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again.”
    “Kharan lego soi,”
she repeated.
    “Good. Now what does it mean?”
    Her brows knit together and she gnawed her bottom lip. Finally she shook her head. “I can't remember. None of it makes any sense. It's all gibberish.”
    “No, that's not the right answer,” Erik said, being purposely obtuse. “
Kharan lego soi
means ‘I wish you joy.’ Now say it again.”
    She mouthed the syllables in a tone that suggested she wished him snatched bald-headed or roasted on a spit—anything but joy.
    “Good. Now count to one hundred like I taught you yesterday,” he demanded.
    “Pax!”
she shouted at him.
    Enough.
At least she'd used a Greek word correctly.
    He grinned at her. She was even more comely than usual when color worked its way up her neck and onto her cheeks. Perhaps that was why he enjoyed driving her to irritated outbursts.
    She really had done well in the weeks they'd been working together. She could name all the pieces of furniture in the Greek's apartment and correctly give the plural, as well. Days of the week, months, colors, articles of clothing—individual words seemed to stick in her mind, but the complicated grammar eluded her completely. Grecian word order seemed to make no sense to her Nordic brain. Valdis's frustration reminded him how bewildered he'd felt when he first came to Miklagard five years earlier.
    He forced the grin from his lips and regarded her with sternness.
Idiot!
he berated himself. If he lowered his guard by so much as a finger-width, her hypnotic eyes would lance him to the heart. He wasn't sure which one of them troubled him most—the sensual dark or the ethereal violet. He was never certain which eye to focus his gaze on, and indecision kept him strangely off-balance.
    Erik continued to be grateful to Odin or
Kristr
or whichever god had conspired to assist the Greek to outbid him for her. If she'd been his, he'd have lost all sense of duty to his regiment. He lived each day for the time he could escape her presence. Valdis was a siren, he told himself, a slow poison seeping into his veins, leeching his resolve to rebuild some semblance of a life.
    Sometimes he allowed himself to fantasize about doing as she begged, about stealing her away from the Imperial Palace and whisking her out of the city.
    But where could they go?
    Not to the North. No one within three hundred
land-miiller
of the fjords would offer him rest or shelter, food or fire.
    After what he'd done, he couldn't blame them.
    It was just as well that he held himself aloof from her. If he didn't allow her close, he couldn't hurt her. But he did wonder from time to time, say every other breath or so, how her silken arms would feel wrapped around him and if her mouth tasted as delectable as it looked.
    No,
he told himself with vehemence. Nothing good could come from wanting what he couldn't have. He already knew he was cursed where women were concerned, so he protected Valdis from himself by scowling at her every chance he got.
    “Mayhap the eunuch will take pity on you and let you practice the alphabet for the rest of the afternoon.” Erik didn't know how to write Greek himself, but Damian Aristarchus seemed to want Valdis to learn. If her master took over her lessons, it would afford Erik a chance to escape to the exercise yard below. He seriously needed to work off some frustration. “Where is that tablet and stylus?”
    Valdis crossed her slender arms on the table before her, buried her head in them and wept. Erik was dumbfounded. How could a woman who refused to scream when the bastinado was applied to her bare feet erupt into tears over a language lesson?
    “What's this?” Damian demanded. “What have you done to make her cry?”
    Erik caught Valdis stealing a sly glance at him through her parted fingers. Was the woman born with the ability to dissemble or had she practiced on other unsuspecting men?
    “I've only carried out your orders,” he told Damian gruffly.
    “I didn't tell you to vex her