Until Forever

by Johanna Lindsey

  Thorn noticed that every so often, the woman bent to pick a wildflower. Not once had she looked his way. But Thorn still could not take his eyes from her.

  He ate the food she had brought, but he knew not what he was eating. He would merely reach into the basket and take whatever came to hand. If he occasionally found himself chewing something that was, in fact, unchewable, he would simply spit it out. ’Twas not worth the effort to examine it, when he would much rather be watching her.

  He would have her. He had not the least doubt of that, was doubtful only of when it was going to happen. He knew not yet what she wanted from him, what her “curiosity” would entail, yet was she determined to keep him here until she had it, whatever it was.

  She had called his bluff right handily in that. Courage she had in abundance. Even fearful of him, she had stood her ground, even without knowing that he couldn’t hurt her.

  From the sword, she had full power over him at the moment. But she also held him in her own power because he wanted her. He never thought it could happen, but just now, he did not mind in the least being so completely bound, as long as it was by her.

  12

  Roseleen couldn’t believe it. She’d actually left Thorn Blooddrinker behind with his sword. If he had possession of it now, she couldn’t imagine how she’d get it back. And what if his possession of the sword ended her control over him? Could he just leave then, and take the sword with him?

  The moment she realized what she had so foolishly done by putting some distance between them so she could cool off, she ran all the way back to him. She wasn’t expecting to find the sword still in its case, the blanket and the surrounding area littered with discarded food, and Thorn looking up at her as if he were starving, when she could see very well that he’d gone through every bit of the food she’d brought along.

  It was his hungry expression that twisted her tongue and had her saying in a rushed garble, “I thought you might have…Don’t you know better than to…Stop looking at me like that.”

  When he dropped his gaze, her urge was to have it back. Oh, God, she didn’t know what she wanted. Yes, she did. She wanted to share his knowledge of the past. She had to concentrate on that, and to stop getting fried by his glances.

  To help accomplish the latter, she focused on the mess that he’d made, clicking her tongue as she started picking up what he’d tossed into the grass. “I know perfectly well that cleanliness wasn’t on anyone’s high-priority list in your day, and you’ve never heard of litter control or five-hundred-dollar fines, but really, Thorn, you’re going to have to become acquainted with rubbish cans while you’re here. Today, we like to leave our environment the same way we found it, and that means picking up after ourselves.”

  “Are you chastising me, lady?”

  She glanced at him sharply, but his expression was now only curious, the blatant need of a moment ago gone, or—hidden. “I wouldn’t dream of—” she started, but suddenly changed her mind. If she was going to spend time with him, she couldn’t be worrying about offending him over small matters, when she had so many other worries to deal with. “Yes, I believe I am chastising you. No more tossing things over your shoulder when you’re done with them. You put them back, give them back, or throw them away, whichever is appropriate.”

  “Throw away is just what I did, as you can plainly see.”

  He did sound indignant, not because she was scolding him, but because she hadn’t explained properly, so he must have felt he’d been unjustly scolded. She sighed. Was she going to have to think about everything she said before she said it? That was going to be an impossible task.

  “I’m sorry, ‘throw away’ today is just a shortened way of saying toss it in the nearest rubbish can. And since there isn’t one handy, for now we’ll just put everything back in the basket and take it with us, so we leave this place as we found it.”

  “The creatures of the wild will not thank you, lady.”

  She heard the scolding tone in his own voice, and sat back on her heals, shaking her head. So there was a reason for his slovenliness? He liked to feed wild animals. That was so sweet and generous, traits she would never have associated with a Viking, that it disconcerted her for a moment.

  And she almost hated to admit, “I don’t believe England has any more wild animals, Thorn, at least, not the kind you’re probably used to. So let’s humor me and clean up here, all right? You can just gather up the blanket with whatever’s on it and jam the whole thing in the basket, while I get the rest of this stuff.”

  She snatched the sword case off the blanket first, in case he took her literally. But with it in hand, she owned up to what had made her run back to him.

  “I thought you might have taken the sword, but you didn’t even touch it, did you?”

  He had already risen to gather up the blanket, so he wasn’t looking at her when he answered, “’Tis my greatest wish, to have the sword returned to me, yet I cannot touch it without your leave.”

  “You can’t, or you won’t?”

  “The curse will not allow it. Only you can place the sword in my hand.”

  She hoped he was telling the truth. That would certainly relieve one of her worries.

  “And if I let you hold it?”

  He was looking at her now, and so intensely that she caught her breath. “Then the power would be mine to control. Would you do this for me?”

  “If it would let you disappear on me again, no way,” she said with several shakes of her head. “The sword belongs to me now, Thorn. I’m not giving it up.”

  He looked so crestfallen, she almost said, “Here, take it.” She had to will away the urge to do so, unable to understand why she even had the urge.

  “Would you be able to disappear?”

  “If you gave complete power to me by relinquishing your claim on the sword, aye. If you merely give me the use of it, nay, I still could not depart, do you not give me the words to allow it.”

  He’d made her curious once again about the intricacies of the strange curse. “What if I did just lend you the sword temporarily, not to keep, mind you, but then inadvertently released you? Would you take my sword with you, so I could never summon you back?”

  “’Tis not possible, lady. I could go, but the sword would not go with me. Only if you agree to go with me would the sword stay in my hand.”

  Her, go to Valhalla? she mused. Be surrounded by brawling, drunken Vikings in Odin’s mythical feasting hall? Not in this lifetime or any other, thank you.

  She realized he could just be telling her what she wanted to hear. He could be lying. She had no way of determining the truth until it was too late, and he and her sword were gone. But, of course, that’s if she was willing to believe that his home was Valhalla, that he was exactly who he said he was. How could she believe that? How could she believe what was happening? She pinched herself hard and definitely felt it. There had to be some logical explanation for all of this.

  Facts. She needed facts, proof, and she intended to get it. The information she was going to get from him about the past could be verified, at least most of it could, and he would have to pull that information from his memory. That would prove, or at least support his claim that he’d really lived in those times, or been summoned to them.

  “That’s enough of that subject for now,” she said as she tossed her first handful of scraps into the basket, then went back for more. “And by the way, I’m not comfortable with the ‘lady’ you keep calling me. I know it’s a title of complete respect where you come from, but some Americans tend to give it a different meaning, especially in moments of frustration, and anyway, my name is Roseleen. You may call me—”

  “Rose?”

  He laughed as soon as he said it. She blushed profusely. That even a thousand-year-old—whatever he was, could see the connection between their names…Or was that what was amusing him? She decided to find out.

  “Care to share the joke?”

  “Joke? Nay, ’tis only that I
thought ‘professor’ was your name. What then, do you profess to, that you are called professor?”

  She grinned now at herself for drawing the wrong conclusion. He didn’t see the connection between their names, and she wasn’t about to mention it herself.

  “History,” she answered. “I went to college to study it, now I teach it.”

  “All history?”

  “I’m most familiar with the Middle Ages, particularly the eleventh century.”

  He was still grinning himself. “Aye, I know that time well. I much enjoyed their wars.”

  Hearing that was nearly as thrilling as—well, not quite that thrilling, but damn close, and Roseleen was filled with excitement. She had a thousand questions for him. But somehow she was going to contain them until they got back to the cottage and she had a notebook in hand.

  Yet her smile was generous when she said, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that, Thorn, and I’m going to want to hear much, much more about it later.”

  “I could show you—”

  Misunderstanding, she cut in, “Demonstrations won’t be necessary, just facts.”

  She didn’t see the disappointment on his face because she was staring at what she’d just picked up, a sandwich wrapped in cellophane with a single bite taken out of it. That the bite went right through the cellophane had her turning back to him to ask, “You couldn’t figure out that the wrapping had to come off of this before you ate it?”

  He was standing there watching her complete her task, having just completed his. He spared only a brief glance at what she was holding, though, before his blue eyes came back to meet hers and stayed there. His shrug was so slight it was barely noticeable.

  “I was looking at you, not at what I was eating,” he told her. “And be warned, Roseleen. I like looking at you.”

  The heat came flooding back, and she groaned inwardly. How could she get him to stop saying things like that, and stop looking at her like that? She knew she couldn’t. She’d already stated her demands. No touching. She had nothing more to bargain with now.

  And besides, she was the one insisting that he stay, keeping him here against his will, more or less. She couldn’t deny him everything that he liked. So how was she going to survive what he was doing to her?

  She probably wasn’t going to survive it at all.

  13

  Roseleen held her breath when they reached the top of the slope and Thorn got his first look at her car, or rather, David’s car. It was a brand-new sedate, shiny black Ford, custom made for an American driving in England so that the driver’s seat was on the left. But there was nothing pretentious about it. Lydia might ride around in her Bentleys and limousines, but David preferred not to announce the size of his wallet by the make of his car.

  And Thorn Blooddrinker didn’t look amazed or dumbfounded by it.

  He had stopped to stare at it, but only for a moment. Actually, it was the utility poles that had caught his interest. He was staring at them with a good deal of curiosity.

  Roseleen couldn’t help it, she was quite disappointed by his reaction, or lack of reaction. Of course, he didn’t know yet what a car could do.

  She perked up with that thought, and even volunteered before he asked, “Do you remember the light you stared at on the ceiling in my classroom, Thorn? It was powered by electricity, and those lines you’re looking at now are what transport the electricity to wherever it’s needed. No more smelly oil lamps and candles—except for when there is a power outage.”

  His gaze came to her, so full of questions that she sighed. “Don’t ask me to explain electri—”

  He cut in to ask, “This power outage, would it work on my sword?”

  That’s all that caught his interest? She shook her head. She was being more surprised than he was.

  “No,” she said, “whatever power the sword has is of a supernatural nature. The power I was referring to comes from electricity and makes things of a mechanical nature work. You’ll see a lot of those things when we get back to the cottage. But there are other sources of power too, batteries, gasoline—and you’re about to discover one of the things that gasoline gives power to.”

  She continued on to the car, put the sword in the backseat, then opened the trunk for him to set the basket in. She was still waiting for his reaction, and when it came, it sounded merely exasperated.

  “What is this thing?”

  “You’ve been in the seventeen hundreds. You’ve seen the exquisite paintings from that period, so you must have seen a few carriages while you were there. The eighteenth century was known for some of the fanciest—”

  His impatience interrupted her, “What has that to do with this thing?”

  “This is an automobile, or in more modern terms, a car. When it was first invented, though, it was known as a horseless carriage. That’s why I mentioned carriages, for you to understand the transition.”

  “Horseless carriage? It does not move then?”

  “It moves.” She grinned. “Feed it gasoline, and it will take you just about anywhere.”

  “’Tis alive?”

  She winced mentally. She was going to have to do better on her explanations. Cute remarks like “feed it” could only confuse him more.

  “No, it’s not alive. It’s one of those unusual things that metal can be shaped into these days. It’s a modern carriage, Thorn. Come, I’ll show you what has taken the place of horses, and makes it possible for this thing to move.”

  In a few moments, she had the hood open and kept the rest of her explanation brief, “This is an engine. The gasoline I mentioned is what makes it work, giving it ‘horsepower.’ That power turns its wheels so that it will move. Are you ready for a demonstration?”

  “I wouldst prefer a horse, lady.”

  That he was calling her lady again showed his confusion, doubt, and very likely unease. Had she really been looking forward to putting him through this? But she wasn’t going to walk the three miles back to the cottage just to keep him comfortable with what was familiar to him.

  “Horses are used today only for pleasure, not for transportation,” she told him. “When people want to go somewhere, they go in cars or—well, let’s stick with cars for now, and this one will get us home in just a few minutes, if we’ll just get in it.”

  To that end, she took his arm and led him around to the passenger side, opened the door, but still had to practically shove him into the vehicle. Moving the seat back to give him more room for his long legs made him growl, and she had to go through another explanation about comfort, convenience, and power seats.

  When she finally got into the driver’s seat, she was no longer hoping he’d be amazed, she just wanted to calm his unease, and so she warned him, “The engine is going to start working now when I turn this key. You’ll be able to hear it working, so don’t be alarmed by the sound. And please don’t be alarmed when the car starts to move. That’s what it’s supposed to do. Okay? Ready?”

  His nod was curt, stiff. He was holding on to the edge of the seat with both hands and looking straight out the windshield at the long road before them, the landscape broken only by an old barn in the distance. He was about as tense and wary as a man could get.

  Roseleen sighed. She thought briefly about delaying their departure so she could explain some more, but figured nothing was going to make his first car ride easier for him. So she turned the key. But she had forgotten about the radio that she hadn’t bothered to turn off. It came on now with the purr of the engine, and Thorn’s wide blue eyes shot right to it.

  “It talks? You said ’twas not alive!”

  She couldn’t help it. His tone was so accusing and disgruntled, his expression so comical in its mix of outrage and awe, she had to laugh. The station she’d previously been listening to was having a newscast, so they were only hearing a single voice speaking, but that was enough to make him think she’d lied to him.

  “That isn’t the car speaking, Thorn, it’s a radio. It plays mus
ic, and there are lots of different kinds to choose from.” She switched through two noisy rock stations until she found something mellow. “See? A radio is just another convenience, this one for our entertainment.”

  He didn’t appear to be listening to her, was still staring at the radio, and probably trying to decide whether he should believe her. She rolled down the windows to let some of the heat out of the car, but he didn’t even notice, so rapt was his attention on the radio.

  Roseleen decided to get them home, the sooner the better. But when she put the car into gear and stepped on the gas, he shot half out of his seat, and her own reaction was to slam on the brakes, sending them skidding several feet in the dirt beside the road.

  At that point, she didn’t know what to do to calm him down, and she needed to calm down herself, because his nervousness was making her jumpy. And then she did know what she could do. That that particular solution came to her so readily could only be because she’d been thinking about it ever since he’d reappeared, but she wasn’t going to berate herself for that. Help was help, and she needed some to get his mind off the terror of his first experience with a car.

  So she turned to him, leaning toward him and putting her hand at the back of his neck to urge him to meet her halfway. His eyes came to her instantly at her touch, questioning, then suddenly heated when he figured out the answer for himself. But he didn’t move an inch toward her. He was going to make her move some more and do the kissing as well, because he probably wasn’t taking any chances with their bargain.

  But that was okay. She wasn’t thinking about bargains right now. She’d found an excuse to kiss him that her morals couldn’t quibble over, and she was going to do it quickly before she could change her mind.

  So she did scoot over more, and she even wrapped her arms about his neck. And between a few brief kisses to start, she said, “Relax. This doesn’t have to be a terrible experience for you. You should be enjoying your first ride in a modern vehicle.”