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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.
CHAPTER THREE
STANDING in the hall, Kristine called uncertainly, ‘Hello...Harald?’
‘Kristine—is that you? I got back early.’
A young man swathed in one of the black bathroom towels came into the foyer. He had a shock of wet brown hair and a cheerful grin, and the hug he gave her was as brotherly as she could have wished. Kissing her on both cheeks Harald said, ‘This calls for champagne, this meeting of cousins after so many years. And how pretty a cousin you are,’ he finished gallantly.
No undercurrents in Harald, Kristine thought. She could travel anywhere with him and be quite safe. To her horror her eyes flooded with tears.
In quick concern he said, ‘You have a bruise on your cheek—has something happened?’
‘It’s a long story,’ she said shakily.
‘I love stories and I love champagne. Let me put on some clothes and then you must tell me everything.’
Under the influence of champagne on top of all the wine she had drunk Kristine told Harald a great deal, although not quite everything. He said decisively, ‘I’ll take you out for dinner and dancing tomorrow night; you don’t need another evening of grandmothers. You’re sure you’re not falling in love with the grandson, though? That would be very romantic.’
Kristine sneezed as the bubbles of champagne tickled her nose. ‘Sex and romance aren’t the same thing at all,’ she announced, just as if she knew what she was talking about.
‘Combined they are irresistible, though,’ said Harald, raising his glass in a toast.
She and her cousin seemed to find quite a lot of things to toast as the night progressed. It was three a.m. when they went to bed, and at nine-thirty Kristine woke up with a hangover. Probably the most expensive hangover she’d ever had, she decided, stepping into the shower and turning on the water full blast, a treatment that did not appear to help.
When she went into the kitchen, Harald took one look at her face and said briskly, ‘A light breakfast at an outdoor café, that will make you feel better.’
It did not seem to be the time to assert her financial independence. ‘All right,’ she said meekly.
They walked out into the sunshine, which was blindingly bright. ‘Ouch,’ said Kristine, staggering a little.
Harald put his arm around her, dug into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of aviator’s dark glasses, and positioned them on her nose. Then he steered her across the street. The man who had been seated on the stone wall watching all this got up and said tightly, ‘Good morning, Kristine.’
The glasses made everything a surreal shade of blue and the man was Lars. Camped on her doorstep as he had threatened. Groping for her manners, Kristine said, ‘My cousin Harald...Lars Bronstad.’
Lars gave Harald a curt nod, then reached out and removed the glasses. ‘What the devil have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Champagne on top of wine,’ she said, blinking into the light and keeping a firm hold on Harald’s arm. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I have to go to Lillehammer on business today. Spend the day with me tomorrow.’
Harald said casually, ‘I’m going to the airport tomorrow morning, Kristine—my girlfriend’s flying in from Milan.’
She gave him a dirty look. Then she said ungraciously to Lars, ‘I suppose you can phone me in the morning. If you want to.’
‘Do you travel so light that you can’t even commit yourself a day ahead of time?’ he exploded.
‘Don’t yell, it hurts,’ she said fractiously. ‘I can’t even decide which side of the street to walk on today, Lars.’
Disregarding Harald as if he didn’t exist, Lars seized her chin in one hand, kissed her full on the mouth, and then put the glasses back on her nose. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ he said, and strode away down the street.
Harald said, fascinated, ‘Well...you’ve made a big hit, little cousin.’
‘He’s not used to women who say no. Harald, I’m in urgent need of coffee. Black coffee.’
‘He’s in love with you.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense—we haven’t known each other for three days and all we do is fight.’
‘He’s rich and handsome and crazy about you—are all Canadian women this fussy?’
‘His grandmother wants him to marry the girl next door.’
‘Not a hope,’ said Harald. ‘That’s a man who’ll do what he wants...I think you should stay another week and give him a chance. Fjaerland will keep.’
Kristine scowled at him. ‘Tell me about your work or your girlfriend or your new car, Harald. And please get me that cup of coffee.’
Harald, after one look at her face, obliged on both counts. Kristine then went back to the flat and slept through the afternoon. Harald’s first comment when she came out of the bedroom was, ‘Dress up—we’re going to the best restaurant in town.’
Kristine felt a great deal better than she had this morning. Giving him an impish grin, she said, ‘I have one dress and you saw it last night.’
‘Maybe something of Gianetta’s will fit you—come along.’
Half of Harald’s closet was taken up by female clothing. Utterly delectable female clothing. ‘I can’t wear something of hers, I haven’t even met her,’ Kristine protested, looking longingly at a slinky sea-green jumpsuit with spaghetti straps.
‘She’d be delighted to lend you something,’ Harald said; ‘she’s very generous,’ and winked at her.
So when she and Harald walked arm in arm into an elegant dining-room that overlooked the royal palace Kristine looked slim and sexy and every inch as though she belonged there. As she was guided to her window-seat the first person she saw was Lars.
He was sitting at a circular corner table, staring at her. He looked as though he had been struck on the head by a blunt instrument.
The waiter put an immense, leather-bound menu in front of her and asked her something in Norwegian. Harald glanced over his shoulder to follow the direction of her gaze, then looked back, an unholy amusement in his face. ‘Of course, this is the obvious place to bring his grandmother on her birthday—I should have thought of that,’ he said blandly.
‘Perhaps you did,’ Kristine snorted.
‘I admit nothing. What will you have to drink, cousin?’
‘Anything but champagne,’ she said, and buried her face in the menu. It had English subtitles. From behind it she sneaked a glance at the circular table, met Lars’s eyes again, and ducked. He was with a party of five, one of whom, seated beside him in a demure white lace dress, had to be the sweet and biddable Sigrid. It hadn’t taken him long to find a substitute once she, Kristine, had turned down his invitation, she thought shrewishly.
Cocktails arrived, the menu was discussed with the solemnity due to a serious matter, then Harald put his linen napkin on the table and said, ‘Dance, Kristine?’
She had already noticed the rectangular parquet floor and the small dance band. Her brother Art had taught her how to dance; and it would beat sitting here trying not to stare at Lars. ‘Sure,’ she said.
The music was probably as lively as it got in these august surroundings; but Harald was a flashy and inventive dancer and Kristine was soon caught up in the rhythm of a jive. Her cheeks were pink and she was out of breath when he whirled her one last time and pulled her against his chest for the final chord. Then he said, taking her firmly by the hand, ‘It would be polite of you to wish an elderly lady the compliments of her birthday,’ and set off towards the circular table.
‘Harald—don’t!’ she whispered fiercely, tugging at his hand.
‘Are Canadian women cowards as well as fussy?’ he whispered rhetorically, and kept going.
And Kristine, her breast still heaving from her exertions, thought recklessly, Why not?
Lars and a younger man, who was a less striking version of Lars, got to their feet. Harald greeted Lars, who then introduced his grandmother, his brother and sister-in-law, and Sigrid Christensen, who was even prettier close up than at a distance. A great many pleasantries were exchanged. Although Marta Bronstad looked less than delighted to see Kristine, Kristine wished her a happy birthday. From the fragments of cake left on the dessert plates, it was plain the party was almost over.
The band had struck up a waltz. Harald, with a charming smile, asked Sigrid to dance. Lars, without asking, walked around the table, took Kristine by the hand, and pulled her between the tables to the dance-floor. Just before he took her into his arms, he said, ‘Bestemor invited Sigrid—I didn’t.’ Then he put an arm around her waist, took her hand and pressed it to his chest, and began to dance.
His cheek was resting on her hair. The length of his body was hard against hers. Kristine made a tiny sound expressive of dismay, delight, and desire, and gave herself up to the slow rhythm of the music and the sensuality of an embrace unlike any she had ever known. Beneath her palm was the strong, steady beat of Lars’s heart, an intimacy new to her. Against her hip she felt the instant and explicit hardness of his arousal; and that too was new and frightening and more exciting than she would have thought possible.
The dance seemed to last forever and was over before she was ready. There was a smatter of applause from the couples on the dance-floor, and slowly Lars released her. He had, she knew, been holding her far closer than was correct, but she could not find it in her to chide him. His eyes brilliant with a mixture of lust and laughter, he said, ‘As you must be aware, I’m in no state to face my grandmother...perhaps you could walk in front of me?’
Kristine fluttered her lashes and said demurely, ‘So I’m to run interference? I’ll do my best.’
‘We’re in trouble enough with Bestemor without any outward manifestations.’
She loved the twinkle in his eye and the sense of shared conspiracy. As her laugh rang out in a delicious cascade of sound, Lars added evenly, ‘When you look at me like that, you’re no help at all.’
For a moment his gaze dropped. Her backpack had not included a strapless bra; the jumpsuit therefore clung to her breasts, and the hot touch of his eyes hardened her nipples instantly. She said unsteadily, ‘Who’s going to walk in front of whom?’
‘Side by side?’ he suggested.
Laughter bubbled in her throat again. ‘You’re the one who has to live with your grandmother,’ she said, and set off through the tables ahead of him. His hand was resting lightly on the nape of her neck; she was sure her desire and her happiness—as deep as it was unreasoning—must be written on her face for all to see.
Harald was standing at the circular table chatting to Lars’s brother, while Marta Bronstad was sitting rigidly in her chair, fury evident in every line of her body. Lars let his hand fall to his side, said to Kristine, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ then sat down. After a round of polite goodbyes, Harald took Kristine back to their table.
A tempting array of hors-d’oeuvres on a silver tray had been placed on the starched linen cloth. Harald passed it to her and said, ‘The little Sigrid is charming and utterly unsuitable for Lars—it would be like mating a turtle-dove with a falcon. She’s also completely under the grandmother’s thumb...I was delighted to see how indiscreetly you danced, cousin.’
An elegant concoction of smoked salmon and capers fell from Kristine’s fork and rolled on to her plate. Deciding subtlety would be wasted on her cousin, she said, ‘Harald, I’ll talk about anything under the sun except Lars.’
Harald replaced the tray on the table and said with unmistakable force, ‘I turned thirty last month, and I’m beginning to realise life doesn’t give us as many second chances as we might think—be careful here, Kristine. This man Lars...unless my judgement’s way off, I don’t think he makes a habit of dancing like that. Nor, I would suspect, do you make a habit of responding as you did.’
She stared at the intricately curled piece of fish. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do this,’ she said in a low voice.
He gave a quick sigh of impatience. ‘Neither is it my habit to give advice to those I scarcely know,’ he said. ‘You should try this one—reindeer meat with cranberry relish.’ He then began to talk very entertainingly about how he had met Gianetta on a crowded railway platform in Vienna in the rain, and in the middle of this tale Lars and the rest of his party left. Little by little Kristine started to relax.
She was in bed by eleven, woke at eight, and joined Harald in cleaning up the flat. At nine-thirty the phone rang. Harald passed her the receiver and she said with entirely false composure, ‘Hello, Lars.’
He sounded distracted. ‘I’m back in Lillehammer—can I meet you around three?’
Unbidden, a picture of the young woman in the narrow black dress clicked into Kristine’s brain. Against every lesson of the past sixteen years she said, ‘Harald recommended the Vigeland sculpture park...why don’t we meet there?’
‘By the monolith. Thanks, Kristine.’
He rang off. ‘Congratulations!’ Harald said.
‘I must be certifiably insane,’ she answered succinctly. ‘Pass me that cloth.’
While Harald vacuumed the living-room, Kristine threw out most of the contents of the refrigerator and wiped the top of the stove. He cleaned the bathroom; she vacuumed the bedrooms. She then showered, changed into her blue shorts and flowered blouse and took the subway to the sculpture park.
Harald had loaned her a guidebook, so she knew as she went through the wrought-iron gates that the park contained dozens of sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. However, the photos in the book had not prepared her for the reality.