by Sandra Field
‘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 y
ou’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.’