Читать книгу Travelling Light - Sandra Field - Страница 5

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.