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will be grateful to marry. A woman of yielding tenderness, who will serve me loyally.” His gaze stroked her from head to toe and back again, but she saw in him something apprehensive, even timid. When he found her staring back he withdrew at once under a hard shell. “Your father and I should discuss your place here. I suppose I can let you stay as a goat herd, or some other servant.” He turned away and walked on.
    Elsinora was dizzy. Her mind spun with things she should say, anger and hurt she should fling at him. But she was distracted by the dip at the base of his spine, leading to the first slash of a cleft between his buttocks. She suddenly thought of yesterday afternoon in the stream, when that unexpectedly violent wave slapped backward, hit her bottom, and trickled down betwixt her cheeks. Instantly she was aroused, the warm heaviness squeezing and settling in her quinny. What had he done in her stream? Had he let the cold water cleanse him just as she liked to? No wonder the other women were all aflutter this morning. She could imagine how he looked as he waded in the water. But surely, the cold would have caused a shriveling of certain parts? She knew enough about men to know how cocks reacted to various sensations. If his manhood was still large enough to be giggled over when it was hit with frigid water, it must be an organ of remarkable size.
    For heaven’s sake, why think of that?
    She must get her thoughts back in order.
    “Discuss my place?” She ran after him again and leapt several inches to slap him across the shoulder. “You monstrous Norman swine, you are not worthy to kiss my feet! I am Elsinora Gudderthsdottir and you—”
    He did not break his stride. Breathless with fury, she ran around him and stood in his path.
    “You will not come here and insult me, Norman. And for the sake of all that’s holy pull your damnable breeches up!”
    Finally he was forced to stop, or step on her toes. “ Me insult you? ” His expression was perplexed.
    “Leave,” she cried, watching a bead of water drip from a dark curl above his ear. Oh, her stream. Her stream. He contaminated its spring purity. “Leave now and then you will have no trouble. If you stay I will see to it that you never have a moment’s peace.”
    That drip of water tumbled from his hair and rolled down the slope of his broad shoulder. “You will be too busy to cause me trouble. Anyone who stays here will work hard to earn their keep. That includes you.”
    Elsinora heard, but barely registered the words, too distracted by her thoughts.
    When she pleasured herself in that stream again, would some remnant of him remain there and touch her intimately? She shivered at the thought of it.
    It was true that healthy young males were few and far between in Lyndower. They had thick-waisted farmers with bowed legs; fishermen with weathered faces and sparse teeth, and young lads like Nat, the spit-boy. Now that Dominic Coeur-du-Loup had washed the grime off his face and body, Elsinora understood why the girls in the cookhouse were so happy that he came. If he wasn’t intent on stealing away her home and treating her like oxen he would yoke to a plow, she might have lusted a little too. A little. Mayhap.
    This was a regrettable realization and she did her best to smother it quickly. It was a sad state of affairs that the women here should be so in want of alluring male company that they would settle for this creature who couldn’t even hold a spoon.
    “If you do not like this,” he added, “ you should leave. It is not your right to say who stays. If you cannot,” he leaned closer, dripping water, “or will not give me the comfort I need from a woman, I’ll find it elsewhere.”
    Just what Bertha had warned! She felt sickened by the thought. “I am the mistress here, Norman swine! You cannot take my father’s land and make me your servant.”
    He merely looked at her, his eyes half-shuttered, nostrils flared, lips tense.
    “And if you