‘‘Not as lousy as you are, my darling.’’ He slid beneath the sheet, disappearing from her view. She felt the shivery scrape of his tongue against the curve of her hip. ‘‘I am not a lousy loser,’’ she announced.
And then she moaned.
And then she forgot everything but the magic he could work with his hands and his tongue.
Liv and a number of other ‘‘nonessential’’ staff at the Justice Department got Friday off.
She and Finn slept late. When they woke, they made leisurely love. Then they wandered downstairs and fixed a big brunch, which they ate sitting on the floor in the family room watching daytime TV, sharing coffee-flavored kisses.
Later they went over to Old Sac. They strolled the wooden sidewalks and toured the permanently moored Delta King. When Ingrid’s shop closed at six, they took her to dinner.
They were back at the T Street house by eight-thirty—and wrapped in each other’s arms upstairs in her bed by nine. They made love and then they made love again.
They slept.
Live woke a little after two. She looked at the clock and she thought of the test she’d agreed to take in just a few short hours. The truth was, the test had been there, lurking in the back of her mind, since the night Finn had brought it to her and they became lovers again.
Her period hadn’t come and she’d experienced none of the usual signs that it was coming. Still, things had been stressful, to say the least, these past few weeks. In all likelihood, she was simply going to be a little late this month.
She turned her head and looked at the sleeping man beside her, resisting the all-too-constant urge to touch him, to trace his fine brows, to brush at his hair where it curled at his temple, to run her finger down his beautiful blade of a nose.
Positive or negative…
Either way, tomorrow she would probably lose him. Unless she agreed to return to Gullandria and become his wife. The choice, in the end, was one she dreaded having to make. Give him up. Or give up her dreams for herself.
There was pressure at the back of her throat. Ridiculous. She was Liv Thorson, head of her class, with a mind like a steel trap. She was going into politics and there was no crying in politics. She swallowed to banish the traitorous tightness.
Finn stirred. He opened his eyes. Through the darkness she saw the white flash of his smile. The smile faded and he looked at her deeply as he realized what was going through her mind.
