The Angel Wore Fangs(34)
“Don’t you dare!” She assumed that was why he’d freed his hands. The better to kiss her.
He laughed. “The torch was burning my hand.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, knowing perfectly well what she had thought. “In any case, I didn’t mean that kind of mistress, unless you want the position. Nay, I was giving you a position of authority so my people would follow your orders. Rather like mistress of the household.”
“Oh,” she said, even though that was presumptuous of him, too.
He leaned against the wall beside her and brushed some strands of hair off her face that had come loose from her ponytail. She realized in that instant that she was still wearing the silly cowboy hat. What must the people in the hall have thought of her, a woman, in this attire?
“And the kiss,” Cnut said in a husky voice as he stared at her lips, “was to show all the men in my keep that you are off limits.”
“As if that’s for you to decide.”
“Believe you me, a comely woman in a Viking hall would result in fighting among the men to see who got first dibs.”
He thinks I’m . . . comely? Skinny Andy Stewart causing a riot? That is ridiculous. And what exactly does he mean by dibs? Ooooh, the jerk is trying to divert me when I have bigger bones to pick with him. “You somehow teletransported us through time to land in some Dark Age hovel.”
“A hovel? Really? My castle is a hovel?”
She waved a hand to encompass their surroundings. “A wood castle that’s more like a fort than my idea of a castle. Yeah, it’s hovel, a big one. And you brought me here, without my permission!”
“Would you rather we’d stayed at the ranch and been demon fodder?”
She hated when he was being logical. And she hated when he stood so close to her that the scent of peppermint came off him in waves, enveloping her. She barely stifled a moan. “But what about Celie? Oh my God! I knew she was in danger with the ISIS creep, but those other . . . things!”
“Your sister is in no danger from the Lucies. Demon vampires are only interested in dreadful sinners which they can take back to Horror and torture into becoming more of their kind. And vangels, more than anything, Lucies want to capture vangels. The only time they kill innocents is when they get in the way of their evil goals.”
“In other words, I could have stayed.”
“And been surrounded by Lucies. Would you have wanted to stay there alone?”
“Yes.” No. “Send me back.” But I’m so frightened! I don’t want to go alone. Can I go alone? I might have to. For Celie. “Take me back.” Yeah, that’s better. Don’t give him a choice. “Now!”
He shook his head. “I can’t. Not right now.”
“Why not?”
“We were sent here for a reason.”
“What reason?”
“Um . . . I can’t tell you.”
“Do you know?”
“Um . . . yes.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He was lying, or keeping something from her. “Idiot,” she muttered under her breath. Then aloud, “Will we go back?”
“I think so. Eventually. As for your sister, she might have already left the ranch. For Syria or Pakistan or God only knows where. If she’s still there, my brothers will rescue her. I notified my brother Vikar of the conditions, just before we left. There would have been a hird of vangels there before that bedroom door was broken down.”
“That makes me feel much better,” she said in a tone of sarcasm. But it actually did. Not that she wasn’t still worried about Celie, but it appeared as if her sister would be in capable hands. But that brought up another question. “If your brothers were coming, why didn’t we stay?”
“Because there was that period before they arrived, even if was only ten minutes, when you and I were vastly outnumbered. We had to leave.”
“I still can’t believe what happened back there, not that I really know what happened.”
“I’ll explain it all later when there’s no chance we will be interrupted.” As it was, people kept peering down the hall, staying away only because they sensed their master wanted some privacy. They wouldn’t be put off indefinitely.
She put her face in her hands. “Maybe I’m already dead, and this is my Purgatory, though I don’t think I’ve done anything bad enough to merit such punishment.”
“Hoggstead isn’t that bad,” Cnut said with affront.
She lowered her hands and saw that he was serious. “Hoggstead? How perfect! A pig farm!”
“Hoggson was the name of the original owner of this estate. It’s not a pig farm, though I imagine a pig or two would come in handy in the midst of this famine.”