Loving the Blacksmith (The Noble Norsemen #7)

Prologue

PROLOGUE

“ H ere. It’s not much but?—”

“It’s perfect, thank you.”

Agnes looked at the man looming over her, making the room appear smaller than it was. Blond, muscular, with long, flowing hair and eyes as blue as the deepest part of the ocean—the part where she imagined dangerous creatures lurked—he was too perfect to be true. She had thought Bjorn, the Norseman who’d come to visit Birgit at the village, magnificent enough, but this one was even more compelling. She judged him to be a decade older than Bjorn and herself, and the added maturity suited his masculine features to perfection. In him, everything was... more , somehow. His stance was more assured, his body more developed, his gaze more piercing.

Though he was a stranger, and impossibly large, she felt at ease with him. Perhaps it was the way he had immediately offered her a place to sleep, perhaps it was the way he spoke, with the faintest trace of an accent, perhaps...

Perhaps it was simply the way he looked.

No matter what, she just couldn’t get past the attraction she felt. The men in her village had never stirred half the emotions this one stirred in her and she wondered if she should not ask to sleep somewhere else. But where? She only knew Bjorn and Dunne, with whom she had spent the last few days traveling, and neither had offered to have her.

No, the blacksmith had been kind to offer her a place to sleep, she could not offend him now by asking to go somewhere else. She would simply have to pull herself together and stop gawping at him.

“I use this room to keep old tools,” Magnus was saying, mercifully oblivious to her musings. “But it’s clean because my brother visits regularly and sleeps in it when he does.”

“It’s perfect,” she repeated. At least she would be alone, and able to decide what to do next. The Norsemen village could only be a temporary stop. As a Saxon, she didn’t belong here. But she couldn’t go back to her village, knowing what was waiting for her there.

A husband she didn’t want.

A life she feared.

Magnus walked over to the pallet. “I’ll go and give the furs a shake outside and find a softer blanket for you. This one won’t do. Your skin is bound to be more delicate than Sven’s.” The way he said that, and then cleared his throat, told her the comment had put wholly unsuitable ideas in his mind. Was he imagining her naked and sprawled on the furs for him to gaze upon? Was he thinking of stroking her all over to ascertain just how soft she was? His hands, used to handle the tools around her, would be strong and callused, all the better to awaken her senses.

Heat bloomed under her skin, which suddenly felt as delicate as he’d called it.

“Really, please,” she mumbled. “This blanket will do very nicely. I don’t want to put you out.”

“You’re not putting me out.”

He bundled the furs up into a ball he lifted as easily as if it had not weighed almost as much as she did. Inexplicably, the sight caused her stomach to flip. Why was the man’s strength so appealing? It should have worried her. But for a reason she couldn’t explain, it thrilled her.

When he came back a moment later with a soft woolen blanket, she had herself under control once more. The reaction had been as brief as it had been inexplicable. Compelling as he was, the blacksmith was only a man. There was no reason she wouldn’t be able to keep him out of her mind, just like she had the others.

She nodded her thanks and watched him walk out of the room.

No. No reason at all.