Книга - Travelling Light

Travelling Light
Sandra Field


Destination: Unknown Kristine had one suitcase and no room for excess baggage as she traveled through Norway - especially not for a modern-day Viking like Lars Bronstad.But even a genuine Viking with pillage on his mind would have been easier to cope with than this man who was determined to melt her cynical attitude toward togetherness.She'd even gone so far as to toss his car keys. But nothing could stop a man who'd found the woman of his dreams, and with each stolen caress, each conquered embrace, Lars knew the ice was melting… .







Travelling Light

Sandra Field






www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#uebc67e56-45b1-58ee-adc9-4473d36bfe12)

CHAPTER TWO (#u0365fa7a-dc0e-5dc9-9c08-b25a02dfca41)

CHAPTER THREE (#uc27a6b14-bcf5-5280-a2a0-a05c32c24918)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE


SHE felt at home.

It was ridiculous. Kristine was in Oslo, thousands of miles from home. She and her parents had left Norway when she was less than three, and she had grown up on a farm in central Canada; how could she possibly have concrete memories of this spacious, stately city? Yet, ridiculous though it was, she did indeed feel at home.

She had been strolling the length of Karl Johansgate, one of the main streets of Oslo, her eyes scanning the shop windows, the restaurants, the faces that passed her by. It was a fine evening in July and the pavements were crowded. As she wandered past an outdoor café, where experience had already taught her she could scarcely afford even a sandwich or a beer, she was oblivious of the male eyes that flickered over her, came back, and lingered, for she was immersed in her own thoughts.

This morning, at the border, she had almost turned back into Sweden, for somewhere deep within her she was afraid of this return to her birthplace, and of what she might learn here. Right now she was truly glad that she had taken her courage in her hands and driven past the checkpoint with its brave red, white and blue flag.

Further up the street clowns were cavorting on the pavement, and a group of Bolivians in colourful costumes were singing folk melodies accompanied by drums and throaty flutes. Her mouth watering for a, the Norwegian version of a hot dog, or for one of the baked potatoes the street vendors were selling, Kristine stopped to listen to the musicians. She had all the time in the world, she thought contentedly, aware that the long summer evening was gradually drawing to a close, the sky darkening above the buildings. The key to Harald’s apartment was safely tucked away in one of the many pockets of her shorts, and he would not be back until the weekend. She was accountable to no one.

Another vendor tried to sell her a long-stemmed rose with petals the colour of apricots. She shook her head, smiling, and said awkwardly, ‘Nei takk.’ The language felt rough on her tongue. She should have made an effort to study it before she arrived. But then until last Saturday when she had phoned Harald she had not really been sure that she was going to come here...

A reggae singer attracted her attention, and then two young men in skin-tight black outfits with white-painted faces doing some very clever mime. The audience, she noticed, was mixed: tourists draped with cameras, indulgent middle-aged couples, and every now and then an archetypal Norwegian youth, tanned, blond, lithe and healthy. Her own hair was blonde and her eyes blue. She fitted right in.

From the slim leather bag that looped over her shoulder and hung in front of her Kristine extracted enough money to buy an ice-cream cone, and because she was relaxed and happy her normal caution in a foreign country deserted her; she did not realise that eyes were following her for reasons other than her looks any more than she had noticed the girl-watchers in the cafés. She heard music down one of the side-streets and wandered in search of it, licking the mint-flavoured ice-cream.

The music came from a bar that she couldn’t afford to enter. Then she saw a small leafy park further down the street, and from beyond it heard the lilt of an accordion and the sound of singing. Even if she couldn’t go into the bars and cafés it was fun to watch the people. A people to whom she was related by ties of birth, she mused, munching at the crusty cone as she followed the narrow pathway through the park in the direction of the singing.

In the last two years Kristine had travelled through Thailand, India, Turkey and Greece, and in none of these countries would she have walked alone at night through a city park, for she had a very healthy sense of survival and had soon learned to be streetwise. But this was Norway, and she felt at home, and now that she was finally here her mind was already dwelling on her next decision. She had a grandfather, father of her father, living in Fjaerland, a little village many miles north of Oslo. Her grandfather had no idea that she was here in Norway. Was she going to visit him?

She would have to decide soon, because her money was running out fast. Or else she would have to get a job to tide her over. Frowning to herself, some overhanging branches brushing her shoulder, she ducked into the shadows of the tree.

From nowhere a figure out of a nightmare sprang up in front of her. A grinning white face with a slash of red lips. Black-circled eyes. A black costume that was part of the shadows of the night. And hands that grabbed for her purse.

The hands were real. Male hands with dirty fingernails. Acting instinctively, Kristine thrust the remains of her ice-cream cone at his face, gathered her breath to scream and from behind felt another hand clamp over her mouth.

So there were two of them. Men dressed as clowns. How could she have been so stupid? So abysmally careless?

The man’s fingers dug into her cheeks. His skin smelled acridly of greasepaint and nicotine, and it would have been all too easy for her to succumb to mindless panic. But Kristine had not been travelling for the better part of two years without learning a few tricks of her own. She sagged against her attacker as if overcome by fear, and reached for the tiny nail scissors that she always carried in her pocket. Twisting, she dug them into the first clown’s hand, heard his yelp of pain, and kicked out viciously at the man behind her.

Philippe, with whom she had travelled in Turkey, had taught her that particular trick. Philippe had a face like a Raphael cherub and had been the meanest fighter she had ever seen.

The kick worked. And she was lucky. The second clown tripped over the iron bench on the edge of the path and crashed into the bushes. His curse, fortunately, was in Norwegian.

Adrenalin pumping through her veins, Kristine screamed as loudly as she could. The first clown swung at her with his fist. She ducked, hearing the swish of air past her ear, and struck out again with her lethal little scissors. As they grazed his flesh, his sideways swipe knocked them from her hand. But in the instant that he was off balance she whirled and fled between the trees.

A branch struck her cheek as cruelly as a whiplash. Almost certain that the clowns were following her, she flung her body through the shrubs, burst out on to another path, and ran straight into the man who was waiting there.

Her gasp of terror drove the last of her breath out of her lungs. Yet even then Kristine did not give up. For Philippe had taught her something else. ‘Always you must have two weapons,’ he had said in his charmingly accented English. ‘One for every day, and one for the real emergency.’

She had a Swiss army knife in her back pocket. Just before the man’s arms could close around her, she hauled it out of her pocket in a blur of movement and raked the sharp point of the corkscrew down his bare arm.

He gave a grunt of pain. But he did not let go. Instead he pushed her away from him and said something urgent and incomprehensible in Norwegian.

He had been a fool to push her away, Kristine thought, and brought her knee up to his groin with malevolent speed.

His countermove was swift and decisive and her knee struck nothing but air. He gasped, ‘Stop! I’m trying to rescue you. Je suis un ami...ein Freund.’

Her fingers were already clawing for his eyes. Then her body went still as his words penetrated her haze of fear. For the first time she realised that he was not in a clown costume and that he was not fighting back: all his moves had been defensive. She said blankly, ‘What did you say?’

He was still clasping her strongly by the shoulders, the warmth of his fingers burning through her shirt. ‘I’m trying to rescue you,’ he repeated in English. ‘Against considerable odds, I might add. You did scream for help, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. Yes, I screamed...but I thought you were another one of them...the men who attacked me, I mean.’ She gave an uncontrollable shudder. It was very dark under the trees and she was still not quite sure she could trust him.

He added in a clipped voice, ‘Let’s get out on the street where I can see you.’

One hand slid to grasp hers, and he led the way down the path. Kristine’s knees felt like jelly; she stumbled after him, and as the light from the street penetrated the trees saw that her unknown rescuer was both tall and broad-shouldered, and moved with a fluid grace that seemed every bit as dangerous as the dead white faces of the clowns.

They came out on the pavement of a narrow street edged with rather grand stone buildings. The man stopped under the nearest streetlight, which was decorated with pretty baskets of flowers, and turned to face her, still holding her by the hand. In silence he looked down at her.

She was of average height. Her clothes—khaki shorts and a faded green shirt—were unremarkable, and her face was innocent of make-up. But the light shone full on her eyes, which were blue as gentians and still wide with remembered terror, and on a cap of short, feathered blonde hair. Her features had the clarity of perfect bone-structure, as such possessing an almost asexual beauty. Only in the tilt of her eyes and the sensual curve of her mouth was to be found her essential femaleness, a femaleness she was doing nothing to accentuate.

As for Kristine, she was instantly aware that her rescuer could have graced any advertisement for a Norwegian ski slope or a northern beach. Like her, he had blond hair and blue eyes. Yet the comparison ended there. His hair was darker than hers, tawny and streaked by the sun, while his eyes, blue-grey like the sea on a misty day, were tumultuous with an emotion whose source she could not begin to guess. His nose was straight, his mouth well-shaped, his jaw determined.

As the silence stretched out, she realised something else. Her survey of his external features could almost have been a defence mechanism. What she was striving to ignore was an intense and potentially devastating masculinity, focused at the moment entirely on her. To say he was attractive was to use that word only too literally.

She pulled her hand free. ‘I...thank you for coming to my rescue.’

In disconcerting contrast to the stormy eyes, his face was expressionless. He said, ‘I think you were managing just fine without me.’

He spoke English with almost no accent. ‘I—I thought they were coming after me,’ Kristine stammered, and realised dimly that she was still trembling.

‘Who were they?’

‘They were after my purse. They were dressed as clowns.’ She grimaced. ‘It was horrible, like a bad dream.’

‘I would gather you’re a visitor here—don’t you know enough not to wander around alone at night? Even though Oslo has a low crime rate compared to most European cities, pickpockets and drug addicts are everywhere.’

Some of the turbulence in his eyes was anger, she realised belatedly, although it was an anger held in check and completely under his control. Yet because of his intervention he deserved an honest reply. ‘I’m not normally so careless,’ she confessed. ‘It was stupid of me.’

‘More than stupid. Criminally negligent...you’re a very attractive young woman; it’s entirely possible they wouldn’t have stopped at theft.’

Kristine lifted her chin. ‘Yet you yourself have just admitted that I got away from them on my own.’

‘So you are high-spirited,’ he said slowly. ‘Besides being very foolish.’

‘I’m not usually foolish!’

‘Then why were you tonight?’ he demanded.

‘That’s scarcely your business,’ she fumed, clenching her fists at her sides. As she did so, the cold metal of her Swiss army knife bit into her palm, and in sudden horror she remembered how she had dragged it down her rescuer’s arm. She reached out and took him by the wrist, saying in consternation, ‘I must have hurt you—let me see your arm.’

His shirt-sleeves were rolled up. From his elbow halfway to the base of his thumb there was a long jagged gouge in his flesh, blood seeping from either side of it. She cried incoherently, ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you, or at least I did because I thought you were one of them, and then of course you weren’t...’

Her fingers were slender, and bare of rings. He said, a note in his voice she could not have placed, ‘Did you do the same to them?’

She looked up, sudden mischief lighting her face and driving away the last remnants of fear. ‘I was also carrying a pair of nail scissors,’ she said. ‘I used them to very good effect.’

He gave a reluctant laugh, his gaze trained on her face. ‘Do you carry a first-aid kit, too? To minister to the trail of wounded in your wake?’

He was breathtaking when he laughed. Unconsciously Kristine’s fingers tightened around his wrist. Under her thumb she felt the heat of his flesh, under her fingertips a supple shift of bone and tendon—intricate and indelible impressions as ruthless in their way as the anger in his steel-blue eyes had been.

She let his arm fall to his side and heard herself say, ‘The apartment where I’m staying is only five minutes from here and I do keep a first-aid kit there. Will you let me wash that cut and put some antibiotic cream on it? It’s the least I can do by way of reparation.’

One by one her words repeated themselves in her head. You’re crazy, Kristine, she thought. You should be running away from this man much faster than you ran from the clowns.

With a formal inclination of his head he said, ‘Thank you... My name, by the way, is Lars Bronstad.’

‘Kristine Kleiven.’

‘A Norwegian name, surely?’

‘I was born here,’ she said crisply. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Yet you speak no Norwegian?’

She did not want to tell anyone, let alone this handsome and disturbing stranger, the story of her upbringing. ‘I’ve lived in Canada ever since I was two,’ she said repressively. ‘Do you live in Oslo, Mr Bronstad?’

‘High-spirited, foolish, and a woman of secrets,’ he said, setting off down the street at her side.

‘Everyone has secrets!’

There was an answering grimness in his tone. ‘True enough.’

She did not ask what his secrets were. ‘So do you live in Oslo?’ she persisted.

‘On my grandmother’s estate, north of the city. Asgard, it’s called—my great-grandfather had more than his share of self-esteem.’

Her brow wrinkled. ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘Asgard is the old name for the home of the gods.’

She chuckled. ‘And they didn’t call you Thor?’

‘Thor was full of brute strength and not very bright—not exactly a compliment, Miss Kleiven.’

‘Kristine, please.’

‘And I am Lars. Are you staying long in Oslo?’

‘I’m not sure what my plans are,’ she said evasively. ‘But while I’m here I have the use of my cousin Harald’s apartment; I’m very lucky.’

They talked about the high prices of accommodation and food until they came to the elegant stone building where Harald had a fourth-floor flat. Kristine unlocked the security door and together they climbed the stairs. Now that she was here with Lars Bronstad, she was regretting her hasty invitation; Oslo seemed to be having a most peculiar effect on her, for it was not characteristic of her to invite a strange man to her room. Particularly a man as compelling as Lars. She hesitated outside the door, and said clumsily and untruthfully, ‘My cousin will be home later.’

Lars said drily, ‘You can leave the door open into the hallway if that will make you feel safer.’

As she glanced back over her shoulder at him, the light fell strongly across the curve of her cheek. Anger hardening his voice, Lars demanded, ‘Did the men hit you?’ Then with one finger he traced the reddening weal on her skin.

His lashes were darker than his hair, and his eyes had an intensity that disturbed her. ‘It’s nothing—a tree branch when I was running away from them.’

‘I’ll put some ice on it for you.’

She turned away, unlocked the door and ushered him in, flipping on the light-switch. Then she let the door close behind them; she already sensed that her safety where Lars Bronstad was concerned had nothing to do with an open door.

Although Kristine had yet to meet her cousin Harald, she knew quite a bit about him from the contrasts in his six rooms. Because the flat with its high ceilings and oak floors was clearly expensive, and because he had several exquisite antiques, she was certain he had money. That he was untidy and did not believe in housework was self-evident. He also skied, played tennis, drank beer, and, judging by the delicious lace négligé hanging on the back of the bathroom door, had at least one girlfriend of equally extravagant tastes.

But Lars Bronstad quite effortlessly dominated Harald’s large living-room. He too looked expensive, she thought, noting his tailored summer trousers, well-fitting open-necked shirt, and crafted leather loafers. He did not look at all like Andreas, Bill or Philippe, young men with whom she had teamed up at various stages of her travels. It was not just that he was older, or that something in his bearing seemed to define the word masculine. There was something seasoned about him as well, as though his life had led him down some rough roads and the scars of travel were still visible. She said politely, ‘May I offer you a cold beer?’

He was examining the painting over the marble fireplace. ‘Thanks...your cousin has good taste.’

In the kitchen she poured the beer into sterling-silver mugs. Then she fetched her first-aid kit from the guest bedroom and said, using his name for the first time, ‘Lars, if you’ll come into the bathroom I’ll wash your cut.’

She was standing in the doorway. He said abruptly, ‘You look tired...did you just arrive in Norway today?’ She nodded. ‘And you haven’t been here since you were a little girl?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Am I way off the mark if I think it’s not easy for you to be here?’

Every nerve in her body tensed. She didn’t want Lars Bronstad guessing the confusion of emotion that had claimed her ever since she had headed in the direction of Oslo. ‘You can’t possibly know that!’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I know it. I don’t know how or why, but I do.’

With a lack of finesse that secretly appalled her, Kristine snapped, ‘Look, I’m grateful you came to help me, and I’m truly sorry I hurt you—and that’s that. My private life—my feelings—are nothing to do with you.’

‘We’ll see.’

Two small words into which he had injected a world of purpose. Her breath hissed between her teeth. An open door into the hallway was most certainly irrelevant as far as Lars Bronstad was concerned, she thought furiously. He was the most unsettling man she had ever met.

In the bathroom she turned on the taps in the basin. The room was graced with a sunken jacuzzi, great piles of fleecy black towels, and rather more mirrors than were discreet; in one of them she watched Lars look around with interest. ‘A hedonist,’ he commented. ‘Why didn’t he accompany his Canadian cousin on her first wanderings around Oslo?’

‘He was busy,’ Kristine said with minimal truth, scrubbing her hands with soap and hot water, then guiding Lars’s elbow under the cold tap. The flesh was swollen. Blood had encrusted his arm, so that the water ran pink into the bowl. His forearm was corded with muscle, and very tanned; blue veins stood out in the crook of his elbow. Her mouth suddenly dry, she turned off the tap and rummaged in her kit for the antibiotic ointment.

After dabbing his arm dry with a sterile pad, she daubed the cream on the long red gouge, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she tried to concentrate on her task. She had not felt the slightest bit like this when Philippe had been stung by a bee, or when Bill had scraped his knee on some rocks. Straightening, forcing herself to meet Lars’s eyes, she said, ‘That looks better.’

His face was very close to hers; she had no idea what he was thinking. His eyes were deep-set, the sockets lined, and again she had the sense of a man who somewhere in his past had been stretched beyond his reasonable limits. Yet she had forfeited the right to ask him how or why, for she had discouraged him from a similar curiosity about herself. She bit her lip in frustration.

Lars reached around her with his other arm, turning on the cold tap again, and taking a face-cloth from the nearest pile. ‘Hold still,’ he ordered.

As he brought the wet cloth up to her cheek, Kristine closed her eyes. He applied only the lightest of pressure, yet as she felt against her other cheek the waft of his breathing her heart began to race in her breast.

What was wrong with her? She’d never reacted like this to a man in her life; had never wanted to. Nor did she want to now. An unknown cousin and a problematic grandfather were males enough.

After what seemed like a very long time, Lars lowered the cloth and took her chin in his fingers. Kristine’s eyes jerked open. She could lose herself in the depths of his eyes, she thought in utter confusion, and felt him angle her cheek to the mirror. ‘I suspect you’ll have a quite dramatic bruise by tomorrow,’ he said.

For a wild moment she had thought he was going to kiss her. Hot colour flooded both her cheeks. Lars said harshly, ‘I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to.’

Kristine’s eyes flew back to meet his. Her vision had never been so keen, her sense of touch so acute; she felt herself being pulled into the blue of his eyes even as the warmth of his fingers on her skin spread through her body. All the normal barriers between two strangers fell to the ground, leaving the two of them, man and woman, sharing a moment of naked communication that shook her to the soul.

Then she jerked her chin free of his grip. The moment was gone, swallowed by the past, ephemeral as only memory could be. Kristine drew a long, jagged breath, knowing it was terror that had driven her to free herself, terror of a very different kind than that which had claimed her in the park. There was no room in her life for the stark honesty of that moment with its blend of sexual awareness and emotional intimacy, a blend that went far beyond the sexual into territory she had not even known existed. No room at all.

She grabbed a towel to wipe her face, avoiding his eyes. He said flatly, ‘Has that ever happened to you before?’

She shook her head; it was noticeable that she did not ask him the same question. He answered it anyway, and for the first time Kristine had a sense of English being a language foreign to his tongue. ‘Nor to me, ever. What does it mean?’

‘Nothing! I’m tired, I had a bad fright, we’re alone here—that’s all.’

Lars was breathing hard, and she was suddenly aware of the silent, empty rooms that surrounded them and of her distance from anyone she knew. He said, the words falling like stones, ‘I will not allow you to call it nothing.’

In open defiance she said, ‘I’ll call it what I choose.’

‘So you are a fighter, Kristine Kleiven.’ His smile was mirthless as his gaze dropped briefly to his gouged arm. ‘Not that I needed to be told that, did I? Perhaps we should go to the kitchen, where the cold beer is no doubt becoming warm beer?’

Although his change of subject threw her, her recovery was almost instant. ‘Flat, too,’ she said agreeably. ‘I made the mistake of pouring it.’

‘Your cousin isn’t coming back tonight, is he?’

Her lashes flickered. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Not until the weekend.’

‘Yet you invite me—a stranger—up to his apartment. Do you go around looking for trouble?’

‘I asked you here to make amends—not to be insulted!’

‘You haven’t answered my question.’

She gave him a mocking smile. ‘You didn’t have to accept the invitation, Lars.’

‘A fighter, indeed,’ Lars said, balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, and holding her gaze with his own. ‘I want to see you again. Tomorrow why don’t we go to the Viking museum at Bygdoy?’

Normally there was nothing Kristine liked better than to tour a city with one of its inhabitants. ‘No, thank you,’ she said firmly.

‘Every visitor to Oslo should go there.’

‘In that case I shall do so. On my own.’

His jaw tightened infinitesimally. ‘How long are you staying in Oslo?’

‘Not long.’

‘Then what’s the harm in one outing?’ he asked, his smile deliberately high-voltage.

Fighting against his charm, she said, ‘I travel light.’

‘I’m not asking you to bring your cousin.’

In spite of herself her lips quirked. ‘Earlier you called me foolish. I think it would be extremely foolish of me to accept your invitation.’

‘Merely high-spirited.’

‘You have an answer for everything and I need that beer,’ Kristine said feelingly, and marched into the kitchen. There she perched on a stool by the counter and launched a determined discussion of Ibsen’s plays. Lars obligingly followed her lead. They moved to Grieg’s music and drank one beer each. Then Lars stood up. Moving towards the door, he said, ‘What time will I pick you up tomorrow?’

‘You’re taking it for granted that I’m going with you!’

He leaned against the doorpost, his body a long, lazy curve. His blue eyes were laughing at her again. ‘That would be very foolish of me,’ he said.

If she were sensible, she’d say no and oust this man from her life as violently as he had entered it. ‘I’ll go,’ she said crossly. ‘Ten-thirty.’

‘Good.’ Lars pushed himself away from the door and crossed the hall to the main entrance. Pulling one of the tall double doors open, he said, ‘Lock this behind me, won’t you? I hope you sleep well.’ Then the door shut and he was gone.

Kristine, who had been pondering what she would do were he to try and kiss her goodnight, gaped at the gleaming wood panels, said a very rude word, and hoped she wouldn’t behave as atypically during the rest of her stay in Norway as she had on the first day.




CHAPTER TWO


KRISTINE slept poorly. She got up early the next morning, washed out some clothes and hung them on Harald’s balcony, and soaked in the jacuzzi with a gloriously scented bubble bath that she suspected must belong to the owner of the négligé. She then dressed in her blue shorts with her favourite flowered shirt, breakfasted on the less dubious remains in the refrigerator, and went out to buy some groceries.

She had woken with Lars very much on her mind. But in the bright morning sunshine his effect on her last night began to seem the product of fright and an over-active imagination. He was only a man, after all. She would visit the Viking museum with him, there was no harm in that, and then they would go their separate ways. Jauntily she crossed the street to the market.

On her way back she dropped into the post office, finding to her delight that there was a letter in general delivery from Paul, her youngest and favourite brother, to whom she had mentioned the possibility that she might go to Oslo. Kristine sat down in the sun on a stone wall near Harald’s street and tore the letter open.

Paul at eighteen was in love with basketball and women, in that order; he was putting himself through university on athletic scholarships and was now at a summer training session that happily was co-educational. After a two-page description of a centre-forward called Lisa, he reported on the duty visit he had made to their parents recently. Mum was the same; Dad was suing the next-door neighbour for building a fence that infringed on his property.

Kristine let the closely written pages fall to her lap and stared blindly at the ground. She had done the right thing to leave the farm two years ago; as far as her family was concerned she had more than paid her dues. Yet not a letter came from home that she didn’t feel guilty...

A shadow fell across the letter and a deep male voice said, ‘Bad news?’

Kristine gave a nervous start. Raising her eyes, she was presented with a close-up view of long muscular legs, navy shorts, and a shirt clinging to a flat belly. Lars. The gouge in his arm looked worse in daylight than it had last night. More guilt, she thought wildly, clutching at the thin sheets of airmail paper.

Lars sat down beside her on the wall, put an arm around her and said, ‘What’s wrong, Kristine?’

His solicitude unnerved her almost as much as the warm weight of his arm. She shoved the pages of Paul’s letter back into the envelope. ‘Nothing. Just a letter from one of my brothers...I haven’t seen him for two years.’

Lars glanced at the stamp. ‘You left Canada two years ago and you’ve been travelling ever since?’ She nodded, her head bent. ‘Are you running from something—is that why you travel light?’

She was conscious of an irrational longing to pour out the whole sorry story to him. But that would be breaking a self-imposed rule she had never before been tempted to break. ‘I’ve already told you my private life is off-limits, Lars,’ she said more sharply than she had intended. She got to her feet, moving from the protection of his arm to stand alone. It was, she supposed, a symbolic action. Despite a father, a mother and four brothers, she had been standing alone most of her life.

And glad to do so, she thought fiercely. Stooping, she picked up the groceries. ‘Once I’ve put these away, we can go.’

Lars leaned forward and neatly took one of the bags from her. Then he said in deliberate challenge, ‘Now you’re really travelling light. Because you’re letting me take some of the weight.’

‘That’s not what I mean by it,’ she flashed. ‘I travel alone, Lars—that’s what I mean.’

‘Not with me, you don’t! When you’re with me, we travel together.’

The wind was playing with his hair. He looked as if he had slept as little as she, and on what was only their second meeting he was pushing his way inside boundaries that Philippe, Andreas and Bill had never once breached. ‘Then we won’t travel at all,’ Kristine announced, her blue eyes openly unfriendly.

‘Yes, we will. Because you know as well as I do how we met—we met because you screamed for help.’

She glared at him, visited by the mad urge to scream for help again. ‘That’s all very clever,’ she snorted, starting off down the street, ‘but you can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do!’

‘I never thought otherwise,’ Lars said mildly.

She stamped her foot in exasperation. ‘For goodness’ sake let’s talk about something else. Tell me about the Vikings, since we’re going to this museum. A good honest Viking with rape and pillage on his mind would be a lot easier to cope with than you, Lars Bronstad.’

He stopped dead on the street and gave her a comprehensive survey from her over-bright eyes to her slim, tanned ankles. ‘You certainly bring out the Viking in me,’ he retorted, and watched as the flush in her cheeks deepened.

‘Just don’t even think of acting on it,’ she threatened.

‘Not here. Not now.’

‘Not ever. Anywhere.’

A transient gleam of humour in his eyes, he said, ‘I have a philosophic dislike for absolutes.’

Disarmed in spite of herself, Kristine said sweetly, ‘You’d look really cute in one of those metal helmets with the horns on it.’

‘Historians have proved that Vikings didn’t actually wear those helmets,’ he drawled.

‘So is this museum going to give me a whole lot of boring facts instead of romance?’ she riposted, and felt every nerve in her body spring to life at the answering laughter in his face. It was a good thing this was her last meeting with Lars, she thought. He was far more complex—and more dangerous—than any Viking could possibly be.

They arrived at the museum a couple of hours later, after a brief ferry trip and a leisurely stroll up the hill past houses with red-tiled roofs and gardens brilliant with roses and delphiniums. As they bought their tickets Lars said, ‘Just do your best to blank out all the other people,’ and then gestured to her to precede him.

The hall into which she walked had a high arched ceiling and long windows on either side. In the centre of the hall was a ship made of dark wood, a ship whose hull was a graceful sweep from prow to stern. A tall mast stood amidships. High above Kristine’s head the stem and stern ended in carved wooden spirals whose very uselessness emphasised their stark beauty.

She stood stock-still. Lars had told her nothing of what she might expect, allowing the full impact of the ancient vessel to strike her. She walked around it, then climbed the stairs and viewed it from above, with its oarholes and wide, slatted deck open to the elements; she wandered around the other two boats, the burial chamber, and the fierce wooden dragon heads. Finally, with a sigh of repletion she turned to the man who at no point had been far from her side and said quietly, ‘How brave they were, to set out across the sea not even knowing their destination...thirty men in an open ship.’

‘A ship shaped like a woman.’

‘And carved with images of death and war...’ Her face bemused, she smiled at Lars. ‘Thank you...I wouldn’t have missed this for anything.’

As if he couldn’t help himself, he ran one finger down the curve of her cheek. ‘I don’t—’ And then he stopped.

‘What is it?’ she asked in quick concern.

‘Nothing...a silly fancy.’ He glanced down at his watch. ‘It’s time to eat.’

‘You know something? You’re a total mystery to me,’ Kristine said matter-of-factly.

He gave her a crooked smile. ‘I could say the same of you. Food, Kristine.’

They found a restaurant by the water and ate open sandwiches with prawns and lettuce—and argued about aggression and the roots of war. Kristine was thoroughly enjoying herself, for Lars’s intelligence was both wide-ranging and tolerant. It was only his emotions that caused her trouble, she thought wryly. That and his sheer physical attraction: the ease of his long-limbed body in the chair, the gleam of blond hair on his arms, the latent strength in his hand as he poured more water into her glass. She insisted on paying her share of the bill, and then they passed between the closely packed tables on their way out.

Lars curled his fingers round her elbow. Like a stone thrown into water the contact rippled through Kristine’s body. As they emerged on the street, he took her by the hand, another very ordinary gesture that filled her with a complicated mixture of pleasure and panic and reduced her to a tongue-tied silence.

They meandered along the streets until they came to a barrow selling cherries. Lars bought some, holding the bag out to Kristine. They were big ripe cherries like the ones her father used to grow before the orchard went into bankruptcy. She took one, biting into the dark red flesh, instantly transported back to the old farmhouse where as a child it had first become clear to her that something was badly wrong with her parents’ marriage.

Juice was trickling down her chin. Lars said, ‘Hold still,’ and with a folded handkerchief swabbed her face. Then, taking her by surprise, he lowered his head and kissed her.

His lips were firm and tasted of cherries and flooded Kristine with bitter-sweet pain and an ache of longing. She pulled away, muttering frantically, ‘No, no—don’t do that.’

He said with a calmness belied by the rapid pulse at his throat, ‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since last night.’ Then, as if nothing had happened, he offered her the bag of cherries again.

She fought to steady her breathing. How could she make a fuss when for him the kiss was already in the past? Anyway, she was twenty-three years old and both Philippe and Andreas had kissed her before she had made it clear to them that she was not interested in that kind of travelling companion. Determined not to let Lars know that the blood was racing through her veins from that brief touch of his mouth to hers, she helped herself to another cherry.

They took the ferry back to Oslo, past the crowded marina and the bulk of Arnhus Castle, and window-shopped near the city hall. In front of a display of hand-knit sweaters Lars said, ‘Where would you like to have dinner?’

‘I can’t afford to eat out twice in one day,’ Kristine answered lightly.

‘I was inviting you to be my guest,’ he said with a careful lack of emphasis.

Almost glad that he had presented her with a genuine excuse, she said, ‘I can’t do that, Lars. Because I don’t have enough money to return the compliment.’

‘Your company is return enough.’

Not sure whether he was serious or joking, she said, ‘You may think so, I don’t.’

‘Kristine, you’re a visitor in the city I call home. Let me at least introduce you to the delights of sursild and rensdyr.’

‘I’d be using you if I did that, don’t you understand?’

He was clearly making an effort to hold on to his temper. ‘You have a conscience as scrupulous as a cardinal’s!’

‘I’ve met a lot of men in the last two years, and I’ve never wanted to be indebted to any of them.’

‘So I’m to be lumped together with everyone else?’ he grated.

He was startlingly different from everyone else. Which she was not going to share with him. ‘It’s a rule that’s stood me in good stead,’ she said obstinately.

‘Rules are made to be broken.’

‘Not this one.’

Two American tourists in loud checked shirts were listening unashamedly to this interchange. Muttering a pithy Norwegian word under his breath, Lars took her by the arm and steered her out of earshot across the cobblestones. ‘Let’s get something straight,’ he rasped. ‘Which is it—you don’t want to have dinner with me or you can’t afford to have dinner with me?’

Kristine let out her breath in a tiny sigh. It was a strange moment to remember the Viking vessel with its elegant curves and its aggressive crew, its unsettling combination of the feminine and the masculine. She said honestly, ‘I don’t know, Lars. I do know I’m not looking for a summer romance—’

‘Neither am I.’

‘Then what’s the point? I’ll be gone from here by Monday at the latest, and I won’t be back.’

‘I asked if you wanted to have dinner with me. Wanted, Kristine.’

She had never liked lying. ‘Yes, I want to! But—’

‘Then tomorrow night have dinner with me and my grandmother at Asgard. That’s free.’

He had cleverly undercut all her arguments. ‘Right now you look as though you’d rather pick me up and shake me than have dinner with me,’ she remarked.

‘Both,’ he said.

Surely there could be no harm in a family dinner. Besides, it might be her only chance to visit an old Norwegian estate. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘dinner tomorrow night.’

Lars said with a touch of malice, ‘You should be more than a match for my grandmother. I’ll pick you up at the apartment at six-thirty.’ He then wheeled and headed across the square.

Piqued that he should leave her so unceremoniously, angry with herself for minding, Kristine called after him, ‘You’re just not used to being turned down.’

He stopped in his tracks and looked back at her. ‘Kristine, if you’re picturing me as some kind of Viking Don Juan wallowing through a sea of women, you couldn’t be more wrong.’

Even across twenty feet of cobblestone she could feel the pull of his body. ‘Are Norwegian women crazy? Or does winter freeze the blood in their veins?’

A smile was tugging at his mouth. ‘You flatter me.’

Abandoning all caution, she said wickedly, ‘Clearly a female has to leave Norway at the age of two in order to develop a proper appreciation of a sexy man.’

His legs straddled, the sun glinting in his hair, Lars said, ‘Certainly leaving Norway at the age of two has turned this particular female into a raving beauty.’

Her jaw dropped. ‘Who, me?’

He looked around him. ‘No one else here.’

‘Raving beauties wear lots of make-up and elegant clothes and go to the hairdresser,’ Kristine argued. ‘I cut my own hair with my nail scissors—which, incidentally, I lost in the park last night.’

He said evenly, ‘You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.’

In the middle of a crowded public square was not an appropriate place for Kristine to be attacked by a sexual desire so strong that she was sure it must be obvious to every tourist within a hundred feet. Although she had never felt this way in her life, she could define exactly what she was feeling. She wanted Lars Bronstad, wanted him in the most basic way a woman could want a man. She said faintly, ‘I—I’ve got to go...I’ll see you tomorrow,’ turned, and ran away from him across the square. Her face was burning, her eyes feverish...what must he think of her?

He thinks you’re the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen.

She should never have agreed to see him again tomorrow. Never.

* * *

Kristine spent the next morning in the National Gallery, where two Munch portraits caught her imagination. The first was of a young woman in a high-collared black dress, hands submissively folded, hair scraped back; the second was of a wild-haired, half-naked Madonna. Which one was she herself like? Or was she like neither? Did travelling light mean that all her energies were confined to the cage of a narrow black dress?

She had no answers to her own questions. She only knew that the thought of seeing Lars tonight filled her with panic.

In the foyer of the museum she leafed through a phone book. There was no listing for a Lars Bronstad, no mention of Asgard, and she lacked the courage to tackle the operator with her minimal Norwegian. So she had to go to dinner tonight.

She set off down the street to the bookshop to buy a phrase book, trying to rationalise her dilemma. Lars was taking her mind off her grandfather. Once Harald returned—and providing the owner of the négligé did not object—she would spend some time with her cousin. And then she would be leaving Oslo. There was no need for her to panic.

Nevertheless, Kristine got back to the apartment in lots of time to get ready. Because she had only one dress, made of uncrushable jersey in a swirl of blues and lilacs, any indecision as to what to wear was eliminated. She shampooed her hair, soaked in more of the bubble bath, and made up her face with care. Her dress was designed for coolness, baring her shoulders and arms, hanging straight to her hips, then flaring out in graceful folds to her knees. Her shoes were thin-strapped blue sandals.

She looked at herself from all angles in the bathroom mirrors, remembering how she had gone dancing with Andreas in Greece and had flung the dress on without a second thought.

The doorbell rang. Her heart thumped against the wall of her chest and her wide blue eyes stared back at her as if they were not sure who she was any more. Taking a deep breath, Kristine went to open the door.

Lars was wearing a light grey summer suit with a shirt and tie; he looked handsome, formidable, and a total stranger. Her heart performed another uncomfortable manoeuvre in her breast. Ushering him into the foyer, she said weakly, ‘Hello.’

In silence he looked her up and down. The dress touched her gently at breast and hip. Her neck looked long and slender, her eyes huge. He put the bouquet he was carrying on the cherrywood table and rested his hands on her bare shoulders, stroking her flesh with his thumbs. ‘The reason I do not often touch you,’ he said formally, his accent very much in evidence, ‘is because when I do I want only to make love to you.’

The sensuous madonna and the black-clad woman rose in her mind. ‘I’ve never made love with anyone,’ Kristine said.

She saw his instant acceptance of her words. His hands stilled. ‘For whom have you been waiting?’

‘I—I don’t know...not for anyone. I—’

‘You are so beautiful I forget the rest of the world exists,’ Lars said huskily.

If he kissed her now, she would be lost. Kristine stepped back, stammering, ‘Lars, I—I told you I travel light—I don’t want involvement.’

He let his hands travel the length of her bare arms. ‘Sooner or later you’ll tell me why,’ he said.

The force of his will pushed against her defences. ‘I don’t owe you an explanation,’ she cried.

‘I don’t speak of owing or of debts—but of honesty,’ he said fiercely.

She took a deep breath. ‘Your grandmother can’t possibly be as difficult to get along with as you.’

His eyebrow quirked. ‘We shall see,’ he said. ‘By the way, these are roses from Asgard.’ He handed her a tissue-wrapped bouquet of old-fashioned blooms, heavy-petalled and fragrant, adding with his crooked smile, ‘They have thorns as sharp as your Swiss army knife—be careful.’

‘They’re beautiful, thank you.’

She arranged them in a lead-crystal vase, then she and Lars left the apartment. She was somehow not surprised that his car was a Jaguar, painted a sleek dark green. Within minutes they were in the countryside, winding up a low hill between tall, verdant trees. ‘My grandmother owns all this,’ Lars said. ‘The house is around the bend.’

The house was a stone mansion that somehow repelled Kristine by the heaviness of its design and the blank stare of its long ranked windows. ‘Do you live here?’ she asked non-committally as Lars pulled up by the door.

‘For now.’

Which was a less than satisfactory answer, she thought, getting out of the car and walking up front steps guarded by a pair of hideous griffins. A uniformed butler greeted them and led them into the drawing-room. Kristine had a quick impression of dark panelling, ornate furniture and gloomy oil-paintings before Lars said, ‘Bestemor, I’d like you to meet Kristine Kleiven. Kristine, my grandmother, Marta Bronstad.’

Marta Bronstad was seated in a high-backed wing chair, her crown of pure white hair held in place with diamond clips, her long gown of bottle-green taffeta instantly making Kristine feel underdressed. With swift intuition she knew Lars would ordinarily have worn a tuxedo for dinner and had not done so tonight out of deference to her restricted wardrobe.

Marta Bronstad was holding out one hand, palm down; the smile on her lips did not reach her faded blue eyes. She expects me to kiss her hand, thought Kristine, and knew this was the first test. She said politely, ‘Good evening, Mrs Bronstad, it’s very kind of you to invite me to your home,’ took the proffered hand in hers and shook it.

‘Fru Bronstad,’ the old woman corrected her.

‘I speak almost no Norwegian, I’m afraid.’

‘Yet you were born here, Lars tells me. Why did your father leave his home?’

A question to which Kristine would very much have liked the answer. As the butler offered her a glass of sherry, she said, ‘Perhaps he wished, like the Vikings, to find a new and different land.’

‘And what did he do in that new and different land?’

Kristine’s relationship with her father had never been easy, but she owed him more loyalty than she owed honesty to this inquisitive old lady. ‘He bought an orchard.’ She looked directly at Lars. ‘He grew cherries. Kirsbaer, you call them.’

Between them the memory of a kiss flared to new life. Kristine looked back at his grandmother and asked, ‘Have you always lived here, Fru Bronstad?’

‘Always. It will be the inheritance of my elder grandson, Lars.’

So this dreary mansion would one day be Lars’s. Somehow Kristine had not pictured him as a man content to wait around for his inheritance. She was almost relieved, because such a discovery lessened his attraction. Then Lars said levelly, ‘That is still to be decided, Bestemor.’

Marta Bronstad glared at her grandson, transferred the glare to Kristine, and said, ‘Are you here to visit relatives, Miss Kleiven?’

For the first time Kristine’s composure faltered. ‘Partly,’ she said. ‘I’m staying in my cousin’s apartment, and I’ll be meeting him on the weekend.’

‘Where did your father come from?’

‘Fjaerland.’

‘Ah, yes...farmers,’ Fru Bronstad said dismissively.

Anger licked its way along Kristine’s veins; she took a large gulp of sherry before she could say anything she might regret. As Lars described the history of some of the paintings in the room, Marta Bronstad sipped her sherry in a silence that was the opposite to repose. The butler made an announcement. In a rustle of skirts Lars’s grandmother stood up, took Lars by the arm and swept out of the room. Kristine perforce followed.

The dining-room table, large enough for twenty, had been set at the far end with an intimidating array of silverware and goblets. With a wrench of homesickness like a physical pain, Kristine remembered the old pine table in her mother’s kitchen and the plain cutlery that had come with them from Fjaerland. What was she doing here in a house that she hated, with a woman who did not like her and a man who liked her too much?

The meal began with thin strips of herring in a tangy sauce. Kristine waited until Lars had picked up his cutlery and chose the same knife and fork. Marta Bronstad said, ‘Are your parents still living, Miss Kleiven?’ Kristine nodded. ‘And do you have brothers and sisters?’

Impatient with this catechism, aware that she was speaking to Lars more than to his grandmother, Kristine said, ‘I have four younger brothers, whom I virtually raised—my mother hasn’t been in good health for years. When the youngest turned sixteen nearly two years ago and left home, I too left. I’ve been travelling ever since.’

‘It takes money to travel,’ the old lady observed, delicately dissecting one of the fillets.

‘I’ve worked since I was sixteen, and saved every penny I could. I also had temporary jobs in Greece and France—and may have to do the same in Norway, presuming I wish to continue to eat.’

She smiled at the old lady after this smallest of jokes. Marta Bronstad flicked a quick glance around the richly appointed room and said frostily, ‘So you have no money.’

Lars made a sudden move on the other side of the table. But Kristine from the age of eleven had learned to confront her father, and was not about to back down to Marta Bronstad. Before Lars could intervene, she said with the clarity of extreme anger, ‘No, I have no money. Nor have I ambitions to acquire anyone else’s money by fair means or foul.’

‘You’re very forward, Miss Kleiven...young girls were not like that in my day.’

‘I saw a portrait in the National Gallery today of a young woman wearing a black dress that might just as well have been a strait-jacket,’ Kristine replied vigorously. ‘I’m truly grateful I’ve been born in an age when I can travel on my own and earn my own money.’

Marta Bronstad’s eyes did not drop. ‘So you will continue your footloose ways when you leave here?’

‘For as long as I have money and enjoy my travels, yes.’

The old lady pounced with the speed of a ferret. ‘You don’t consider you have a duty to your parents—to a mother who, you say, is far from well?’

Kristine flinched visibly; it was the chink in her armour, the guilt that grew with every letter from home. As the herring fillets wavered in her vision, she heard Lars rap out a sentence in Norwegian. Marta Bronstad’s reply was unquestionably the Norwegian version of, ‘Humph!’

Kristine raised her head. Her eyes filled with an old pain, she looked straight at her interrogator and with desperate honesty said, ‘From the time I was six until I was twenty-one I raised my brothers, Fru Bronstad—what more must I do?’

‘You always have a duty to your parents. Always.’

The butler substituted a clear soup for the remains of the herring, and, having achieved her purpose, Marta Bronstad changed the subject. She spoke of the artist Munch, whom her mother had known, and of the sculptor Vigeland, whom she herself had known; she was caustic and entertaining and offered no apology for any of her earlier remarks. Although Kristine responded valiantly, the unaccustomed amounts of food and wine were giving her a headache.

The meal ended with some wickedly strong espresso served in tiny gilded cups in the drawing-room. Then Lars stood up. ‘I’ll drive Kristine home, Bestemor.’

Kristine also got up. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, Fru Bronstad,’ she said, careful to keep any irony from her voice.

‘As you’re leaving Oslo soon, I doubt that I will see you again,’ Marta Bronstad said. ‘Goodnight, Miss Kleiven.’

It was a dismissal. Kristine stalked down the steps between the griffins, got into Lars’s car, and as soon as he closed his door said tempestuously, ‘What was that, Lars—some kind of test? If so, it’s very obvious I failed.’

‘I would say you passed with flying colours.’

‘It was a set-up!’

‘My choice, you may remember, was to go to a restaurant.’

This was not a statement calculated to appease Kristine’s temper. ‘She thinks I’m after you for your money.’

‘Then she’s wrong, isn’t she?’

‘I’m not after you at all!’

‘She wants me to marry the girl next door, who’s sweet and biddable and very rich. Sigrid is scared of my grandmother...she would never stand up to her as you did.’

Almost choking with an inchoate mixture of jealousy and rage, Kristine sputtered, ‘Then marry Sigrid if you want any peace in the house. In the meantime, please take me home—I’m tired.’

‘In a minute,’ he said. Taking her incensed face in his hands, he bent his head and began kissing her. This time he showed no restraint, no holding back, his mouth burning through her defences. Her lips parted on their own accord and as she felt the dart of his tongue like an arrow of fire all her anger and frustration coalesced into a passionate hunger. She looped her arms around his neck, dug her nails into his thick, springy hair, and kissed him back.

His response shuddered through his frame, as a tall tree shuddered in a storm. One of his hands caressed her back, bared by her dress; with the other he clasped her waist, pulling her closer. And still his mouth clung to hers, their tongues dancing, their breaths mingling.

Kristine’s knee was doubled under her on the car seat; as pain shot through it, she made a small sound of protest, trying to straighten it in front of her. She was trembling very lightly all over, and wanted nothing more than to haul her dress over her head and make love to Lars in the back seat of the car.

He said unsteadily, ‘On at least one level you’re after me.’

What was the use of denying it? In a jerky, graceless movement she backed away from him, pulling her skirt over her legs. ‘I want to go home,’ she said, and had no idea whether she meant Oslo or Ontario.

Lars put the car in gear and surged down the driveway, gravel spitting from behind the tyres. Trees flicked past, dark statues under a sky brilliant with stars. Kristine sat very still, hugging her chest, knowing that with one kiss she had crossed an invisible barrier and could never go back. Innocence had been lost. She now knew in her blood and her bones what it meant to crave the joining of a man’s body to her own.

The lights of the city spangled the night like fallen stars. Lars drove down Harald’s street, parked the car, and said with an urgency that in no way surprised her, ‘I want to make love to you, Kristine. Now. Tonight. I know we only met two days ago and that this isn’t the way either of us normally behaves. But I have to know this is real—that you’re real. That I can trust in—hell, I don’t even know what I’m saying.’

He raked his fingers through his hair. In the dimly lit car she gazed over at him, seeing the shadowed, deep-set eyes and the mouth that had seared its way into her soul. But on the drive from Asgard the turmoil in her blood had subsided a little, and her brain had started to work. She said quietly, ‘I can’t, Lars—you must know I can’t. We come from different worlds, you and I, and once I leave here we’ll never see each other again—I’ll never forget you but I won’t make love with you.’

‘I won’t allow you to vanish from my life!’

‘You won’t have any choice.’

‘I make my own choices, Kristine. I’ve been waiting for you for a long time, and I’m not going to let you slip through my fingers. Two people can travel light—together.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ she said with deep conviction.

‘Then I’ll have to prove you wrong. What time can I meet you tomorrow?’

‘We’re not going to meet!’

‘Yes, we are. I’ll camp on the doorstep all night if that’s what it takes.’

He was entirely capable of doing so. Feeling besieged and frightened, Kristine repeated, ‘We’re not going to meet and we’re not going to make love—you must leave me alone, Lars.’

Drumming his fingers on the wheel, he changed tactics. ‘My grandmother is a difficult and cantankerous old woman. But despite her money and her beloved Asgard she has had more than her share of tragedy...and I love her. She doesn’t respect Sigrid—as I’m sure she respects you.’

‘It doesn’t matter what she thinks of me,’ Kristine cried. ‘Don’t you understand that?’

‘I’m refusing to,’ Lars said grimly. ‘I’m sure you’ve had more than enough of her right now—but, by one of those coincidences that I could do without, tomorrow is her birthday and I’m taking her out for dinner...I want you to join us.’

Kristine didn’t even hesitate. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow’s Friday and Harald will be back.’

He bit off the words. ‘So Harald has more of a claim on you than I?’

‘He’s my first cousin and the first member of my family that I’m to meet...it’s important to me,’ she said rebelliously.

Knuckles tight around the wheel, Lars said, ‘Then I’ll phone you tomorrow morning.’

She opened her door, said breathlessly, ‘I won’t answer,’ and ran for the front steps of Harald’s building. If she’d only stayed on Karl Johansgate the night before last, she thought sickly, none of this would have happened. And tomorrow morning would she really be capable of letting the phone ring unanswered?

The lift creaked its way upwards, slowly enough for her to decide that what she very much wanted to do was put her head on the pillow and have a good cry. Pulling out her key, she unlocked the door to the flat.

A light was shining in Harald’s bedroom.




CHAPTER THREE


STANDING in the hall, Kristine called uncertainly, ‘Hello...Harald?’

‘Kristine—is that you? I got back early.’

A young man swathed in one of the black bathroom towels came into the foyer. He had a shock of wet brown hair and a cheerful grin, and the hug he gave her was as brotherly as she could have wished. Kissing her on both cheeks Harald said, ‘This calls for champagne, this meeting of cousins after so many years. And how pretty a cousin you are,’ he finished gallantly.

No undercurrents in Harald, Kristine thought. She could travel anywhere with him and be quite safe. To her horror her eyes flooded with tears.

In quick concern he said, ‘You have a bruise on your cheek—has something happened?’

‘It’s a long story,’ she said shakily.

‘I love stories and I love champagne. Let me put on some clothes and then you must tell me everything.’

Under the influence of champagne on top of all the wine she had drunk Kristine told Harald a great deal, although not quite everything. He said decisively, ‘I’ll take you out for dinner and dancing tomorrow night; you don’t need another evening of grandmothers. You’re sure you’re not falling in love with the grandson, though? That would be very romantic.’

Kristine sneezed as the bubbles of champagne tickled her nose. ‘Sex and romance aren’t the same thing at all,’ she announced, just as if she knew what she was talking about.

‘Combined they are irresistible, though,’ said Harald, raising his glass in a toast.

She and her cousin seemed to find quite a lot of things to toast as the night progressed. It was three a.m. when they went to bed, and at nine-thirty Kristine woke up with a hangover. Probably the most expensive hangover she’d ever had, she decided, stepping into the shower and turning on the water full blast, a treatment that did not appear to help.

When she went into the kitchen, Harald took one look at her face and said briskly, ‘A light breakfast at an outdoor café, that will make you feel better.’

It did not seem to be the time to assert her financial independence. ‘All right,’ she said meekly.

They walked out into the sunshine, which was blindingly bright. ‘Ouch,’ said Kristine, staggering a little.

Harald put his arm around her, dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of aviator’s dark glasses, and positioned them on her nose. Then he steered her across the street. The man who had been seated on the stone wall watching all this got up and said tightly, ‘Good morning, Kristine.’

The glasses made everything a surreal shade of blue and the man was Lars. Camped on her doorstep as he had threatened. Groping for her manners, Kristine said, ‘My cousin Harald...Lars Bronstad.’

Lars gave Harald a curt nod, then reached out and removed the glasses. ‘What the devil have you been doing with yourself?’

‘Champagne on top of wine,’ she said, blinking into the light and keeping a firm hold on Harald’s arm. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I have to go to Lillehammer on business today. Spend the day with me tomorrow.’

Harald said casually, ‘I’m going to the airport tomorrow morning, Kristine—my girlfriend’s flying in from Milan.’

She gave him a dirty look. Then she said ungraciously to Lars, ‘I suppose you can phone me in the morning. If you want to.’

‘Do you travel so light that you can’t even commit yourself a day ahead of time?’ he exploded.

‘Don’t yell, it hurts,’ she said fractiously. ‘I can’t even decide which side of the street to walk on today, Lars.’

Disregarding Harald as if he didn’t exist, Lars seized her chin in one hand, kissed her full on the mouth, and then put the glasses back on her nose. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, and strode away down the street.

Harald said, fascinated, ‘Well...you’ve made a big hit, little cousin.’

‘He’s not used to women who say no. Harald, I’m in urgent need of coffee. Black coffee.’

‘He’s in love with you.’

‘Don’t talk nonsense—we haven’t known each other for three days and all we do is fight.’

‘He’s rich and handsome and crazy about you—are all Canadian women this fussy?’

‘His grandmother wants him to marry the girl next door.’

‘Not a hope,’ said Harald. ‘That’s a man who’ll do what he wants...I think you should stay another week and give him a chance. Fjaerland will keep.’

Kristine scowled at him. ‘Tell me about your work or your girlfriend or your new car, Harald. And please get me that cup of coffee.’

Harald, after one look at her face, obliged on both counts. Kristine then went back to the flat and slept through the afternoon. Harald’s first comment when she came out of the bedroom was, ‘Dress up—we’re going to the best restaurant in town.’

Kristine felt a great deal better than she had this morning. Giving him an impish grin, she said, ‘I have one dress and you saw it last night.’

‘Maybe something of Gianetta’s will fit you—come along.’

Half of Harald’s closet was taken up by female clothing. Utterly delectable female clothing. ‘I can’t wear something of hers, I haven’t even met her,’ Kristine protested, looking longingly at a slinky sea-green jumpsuit with spaghetti straps.

‘She’d be delighted to lend you something,’ Harald said; ‘she’s very generous,’ and winked at her.

So when she and Harald walked arm in arm into an elegant dining-room that overlooked the royal palace Kristine looked slim and sexy and every inch as though she belonged there. As she was guided to her window-seat the first person she saw was Lars.

He was sitting at a circular corner table, staring at her. He looked as though he had been struck on the head by a blunt instrument.

The waiter put an immense, leather-bound menu in front of her and asked her something in Norwegian. Harald glanced over his shoulder to follow the direction of her gaze, then looked back, an unholy amusement in his face. ‘Of course, this is the obvious place to bring his grandmother on her birthday—I should have thought of that,’ he said blandly.

‘Perhaps you did,’ Kristine snorted.

‘I admit nothing. What will you have to drink, cousin?’

‘Anything but champagne,’ she said, and buried her face in the menu. It had English subtitles. From behind it she sneaked a glance at the circular table, met Lars’s eyes again, and ducked. He was with a party of five, one of whom, seated beside him in a demure white lace dress, had to be the sweet and biddable Sigrid. It hadn’t taken him long to find a substitute once she, Kristine, had turned down his invitation, she thought shrewishly.

Cocktails arrived, the menu was discussed with the solemnity due to a serious matter, then Harald put his linen napkin on the table and said, ‘Dance, Kristine?’

She had already noticed the rectangular parquet floor and the small dance band. Her brother Art had taught her how to dance; and it would beat sitting here trying not to stare at Lars. ‘Sure,’ she said.

The music was probably as lively as it got in these august surroundings; but Harald was a flashy and inventive dancer and Kristine was soon caught up in the rhythm of a jive. Her cheeks were pink and she was out of breath when he whirled her one last time and pulled her against his chest for the final chord. Then he said, taking her firmly by the hand, ‘It would be polite of you to wish an elderly lady the compliments of her birthday,’ and set off towards the circular table.

‘Harald—don’t!’ she whispered fiercely, tugging at his hand.

‘Are Canadian women cowards as well as fussy?’ he whispered rhetorically, and kept going.

And Kristine, her breast still heaving from her exertions, thought recklessly, Why not?

Lars and a younger man, who was a less striking version of Lars, got to their feet. Harald greeted Lars, who then introduced his grandmother, his brother and sister-in-law, and Sigrid Christensen, who was even prettier close up than at a distance. A great many pleasantries were exchanged. Although Marta Bronstad looked less than delighted to see Kristine, Kristine wished her a happy birthday. From the fragments of cake left on the dessert plates, it was plain the party was almost over.

The band had struck up a waltz. Harald, with a charming smile, asked Sigrid to dance. Lars, without asking, walked around the table, took Kristine by the hand, and pulled her between the tables to the dance-floor. Just before he took her into his arms, he said, ‘Bestemor invited Sigrid—I didn’t.’ Then he put an arm around her waist, took her hand and pressed it to his chest, and began to dance.

His cheek was resting on her hair. The length of his body was hard against hers. Kristine made a tiny sound expressive of dismay, delight, and desire, and gave herself up to the slow rhythm of the music and the sensuality of an embrace unlike any she had ever known. Beneath her palm was the strong, steady beat of Lars’s heart, an intimacy new to her. Against her hip she felt the instant and explicit hardness of his arousal; and that too was new and frightening and more exciting than she would have thought possible.

The dance seemed to last forever and was over before she was ready. There was a smatter of applause from the couples on the dance-floor, and slowly Lars released her. He had, she knew, been holding her far closer than was correct, but she could not find it in her to chide him. His eyes brilliant with a mixture of lust and laughter, he said, ‘As you must be aware, I’m in no state to face my grandmother...perhaps you could walk in front of me?’

Kristine fluttered her lashes and said demurely, ‘So I’m to run interference? I’ll do my best.’

‘We’re in trouble enough with Bestemor without any outward manifestations.’

She loved the twinkle in his eye and the sense of shared conspiracy. As her laugh rang out in a delicious cascade of sound, Lars added evenly, ‘When you look at me like that, you’re no help at all.’

For a moment his gaze dropped. Her backpack had not included a strapless bra; the jumpsuit therefore clung to her breasts, and the hot touch of his eyes hardened her nipples instantly. She said unsteadily, ‘Who’s going to walk in front of whom?’

‘Side by side?’ he suggested.

Laughter bubbled in her throat again. ‘You’re the one who has to live with your grandmother,’ she said, and set off through the tables ahead of him. His hand was resting lightly on the nape of her neck; she was sure her desire and her happiness—as deep as it was unreasoning—must be written on her face for all to see.

Harald was standing at the circular table chatting to Lars’s brother, while Marta Bronstad was sitting rigidly in her chair, fury evident in every line of her body. Lars let his hand fall to his side, said to Kristine, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ then sat down. After a round of polite goodbyes, Harald took Kristine back to their table.

A tempting array of hors-d’oeuvres on a silver tray had been placed on the starched linen cloth. Harald passed it to her and said, ‘The little Sigrid is charming and utterly unsuitable for Lars—it would be like mating a turtle-dove with a falcon. She’s also completely under the grandmother’s thumb...I was delighted to see how indiscreetly you danced, cousin.’

An elegant concoction of smoked salmon and capers fell from Kristine’s fork and rolled on to her plate. Deciding subtlety would be wasted on her cousin, she said, ‘Harald, I’ll talk about anything under the sun except Lars.’

Harald replaced the tray on the table and said with unmistakable force, ‘I turned thirty last month, and I’m beginning to realise life doesn’t give us as many second chances as we might think—be careful here, Kristine. This man Lars...unless my judgement’s way off, I don’t think he makes a habit of dancing like that. Nor, I would suspect, do you make a habit of responding as you did.’

She stared at the intricately curled piece of fish. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do this,’ she said in a low voice.

He gave a quick sigh of impatience. ‘Neither is it my habit to give advice to those I scarcely know,’ he said. ‘You should try this one—reindeer meat with cranberry relish.’ He then began to talk very entertainingly about how he had met Gianetta on a crowded railway platform in Vienna in the rain, and in the middle of this tale Lars and the rest of his party left. Little by little Kristine started to relax.

She was in bed by eleven, woke at eight, and joined Harald in cleaning up the flat. At nine-thirty the phone rang. Harald passed her the receiver and she said with entirely false composure, ‘Hello, Lars.’

He sounded distracted. ‘I’m back in Lillehammer—can I meet you around three?’

Unbidden, a picture of the young woman in the narrow black dress clicked into Kristine’s brain. Against every lesson of the past sixteen years she said, ‘Harald recommended the Vigeland sculpture park...why don’t we meet there?’

‘By the monolith. Thanks, Kristine.’

He rang off. ‘Congratulations!’ Harald said.

‘I must be certifiably insane,’ she answered succinctly. ‘Pass me that cloth.’

While Harald vacuumed the living-room, Kristine threw out most of the contents of the refrigerator and wiped the top of the stove. He cleaned the bathroom; she vacuumed the bedrooms. She then showered, changed into her blue shorts and flowered blouse and took the subway to the sculpture park.

Harald had loaned her a guidebook, so she knew as she went through the wrought-iron gates that the park contained dozens of sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. However, the photos in the book had not prepared her for the reality.

She walked across the bridge with its monumental bronze figures, wandered through the rose garden, and listened to the splash of water from the great fountain upheld by six nude men. Human figures entwined with trees surrounded the fountain, figures from youth to old age, male and female, an inescapable cycle of endings and beginnings. Huge granite carvings stood in massive silence on the steps that led up to the monolith where she was to meet Lars. The monolith itself was more than she could bear, so full of energy and life force were its contorted forms.

She hurried back to the rose garden, knowing if she had any sense she would drive back to Sweden that very afternoon. Instead she listened to a young girl play Mozart on the violin by one of the parapets on the bridge, and put a coin she could ill afford in the open case on the ground. Near one of the ponds she ate the sandwich she had made at Harald’s. Then she looked at her watch. Quarter to three. She’d better go.





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