Page 77 of Viking Unchained
A woman in a dark blue jacket and a short garment known as a skirt was pushing a cart down the aisle.
When she got to Thorfinn and Torolf, who was seated on his left, she asked, “Would you like a beverage?”
“Yea, I would like a beer,” he said.
“Beer?” Torolf snickered. “It’s only ten A.M.”
“So? ’Tis better than that black sludge you drink.” Turning back to the woman, who was tapping her high-heeled shoe with impatience, he inquired, “Dost have beer?”
“Yes,” she said huffily, and left her cart to go up front, where she got a metal container of beer and handed it to him, along with one of those throw-away cups. What he wouldn’t give for a good old horn of mead! That was the way to drink beer. Then she gave Torolf his coffee and both of them a tiny bag of nuts.
“What in bloody hell is this?” he asked Torolf, who was already tearing apart the bag and munching on the nuts.
“Breakfast.”
“You jest.”
“Just eat the damn things.”
A short time later, he told Torolf, who had his eyes closed, attempting to sleep, “Cage is in Minnesota with Lydia.”
Torolf cracked open just one eye. “So?”
“Dost think he is tupping her?”
“Oh, good gods! I hope you don’t intend to ask her that.”
“Why not?”
“You are an idiot. Because it’s tantamount to asking if he’s fucking her.”
“And that is wrong . . . why?”
“You don’t drop the F-bomb around women, unless you can absolutely help it.”
Thorfinn just shook his head at this impossible-to-understand country.
“So, I take it Lydia isn’t your love slave anymore.”
He shook his head. “She does not want a military man.”
“You mean it was getting that serious already? Holy crap! You move fast. Pickup sex to wedding bells in a nanosecond. You must be something in the sack.”
“The sack?”
“Bed furs.”
“Oh, well, of course I know my way around the bed furs, but that is neither here nor there. And I was not speaking of marriage.”
“Oh, yes, you were. You just don’t know it.”
“Explain yourself, lackwit.”
“When Lydia told you that she didn’t want a military man, she meant for the long haul. If it was just sex, what difference would it make?”
He frowned. “I have no intention of wedding again.”
“Did you tell Lydia that?”
