This pizza, however, did not rate so well in Aurelia’s estimation. A kind of bread, it was slathered with a red sauce of considerable spice, the entire thing smelling of fish. She certainly had known better fare, but hoped no one noticed her circumspect examination of the food.
She had no such luck.
“Disgusting, isn’t it?” Julian asked and tossed his piece back on the board. He took a deep draft of his wine as though he would wash the taste from his mouth, then reached for the glass flagon to refill his goblet. “Aurelia? Could you use a bit more?”
Aurelia nodded. To her surprise, once Julian was done, he lifted his goblet in a toast. “To Aurelia’s superb taste! May none of us ever have to eat pizza like this again!”
And he drained his goblet once more.
Aurelia, not wanting to antagonize the priest after having won a measure of his acceptance, followed suit.
“You don’t have to eat it,” Bard muttered darkly.
Julian filled his glass to the brim. “Good. More wine?” His question came too late for Aurelia to have stopped his refilling of her goblet. He winked. “It gets better by the fourth glass.”
This made no sense to Aurelia but she said nothing, stoically continuing to eat her pizza.
“Really, Baird, darling, it’s just too terribly fishy!” Marissa dropped her pizza back onto the board. “I don’t even eat fish with this strong of a flavor!” She sipped at her wine, her gaze locked on Bard.
“I thought you were ravenous,” that man commented.
Marissa rolled her eyes. “Desperation, darling, is quite another thing. And I’m certain I couldn’t possibly eat another bite.”
Bard eyed the whore’s half-eaten slice of pizza dubiously, then his glance flicked to meet Aurelia’s. She saw a skepticism there that she certainly shared—why, Marissa had not eaten enough to sustain a mere rat!
“Well, it’s all there is,” Bard said tightly. He looked to Aurelia again, his eyes tellingly bright. “Will you have another piece?”
Aurelia was not about to slight the hospitality of her host, however barbaric his court might be. A princess had to show some dignity, after all.
And she was very, very hungry.
She wiped her hands fastidiously on her oddly thin napkin and eyed one of the other pizzas. Aurelia was curious to know what all three tasted like but was mindful of her decision to eat only what Bard ate first.
“Shall we try the other one?” she suggested and Bard grinned.
“Absolutely.” He fired an arch glance to his courtiers, both of whom grimaced with distaste and drew back.
“Looks like it’s just you and me, princess.” Bard offered the pizza and Aurelia took a piece, sipping her wine until he had taken the first bite.
Then she practically inhaled her second piece. Gods and goddesses, had she ever been so hungry?
“Whoa!” Julian whistled through his teeth. “You look like you haven’t eaten in a thousand years!”
Vulgar man! Aurelia glanced scornfully in his direction. “I have always been blessed with a healthy appetite.”
Marissa snorted. “I should say so! I could never have eaten more, even if it had been one of Sebastien’s glorious pizzas!”
To Aurelia’s surprise, it was Bard who came to her defense. “There’s nothing wrong with a woman being honest enough to eat like a human being.”
The whore straightened proudly. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Only that most women pick at their food and eat about three bites a meal. It’s not good for you to eat so little.” Surprisingly, he granted Aurelia a smile. “The princess obviously has a good appetite and enjoys food. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
The glint in Bard’s eyes made Aurelia’s resistance to him melt a little more. She felt that the room had become much warmer, though it maybe it was finally having something in her belly. Aurelia cleared her throat, uncomfortable to be the sole point of his interest, and tried to laugh.
“One must always take advantage of an opportunity to eat,” she said lightly. “My mother often said that one never knew when there would be a meal again.”
“Let alone a good one,” Julian interjected.
Bard ignored his priest. “Sound advice,” he concurred.
Marissa snorted. “For vagrants, it makes wonderful sense.”
“My third foster mother said the same thing and I always believed it,” Bard retorted. “Despite an unsettled childhood, I’ve never actually been called a vagrant before.”
Marissa’s eyes went round and she immediately began making fulsome apologies.
Bard ignored his whore and offered the third pizza to Aurelia, “Should we try this one, princess? I don’t think Julian’s going to do this Vegetarian Special justice.”
“Oh, yes!” Aurelia took a piece and Marissa inhaled sharply.
“Give me that!” she snapped and snatched up a slice of pizza.
The priest chuckled to himself and drained his wine once more. “Is the prey really worth the price of the hunt, Marissa?” he murmured inexplicably.
Aurelia glanced between them all in confusion and caught the end of the wicked look the whore fired Julian’s way. There was the evil eye in action, if ever she had seen it! Aurelia concentrated on her pizza for fear of attracting such malice to herself.
“You just go ahead and finish up that cheap wine, Julian, darling.” Marissa’s voice was low with animosity. “You’ll regret it in the morning, you can be sure.”
“Oh, I don’t think so.” Julian leaned forward unexpectedly, the flagon in his hand. “What do you say we make a bet, Aurelia?”
She looked warily to the priest, wondering what his game might be. “A bet?”
“Sure. You may be able to eat more pizza than our Marissa, but can you drink more wine than me?”
Aurelia surveyed the priest who was her competition in more matters than this. “You mean to make a wager.”
“Yeah, just a little friendly competition.” Julian topped up her goblet with a flourish and waggled his eyebrows expressively. “There’s nothing else to do around this damned place.”
“Careful, princess,” Bard warned with a smile. “This man likes his wine.” He offered the first pizza again, much to Aurelia’s relief. This fare was not terribly filling. Aurelia took another slice while she considered Julian’s offer.
A challenge over fruit juice. The Viking pride Aurelia had inherited from her sire would not let her turn him down.
“And what do I win?” she demanded saucily.
“Satisfaction!” Julian said and lifted his glass high.
Oh, there would be that, Aurelia was certain! If she could best Bard’s priest in any matter—even one as minor as this—she would be more convinced of the power of her own abilities against his own.
And less convinced of the efficacy of his own. That would be no small thing.
Aurelia lifted her glass high. “To the end of the wine,” she declared and Julian laughed aloud.
“Or of us, whichever comes first!”
Two hours later, Aurelia and Julian had drunk the better part of four bottles of wine and Julian was wrestling with the cork of a fifth. Aurelia was feeling very, very relaxed.
And more than a little bit happy. She liked the Chianti well, and felt more carefree than she had in quite some time.
Perhaps it was because Bard had settled back in his chair, his green gaze burning bright as he watched her. Aurelia supposed they were all providing his entertainment, but for the moment, she did not care.
She felt very feminine beneath his regard and very much alive. A small smile toyed with his lips and with each glass of juice, the hum of desire deep within Aurelia buzzed a little harder.
Julian tugged savagely on the strange curly implement he had inserted into the cork, but to no avail. “Whoa! This is a tight one!” He turned it some more, grimaced and pulled again.
The cork did not move, but Aurelia laughed at Julian’s antics. Truly, Bard had no need of a fool with this priest in his household!
“Oh, you make too much of too little!” she scoffed, the curious heat in her veins making her playful.
“Oh yeah?” Julian grinned. “You’re drinking as much of it as me—you open this one.”
“I do not know the spell!”
Julian managed to look innocent. “What spell?”
Aurelia chuckled. “You will not trick me that easily into matching my powers against yours!” She shook a finger at an apparently astonished Julian. “You do not fool me with your jest!”
“What jest?”
“Pretending that you cannot conjure that cork out the bottle in the blink of an eye!” Aurelia scoffed. “A powerful priest such as you. For shame!”
Marissa trilled the same odd laugh she had given when explaining the magic of the peephole to Aurelia. No one joined her laughter, or even acknowledged it.
Julian blinked and slanted a glance to Bard.
Bard leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “Priest?” he echoed quietly.
“Oh, surely anyone with their wits about them could see that Julian is your advisor! Who else would have the king’s ear but a priest? Julian is certainly not a warrior, with that strange garb!” Aurelia chuckled to herself that they should pretend the truth was anything other than what it obviously was.
Silence filled the restaurant, but Aurelia was oblivious to the stares of her three companions. She drained the last of her wine and held out her goblet for more with a winning smile.
For fruit juice, it was quite good. A bit of a tang—likely the grapes had tainted slightly during the shipping Bard talked about—but it was flavor one could grow to like.
“If I concede that the powers Rome grants to its priests are far greater than imagined, would you open that cursed bottle and share it contents?”
Julian sat down with a thump, his grip loosened on the flagon of wine. He held her gaze as steadily as an owl. “I’m not a priest, Aurelia. I’m a lawyer.”
Lawyer? There was a word that had no meaning for Aurelia—it must be simply some distinction between grades of priesthood.
“Call yourself what you will!” Aurelia waved off this qualification. “Let us have the wine.” Aurelia dropped her voice and leaned closer to Julian, taking a confidential tone. “You know, for mere fruit juice, this wine has an effect not unlike mead.”
“Mead? Dear God, you have drunk mead?” Marissa looked to be smothering a laugh. “Darling, I thought only rural heathens drank that stuff. Likely because they could not afford anything better.”
Aurelia fixed the other women with a stern glance. Her garb this evening was no less revealing, for all its apparent modesty. Marissa’s ankles were on full display and her chausses emphasized the roundness of her rump in a most forward manner.
“I suppose,” Aurelia said with all the hauteur she could summon, “that mead is beneath the fine tastes of an overly indulged whore like yourself.”
“Whore?” Marissa blanched and her mouth dropped open before she bounded to her feet. “Whore? How dare you call me a whore?”
“Oh, I dare,” Aurelia said smoothly. She eyed the emptiness of her goblet pointedly, then glanced to Julian. He seemed to be struggling not to laugh and had apparently forgotten the wine completely. “Though it matters little. The truth is painfully obvious to anyone who even glances at this travesty of a court.”
“Well, I never…!”
“I should think you have,” Aurelia retorted. “And often.” She met the other woman’s gaze with a serene smile and shrugged. “Why else would the king indulge you so freely?”
Julian began to laugh, but a hard light glittered in Marissa’s eyes. “The king, well!” The whore laughed awkwardly and glanced at Bard. “Where did you find her, darling? Under a rock?”
“Close to it,” Bard commented evenly without even glancing to Marissa. “Why don’t you tell us who you really are, Aurelia?”
Aurelia tried to sweep to her feet regally at the implication that her word was not to be believed, but stumbled instead.
Gods and goddesses, but this juice had an unexpected power!
She lifted her chin proudly all the same. “I am Aurelia, daughter of Hekod the Fifth, King of Dunhelm and Lord of Fyordskar over the Sea, princess to the royal house and sole heiress to the throne of Dunhelm.” She met the invader’s considering gaze squarely and arched a brow. “Who else could I possibly be?”
Bard glanced to a bound volume by his foot and then back to Aurelia, his brow pulling together in a frown.
“Anyone you can imagine, obviously,” Marissa said tartly.
“Marissa, that’s enough.” Bard’s voice was stern.
“Hardly!” Marissa snorted and fired a lethal glance at Aurelia when no one responded. “Well, it’s obvious that no one has any interest in my perspective about all of this!” She stormed toward the door, clearly expecting someone to stop her.
But Aurelia was snared by the intense green of Bard’s concerned gaze and could not look away. They stared at each other, the whore’s displeasure a distant annoyance.
The power of Bard’s effect upon Aurelia was astonishing. She was sorely tempted to trust Dunhelm’s new king, even knowing all she did about him.
Aurelia was vaguely aware that Marissa sniffed with displeasure before stalking through the portal.
“Good riddance,” Julian muttered. He conquered the cork and splashed wine into all three goblets, taking a hearty swallow himself.
Bard leaned closer and Aurelia’s heart began to pound. “Princess, you can tell me the truth, you know,” he said in a low sympathetic voice. His gaze was mesmerizing, his low words hypnotic.
Aurelia was horrified to find her will bending to mesh with his own. “But you know the truth!” she retorted. “Why else did you imprison me in the well?”
Bard laced his fingers together and held her regard, his voice low and authoritative. “No one imprisoned you, Aurelia. We simply found you in that room, the well as you say. How did you get in?”
Aurelia did not know what to say to that.
Bard’s tone was so gentle a less worldly woman than herself might have been fooled into believing he cared for her welfare. “Aurelia, your father is not the king…”
“He was, before you came,” she said tightly.
Bard’s lips thinned, but his tone did not change. “Did your father abandon you here at Dunhelm?”
Aurelia was appalled that he would try to twist the truth to leave her honorable father looking responsible. “No!” she retorted hotly. “My sire loves me! He would never abandon me. We are each all the other has left in this world!”
Bard’s expression turned grim. “Did your father die, Aurelia?”
How could Bard not know her sire’s fate?
Aurelia’s heart leaped. Her father had escaped Bard’s vengeance, no doubt with the aid of the old woman on the rocks.
Then her heart fell like a stone. Because Bard knew Hekod had evaded him. She was the one who had been fool enough to lead Bard to the sea caves! Aurelia groaned inwardly, hating that she found herself in a predicament of her own making yet again.
Clearly, Bard thought Aurelia knew her father’s hiding place. That was why he was treating her so kindly. Oh, she had made a mess and a half of this!
And what else had she revealed this evening? Aurelia knew all too well she had talked overmuch, but her recollection was already fogged.
Aurelia looked to the goblet of wine and suddenly understood what had loosened her unruly tongue.
The drink had been enchanted!
Baird stared into Aurelia’s magnificent eyes, once again certain that her mind was whirling. He could almost hear the wheels turning—and wished desperately that he knew what she was thinking.
Julian chose the moment to end his contest with Aurelia.
The lawyer hesitated uncharacteristically in the act of taking a sip of Chianti. When Baird glanced his way, Julian wavered for a moment, his eyes rolled back, then he slid bonelessly to the floor.
Aurelia waved her goblet over her head, a flush not purely from victory staining her cheeks. “I win!” she crowed and danced to her feet. “He could not face his own brew!”
Her change of mood was breathtakingly quick and Baird eyed her uncertainly. Aurelia changed from woman to child in the blink of an eye—and usually right after she got that look of terror in her eyes.
Her strong response to the idea of her father being dead made Baird think he had hit a nerve. That Aurelia, who faced life full-out, couldn’t bring herself to confront the idea of her father’s death was obviously important.
She was such a strong person that her vulnerability over even one issue tugged at his heartstrings. Baird resolved that he should be gentler with Aurelia in his search for the truth. If her father was dead, it wouldn’t be easy for her to face.
And Baird was oddly determined to protect his princess from hurt.
A less-than-festive Julian groaned from the floor and his glass slipped from his limp fingers. It rolled across the floor, spilling its ruby contents, but the lawyer did not move.
Baird suddenly saw disaster in the making.
“The new tiles!” He swore and ducked his head under the table to wipe up the wine, Aurelia following suit. They bumped heads and she sat back on her heels with a giggle. She clapped a hand over her mouth, fell back on her butt with a thump, and watched him with twinkling eyes.
She was just so damned cute. Baird had to admit he liked how enthusiastically Aurelia met Julian’s challenge and liked even better that she had beaten the lawyer soundly.
Julian would never live this down.
At least, if Baird had his way.
And if Baird could do anything about it, he’d have Aurelia’s eyes sparkling routinely. Baird had to help Aurelia face the truth, however painful it might be.
But right now, he had to ease away the shadows he had unwittingly put in her eyes.
“What do you seek beneath the board?” she asked.
“I was looking to see where you hid all that pizza and wine.” Baird met her gaze solemnly. “Are you sure you don’t have a hollow leg?”
“Not me!” Aurelia laughed heartily, a far cry from the contrived trill Marissa periodically let herself utter. “You have seen my legs enough to know the truth!”
Oh, that he had. Baird snuck a glance at her dancing toes and told himself the heat in his veins was because of the wine.
“What about a dog?” he demanded with mock skepticism. “Have you been slipping all your pizza to some hungry mutt?”
“No! There are no dogs in your hall.”
“Hmm.” Baird stood and propped his hands on his hips, making a great show of looking around the room. He fixed a stern eye on Aurelia. “But you’re too small to eat more than me and drink more than Julian, let alone at the same time. Are you sure you don’t have big pockets in that dress?”
Aurelia scrambled to her feet and lifted her chin proudly. “Do you doubt the word of a Pictish princess?”
“No, just her capacity.” Baird closed the distance between them, fighting against a playful smile. “Maybe I should check,” he suggested wickedly and snatched at her.
“Oh, ho! You will not touch me!” Aurelia danced away evasively, holding up her left hand to ward Baird off.
It worked.
Three delicate, very blue whorls uncoiled on Aurelia’s left palm, the trio radiating from an ornate spiraled core. Each curve as graceful as a fern in the spring forest. It almost reminded Baird of drawings of galaxies, before he realized exactly where he had seen this pattern before.
It was in Talorc’s book.
The hair on the back of Baird’s neck rose right on cue.
“What’s that?” he asked, and his voice was unusually strained.
Aurelia looked to her hand, as though it was no big deal. “It is the mark of the onset of my courses and the pledge of my vows. Surely you have seen one like it before.”
Oh, he had, but how could she know that? Baird refused to even look toward the book. He took a step backward, his gaze locked on the tattoo. An eerie tingle danced over his flesh.
It couldn’t be a Pictish tattoo!
Baird must have drunk more than he thought he had, to even be considering such a possibility! Anyone could have a tattoo made in any city in the world. It wasn’t hard to do—and if Aurelia had wanted to play the Pictish princess with conviction, she might have deliberately chosen this design.
If nothing else, Aurelia had done her homework.
But all the logical explanations in the world couldn’t undermine Baird’s intuitive certainty that this was the real thing.
Which was not the way Baird thought, at all. He wasn’t intuitive, he didn’t have any use for instinct, and he certainly put no value in emotion. Only logic served a man well.
Even if logic was coming up a bit short in this circumstance. Maybe it wasn’t Dunhelm that had cast a spell over him, after all.
Maybe it had been Aurelia.
His blood ran cold at the thought. “It can’t be real,” Baird argued, but there was no conviction in his voice.
“It most certainly is real,” Aurelia scoffed. “I still recall the pain.”
“Then why do it?”
Aurelia lifted her chin proudly now as though insulted. “I am half Viking blood, by my sire, and unafraid of anything laid before me. A Viking neither backs away from a challenge, nor forgets obligation, nor leaves the field in defeat.”
She cast a scathing glance at Julian, now snoring on the floor. “Tell your Roman priest that the power of the old ones is yet strong.”
There was that talk about Julian being a priest again. Baird shifted his weight uneasily and refused to look to Talorc’s book.
Aurelia would have strolled from the room regally, no doubt, but she stumbled on the hem of her dress. She did an intricate little two-step toward the stairs and she caught her balance before Baird could even move to help her.
Then, she took a deep breath and pivoted to stare Baird right in the eye. “And tell him that the spell he laid on the fruit juice was weak indeed.”
Spell?
Before Baird could ask, Aurelia turned away. She must have done so a little too quickly, for she wobbled on her feet, then gripped the doorframe for a long moment. She crossed the foyer without looking back, the faint sound of a hiccup carrying to his ears.
Baird stood and stared after her for a long moment. She didn’t know what wine or pizza was, she drank mead, she didn’t understand indoor plumbing. Aurelia couldn’t really be from the eighth century.
She just couldn’t.
Baird eyed his snoring lawyer and realized that although one contestant had made it to her room under her own steam, the other one would need a little assistance.
And he was the only one left to provide it.