“Mayhap.” Farle sounded skeptical. “Be careful she don’t poison yer lady friend.”
“My lady friend? What? Who? Andrea? Why would you even suggest such a thing?”
“Anything or anyone who gets in her way dies or disappears, so they say at Storm’s Lair.”
“But Andrea?”
Farle shrugged.
“She wouldn’t!”
“If ye say so, m’lord.”
On that happy note, Cnut dried off, put on clean clothing, then stomped into the keep, where he sought out Andrea, who was on a wooden ladder hanging holly from one of the rafters. He yelled up to her, “Andrea!”
The ladder wobbled and she almost fell.
“What?” she asked, irritably.
“Don’t eat or drink anything unless I’ve tasted it first.”
“Are you crazy?”
“Maybe.”
“Who’s that handsome guy who just came in?”
“What handsome guy?” he asked. This time it was his voice carrying a note of irritability. He was the only handsome guy he wanted her noticing.
“Over there. By the door. The one who looks like one of the Three Wise Men. Betcha he parked his camel outside. Ha, ha, ha.”
Cnut looked, and then did a double take. True, the guy wore sumptuous, bejeweled garments in the Eastern style, with a turban, of all things, on his lackwit head.
It was Zeb, the most unlikely, and least welcome, Christmas visitor. Cnut could just imagine the conversation among his brothers:
What did Cnut get for Christmas?
Laid?
Besides that?
A partridge in a pear tree?
What would Cnut do with a pear tree?
I know. Six geese a-laying . . . so he could eat the world’s biggest omelette?
No, Cnut’s Christmas surprise wasn’t food. It was a person. Of sorts. Guess which yule visitor came knock, knock, knocking on our brother’s door?
A jolly old fellow wearing a red hat?
No, a demon wearing a turban. Yuck, yuck!
On the other hand, Cnut mused, maybe there really had been a fourth Wise Man, as many historians claimed. A demon vampire. Cnut would know he was right if Zeb was carrying gold, or frankincense, or myrrh. What in bloody hell was myrrh anyhow? And who needed that kind of stuff? Better he bring a fatted calf, or some sheep. There were sheep at the Nativity, weren’t there?
“Who are you talking to?” Andrea asked as she climbed down the ladder.
Oops! He hadn’t realized he was speaking his thoughts aloud. As she stepped off the ladder, Cnut noticed that Andrea hadn’t yet dressed for the upcoming festivities. Instead, she wore what you could call her work clothes: scruffy boots (she’s going to lose her designer creds), tight jeans (oh yeah!), and the “Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy” T-shirt (yee-haw!).
“Um,” he replied. His brain was melting from whiffing too much holly, or something. Probably coconut overload.
“Greetings!” Zeb the King yelled out, waving his beringed hand, when no one went to give him a personal welcome.
“Oh holy night!” Cnut muttered.
Reynilda perked up from where she’d been sitting by the hearth, bored out of her gourd, while everyone else was working. Seeing the new arrival, she dusted off her gown, a concoction of rose-colored silk and ivory lace, (as out of place in this dark, smoky hall, even with all its greenery, as a butterfly on a pile of dung . . . well, maybe not so bad as that . . . a butterfly in a flock of moths . . . or . . . oh, never mind!), and straightened the silver fillet on her black waves. Then, like a homing pigeon on a wave of lemon scent, she made her way toward the door to welcome the new visitor.
This was not good. Not good at all.
The bride wore blue, the groom wore a grin . . .
Andrea was having the best time of her life. And the worst time of her life.
Cnut had insisted that she sit on his right side at the high table that night, and not be acting the servant. She wore the emerald-green gown, and, actually, she felt rather royalty-like with her blonde hair intricately braided and twisted into a coronet atop her head, thanks to Dyna’s expertise. Of course, any pretensions she might have put on were quickly dashed when Reynilda sat down on Cnut’s left, looking like the Princess in Pink, with her breasts pushed up so high in the rounded neckline that she could just as well be called Princess of Boobland.
That was mean, Andrea’s conscience prodded.
So what! the other side of her brain said.
Andrea’s only jewelry was Cnut’s Christmas gift to her, a thin gold chain holding a gold-filigreed pendant that surrounded a piece of amber, inside of which was the fossil of a long-dead, tiny bumblebee. Cnut told her that many people carried amber as protection on long travels. Her travel back to the past, and hopefully her return to the future someday, definitely qualified as a long travel.