Elizabeth Peters - Silhouette in Scarlet

‘Clumsy, careless – ’ he began. Then his eyebrows rose and disappeared under his hair. ‘You were at the airport!’

It sounded like an accusation. I half expected him to demand indignantly, ‘Are you following me?’

‘Yes, I was at the airport. So what? I think my foot is broken. Why the hell didn’t you look where you were going?’

Still on hands and knees, he gave his head a toss that flung the blond berserker locks away from his eyes. Caesar had a trick like that when he was trying to be cute. I laughed. The Viking staggered to his feet, swayed, swore, and clutched his knee. The woman sitting next to me on the bench picked up her parcels and beat a hasty retreat. It may have been tactful consideration for a wounded fellow creature, but I think she was afraid he was about to fall on her.

He took the vacated seat. We sat in stiff silence for a few seconds while he rubbed his knee and I nursed my foot.

Finally he muttered, ‘Sorry.’ His voice was rather light for such a big man, once he had conquered the anger that had deepened it to a growl.

‘You should be.’

‘Let me see.’

I caught the edge of the bench as he took my foot onto his lap; but he did it skilfully, without upsetting my balance. A woman of my size does not have small feet. His huge brown fingers reduced my size ten to something as dainty-looking as that of a Chinese maiden.

He returned the foot to me. ‘There will be a bruise, I am afraid. Perhaps you had better visit a doctor.’

‘No, it’s all right. How about your knee?’

Unconcernedly he rolled up his pants leg. His calf was as big around as the thigh of a normal man, thick with muscle and covered with fine hairs that glowed in the sunlight like the golden nimbus that surrounds the bodies of saints and divine heroes. I was so fascinated by this fabulous anatomical specimen that I didn’t get a good look at the wounded knee. I caught only a glimpse of reddened skin before he pushed the fabric down.

‘It is not so bad.’

‘I am glad,’ I said slowly, ‘that you did not tear your trousers.’

‘I too am glad. They were very expensive.’

They didn’t look expensive. However, that is a relative term, and I didn’t feel I knew him well enough to pursue the subject. As I started to rise, he put this hand on my arm.

‘You will allow me to buy you – ’ he said.

‘I don’t really think – ’

‘A schnapps. Or something else, if you prefer.’

‘I don’t really – ’

‘You must allow me.’

‘Must’ was the word. It wasn’t an invitation; it was an order, and the weight of the hand on my arm reinforced it.

All at once I was overcome by the most abject feeling of panic. I am – as I have mentioned a time or two – unusually tall. I am also built like my Scandinavian ancestors – big-boned, well-muscled. Wrestling matches with my brothers had toughened me at an early age, and I’d kept in reasonably good physical condition with exercise and diet. Now for the first time in my life I understood how my normal-sized sisters feel when a man grabs them. Small, weak, vulnerable.

My eyes moved from the hand that dwarfed my not inconsiderably muscled arm, up along a couple of yards of coat sleeve, to his face. It was an almost perfect rectangle; the angles of jawbone and cheek were so square that the lower part of his face formed a straight line. His lips were full and healthily pink, bracketed by the luxuriant growth of hair on his lip. His nose rose out of the brush like a sandstone promontory; his eyes, wide-set and slightly protruding, met mine with unblinking sobriety. Every feature was larger than life-sized, but they harmonized perfectly. He was, to summarize, a handsome man with a gorgeous body, the kind of man who could turn a vacation into a memory of the sort little old ladies simper over when they sit rocking on the front porch of the nursing home.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

I could have eluded him if I had wanted to. He didn’t take my arm or hold my hand. At times, when the crowds thickened, we had to walk singlefile through the narrow streets. He preceded me, explaining solemnly, ‘I go first because I know the way. You will excuse the rudeness.’

The stiff formality of his manner made me smile, and I dismissed that brief moment of panic. I just wasn’t accustomed to feeling fragile and feminine, that was my trouble.

It was something of a coincidence that we should run into one another twice in the space of a few hours. However, Stortorget and the Old Town are tops on the lists of most tourists. Even if he had followed me, even if the accident had been premeditated – well, I have my share of vanity. I could think of reasons why a man might force an acquaintance with me, reasons that had nothing to do with John Smythe. When Leif Eriksson bowed me into the doorway of a restaurant that had once been a wealthy merchant’s house, I stepped right in.

I had schnapps. I had been meaning to try it anyway.

The alcohol loosened him up a little. He even ventured to ask a personal question.

‘Are you, by chance, American?’

I nodded. ‘And you,’ I said, with equal gravity, ‘are, by chance, Swedish?’

‘Why do you think so?’

‘Because only a Swede would hedge about a simple question like that.’

He laughed. It wasn’t one of your hearty Norse guffaws, but a prolonged chuckle, as rich and mellow as his speaking voice was light. The moustache added a fascinating dimension to his smile. The ends actually appeared to curl up parallel to his lips. His teeth were big and white, just the dentures to rip into a haunch of raw meat.

‘You are unkind to us,’ he protested. ‘Why do you have a prejudice against this country?’

‘I’m not – I mean, I don’t. I’m half Swedish myself. The other half is a mixture – Norwegian, Swiss-German, American Indian, you name it. Like all Americans, I’m a mongrel, and proud of it.’

He frowned a little, as if puzzled. Abandoning the problem with a shrug, he announced, ‘My name is Leif Andersen. And yours?’

I hadn’t quite decided whether to give him an alias. The abruptness of the question, and the surprise at hearing a name so close to the one I had imagined for him, took me off my guard.

‘Vicky Bliss,’ I said, mumbling. We shook hands over the schnapps glasses. I felt my bones crunch.

He ordered another round, and asked me what I was doing in Stockholm. I said I was on holiday. I asked him what he was doing in Stockholm. He said he was on holiday. I have had livelier discussions with retired schoolteachers. Unperturbed, I sipped my schnapps and bided my time. Swedish men once had a reputation for reticence and reserve. Presumably customs had changed since the sexual revolution, although most of the enthusiastic comments I had heard about modern mores concerned Swedish women and were, I might add, based more on wishful thinking than on actual experience. It was all irrelevant. If Leif wanted to move in on me with the ponderous deliberation of a brontosaurus plodding toward its mate, I could wait. So long as he moved in. He was the tallest man I had ever met.

Then he said, ‘You are here alone?’

A slimy little tendril of caution poked out from under the erotic fantasies that had buried my suspicions. He didn’t look like a Swedish Jack the Ripper – but then, who does? And he had been at the airport . . . I lowered my lashes bashfully and remained silent.

‘I ask,’ he explained, ‘because when I saw you at the airport you were greeting a friend.’

‘He’s no friend of mine.’ I spoke without hesitation, as I would have denied being intimately acquainted with Hitler. ‘I thought I recognized someone I knew slightly . . . once . . . a long time ago.’

Leif leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. I caught one of the schnapps glasses as it slid towards the edge.