I bit my lip, blushing despite myself. “Luckily for you, I don’t speak Norsk.” I pointed at the notebook covered in his handwriting. “What’s this?”

“My times and training progress.”

I laughed out loud, tipping my head back against his shoulder. It felt good to laugh, after such a long night. “You’re a man obsessed.”

He gathered me more snugly against him, and my stomach began tying itself in knots; his skin was warm against my back. “I’m disciplined,” he corrected me, grinning.

I cleared my throat. “I see that. You’re tidy, too—Fredrik and Bragi are pigs.” I picked up the notebook to try and make sense of his scrawled records.

“Wait—” Torden blurted, too late. A thick sheet of paper sailed from between its pages.

There I was, miserable fuchsia dress, gray velvet chair, blank expression. My portrait.

“This is me,” I said stupidly. Torden rolled one shoulder and scratched at his beard, his discomfort palpable.

“I, ah. I just—had that,” he offered. I waited for him to meet my eyes, but they darted anxiously to the far corner of the room.

I set down the notebook, cocking my head at him. “Why?”

“Why what?” He shifted nervously.

The evening had gone to pieces so quickly, I couldn’t help comparing it to the night I’d left England, hurt and humiliated. But the truth about Bear’s lies had turned my bones to ice, and their coming to light in public had left me raw.

Now, glancing between my portrait and Torden’s face, gone as red as his hair, I felt warmth unfurl in my chest.

And here, it was just the two of us.

Torden wasn’t Bear, and he wouldn’t hurt me.

I crossed my arms. “Don’t you see enough of me all day?”

Torden rubbed at a muscle in his neck. “You must understand, I have lived in the brakker since I was seven. Four boys in twenty square meters is all I know. Even when I told my father I’d court you, perhaps marry you—I could not comprehend it.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Being married?”

“Leaving my brothers, the dirty clothes, the bunk beds. The noise and fights in the corridor. Det er koselig. In its way.”

I cocked my head. “Koselig?”

“You might say cozy in English.” Torden frowned, apparently dissatisfied with the translation. “But it means—home. Simplicity. Warmth.” He glanced around, eyes affectionate, then uncertain. “I could not imagine sleeping in a quiet room, in a real bed, making a home with one person—a woman. But I’ve been trying.”

“Trying to imagine living with me.”