Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 03]

by The Tarnished Lady

  Rain drummed loudly on the rooftop, and Eadyth examined the ceiling of the hall for moisture as she passed through. Apparently her workmen had finally repaired all the leaks, she thought with satisfaction. Next, she would set them to the chapel renovations.

  Eadyth was about to mount the stairs to Eirik’s bedchamber when Britta called out, “Mistress, I would not be going up there now.”

  “Why not?”

  “’Twould not be wise,” Britta muttered, turning away sheepishly, just like Bertha.

  Something was amiss. Something she would not like. And it involved Eirik. Her eyes narrowed and she started up the steps again, determined to put an end to the mystery.

  “Oh, Lord,” she heard Britta mutter ominously behind her.

  “Now the goose feathers are gonna fly.”

  Eadyth did not bother to knock on Eirik’s bedchamber door—their bedchamber door, she amended. Instead, she turned the handle and opened the door with a flourish. Then gasped with outrage at the sight before her.

  Eirik was lying on the bed, propped on his elbows. He wore only a loincloth, and his body and slicked-back hair gleamed with moisture from a recent bath.

  He was not alone.

  A young woman—a young, beautiful woman—knelt on the bed with him, his foot on her lap.

  Eadyth’s eyes widened in disbelief.

  The Moorish woman was paring Eirik’s toenails, and he lay practically naked. In her lap.

  “Eadyth, I did not know you were there. Come in,” Eirik said with seeming innocence. His slumberous eyes spoke of some other emotion.

  Oh, the humiliation of it! Eirik had actually brought a mistress into her home in front of everyone. She would kill him! Perchance with that little paring knife the woman wielded. Mayhap she would kill them both.

  In the midst of her anger, Eadyth’s eyes swam with tears of disillusionment. She had not realized until then how much she had grown to trust this man, her husband, and to look forward to their union. Oh, ’twas unfair. First Steven, and now this womanizing wretch.

  What a foolish maid she had been, walking into this marriage with her heart wide open. Raising her chin angrily, she tried to hide her misery from Eirik’s probing stare. She was a strong woman, well accustomed to the harsh reality of loneliness. She would survive yet another man’s betrayal. Yea, she would.

  Without thinking, she grabbed a bucket sitting next to his dirty bathwater and dumped the contents onto his still-reclining body. It soaked him and the bed linens and splattered the gown of the slut who sat back on her haunches on the bed staring at her in horror.

  “Holy damnation, Eadyth! That water was ice cold,” Eirik exclaimed, reaching for a drying cloth. “Do you take exception to a man practicing good bodily habits?”

  “Bodily habits?” she barely choked out and filled the bucket with dirty bathwater, approaching the bed again. The young woman screeched with alarm and jumped off the bed, darting around her and out the door.

  Eirik stood and eyed her challengingly. “Do not dare to throw that filthy water at me, or you will suffer the consequences.”

  Despite her fury, Eadyth had to admit that the man looked glorious standing there, bare-chested and bare-limbed. The light from the arrow slit played on the fine muscles that sculpted his shoulders and arms, highlighting the bunching sinews of long legs which had been honed by years of horseback riding. He threw the linen cloth onto the bed and put both hands on his hips with supreme arrogance. Amusement twitched at his enticing lips, and his pale blue eyes sparkled with some perverted pleasure.

  A red haze of fury blinded Eadyth then. The man was laughing at her. He amused himself with another woman and found humor in her anger. He had promised her loyalty in the betrothal agreement and then committed adultery even before their marriage was consummated. Worst of all, he found that ignorant peasant attractive, and her…and her, his true wife, he could not even bear to bed.

  She threw the bucket of water in Eirik’s face. Soapy water dripped from his hair and eyelashes and chin. Stunned with surprise that she had actually disobeyed his command, Eirik’s mouth dropped open. But only for a moment. His surprise swiftly turned to anger and he promised ominously, “You will regret, wife, that you did not heed my warning.”

  Eadyth realized then that she had perchance been hasty in her method of showing her displeasure to Eirik. She should have waited until she had contained her roiling fury and discussed the situation with him rationally. God’s Bones! Where was the cool-headed, logical woman she had been before coming to Ravenshire? She did not recognize this hot-tempered termagant she had become.

  Eirik started toward her, a predatory gleam in his eyes.

  Eadyth spun on her heels and ran down the steps and through the hall, ignoring the knights who had come in out of the rain and sat about dicing at the long tables. She raced blindly out the courtyard door, unsure of her destination, just knowing she had to escape the pounding footsteps she heard following her.

  She had barely reached the courtyard when she heard Eirik’s bare feet slip on the outside steps. He slid, swearing loudly, before falling to the muddy ground of the bailey.

  Eadyth looked over her shoulder with concern and considered going back to see if he was all right. One look at Eirik changed her mind. He was sitting in the mud, still wearing only the brief loincloth, glowering at her, and she decided she had best find a hiding place until his anger cooled.

  She made it almost to the kitchen garden when Eirik lunged at her from behind, grabbing her waist. She landed flat on her stomach, her face pressed into the mud, Eirik atop her. The rain pounded down on them both, creating a pool of mud.

  Eadyth pressed her palms into the soggy ground and tried to raise her head and shoulders, but she could not move. Eirik covered her from neck to toes with his own much larger body, and she was having difficulty breathing.

  “Get off me, you big oaf.”

  Eirik rolled Eadyth onto her back but continued to press her to the ground with his body. Despite the rain, which was lessening now as sunlight peeked through the clouds, despite the fact that his lady wife looked like a drowned, muddy rat, despite his formidable anger, Eirik felt a keen pleasure in the pressure of his hard body against her womanly curves. Yes, curves, he realized, not without pleasure; his wife definitely was not the bony creature he had once imagined.

  With deliberate care, he adjusted his body atop hers and ground his burgeoning manhood against her center.

  She gasped and gazed up at him with questioning innocence. Rivulets of rain made tracks in the mud plastering her face, and her sodden hair escaped her wimple in ugly gray clumps.

  But somehow Eirik was not repulsed.

  With a deft movement of both legs, he entwined his ankles with hers and spread her legs. Then, through her thin, rain-sodden gown, he expertly touched himself to her center of pleasure—at least, it was a pleasure point on other women he had known. But then, mayhap his wife was different.

  Eadyth’s mouth parted on a soft sigh of enchantment. “Oh.”

  Eirik smiled. She was no different, after all. And in that he found great cause for satisfaction…and anticipation. “Oh?”

  “Oh, you are a brute!” Eadyth exclaimed in her usual prickly tone of voice, trying to shove him off as she came to her senses.

  “A brute, am I?” he asked. “My lady, you do not know, yet, what a brute I can be.” He reached his right hand out and gathered a fistful of mud. Then, with a chuckle of glee, he smeared it onto her face. “That is for throwing dirty bathwater in my face.”

  She sputtered and spat, spraying his face with mud, and tried to claw at him. But he pulled both wrists above her head with one hand. Then he dished up another handful of mud and smeared it onto each of her breasts, rubbing his palm seductively over the slick surface he created. Fascinated, he watched her nipples blossom through her thin gunna.

  And he grew even harder against her.

  “Why are you doing this?” she moaned.

  �
�Because I like to.”

  Carefully, he rotated his hips back and forth against her, experimenting, watching closely for her reaction. She did not disappoint him.

  Instinctively, her legs widened and she arched up for more. Closing her eyes languorously, she parted her lips to accommodate her short, ragged breaths. Her body told him what her prideful tongue could not: she wanted him. As much as he wanted her.

  “Ahem. Ahem.”

  Eirik groaned aloud at the slight coughing sound and he knew his opportunity was lost, even before he looked up and saw Britta and Bertha and several of his knights near the kitchen door.

  Eadyth instantly overcame her passionate response and chastised him in a mortified voice, “Oh, you are the world’s worst husband. To think of consummating our marriage afore an audience. In the mud. In daylight.”

  “Is that what we were doing?” he asked with amusement. “Well, I must admit this is a first for me. You must be a bad influence on me. What other deviant paths will you lead me on, wife?”

  “Me? Me?” she shrieked and tried to buck him off.

  He laughed and would not move.

  She bit his shoulder.

  “Ouch!”

  He bit her shoulder.

  She shrieked even louder.

  Meanwhile, their audience continued to stare open-mouthed at the spectacle they made. Eirik figured it was time to move indoors before they really did consummate their wedding in public. The rain had stopped, and already bright sunlight peeped through the clouds, causing steam to rise from the damp earth. Thinking quickly, Eirik looked up and ordered, “Britta, get me some soap, a comb and several drying cloths. And some clean garments for me and my lady wife. Take them to the spring.”

  “What?” Eadyth croaked out.

  “We are going to bathe…in the pond.”

  “We?”

  Eirik recognized the panic in Eadyth’s voice, but he did not care. She had pushed him too far. He had waited too long to bed his wife, and he would wait no longer. In truth, he could not wait any longer.

  “Is this a private game, or can anyone join in?” a deep voice inquired above him.

  Eirik peered over his shoulder to see Sigurd sitting astride his destrier. He had ridden the animal right into the kitchen courtyard. Eadyth would go into a rage if he trampled her precious herbs.

  But then Eirik realized the significance of Sigurd’s appearance, and he stood, releasing Eadyth from his body’s pressure. He allowed her to rise but held onto her wrist, refusing to let her pull away.

  “What did you find?” he demanded anxiously as Sigurd alighted and handed the reins of his horse to a stable boy. “Does she spy or not?”

  Amazed, Sigurd glanced from him to Eadyth and back again, then looked pointedly at the still-raging arousal at the juncture of Eirik’s thighs. With a laugh, Sigurd shook his head in exaggerated despair. “Methinks the waiting has been sore hard on you, my lord.”

  “Methinks you had best spit out the news or join us in a mud bath.”

  Sigurd grinned widely, prolonging the suspense. Finally, he disclosed, “She is innocent as a newborn babe.”

  It was Eirik then who grinned from ear to ear. “Are you certain? Where did you check?”

  “Hawks’ Lair. Jorvik. Even two of Gravely’s estates. Yea, I am sure. She hates the man. Those closest to her know of it. And there had been no contact betwixt them ’til he came seeking his son this past year.”

  “You set spies on me?” Eadyth asked incredulously, pulling out of Eirik’s grasp. Her face turned stormy with rage. “How dare you? Oh, how dare you?” Winding her arm back, she swung in a wide circle and punched him in the stomach.

  “Oomph!” Taken off guard, Eirik slipped and fell back into the mud, taking Eadyth with him.

  She flailed and fought furiously against his restraint as they slopped about in the mud, covering themselves from head to toe once again.

  “You arrogant ass!” She slapped his face and tried to crawl away.

  “You willful wench!” He grabbed her ankle and pulled her forcibly back toward him.

  Her body went stiff then and her face froze into a mask of hurt as she suddenly seemed to remember something painful. “You betrayed me with another woman,” she accused, coming to her knees before him.

  “I did?” At first, Eirik forgot what had prompted their rolling about in the mud—the ruse he had concocted with Aaron’s young wife. Had he really been so lackwitted as to think he could rile his wife by pretending to be with another woman and not suffer the consequences? “Oh, that was just a charade to provoke you,” he confessed unashamedly.

  “Why?” she asked, her forehead furrowing with puzzlement.

  “So you would not tempt me into consummating our marriage ’til…” Eirik’s words trailed off as he saw the fury boiling in her luminous violet eyes. Perchance he had revealed too much too soon. Some women were quick to temper and needed to be “handled” carefully. In his anger, he had forgotten to employ tact.

  “Tempt you? Tempt you?” Eadyth sputtered. Then that iron-willed chin of hers raised to the heavens and she turned the tables on him. Raising two fistfuls of mud that he had not seen her gather, she hurled them into his face. Momentarily blinded, he sat back on his haunches and released her, trying to wipe the oozing mud from his eyes. When he could finally see again, Eadyth stood before him, hands on hips, glaring at him with affront. “You truly are an arrogant bastard.”

  “I do not like your choice of words, wife, nor your tone.” Realizing they still had an audience, Eirik barked out to all the spectators at the kitchen door, “Depart! All of you. I would be alone with my lady wife.”

  Britta snickered and said something about them looking like two sows in a sty. Bertha laughed lasciviously and made an odd remark about even the flattest breasts appearing to wobble when covered with mud. Sigurd and Wilfrid merely chuckled.

  When they were finally alone and stood facing each other, panting for breath, Eadyth reproached him, “You set spies on me even when I gave my word that I was true. You believed I conspired with your most hated enemy—my most hated enemy. And you planned to bed another woman just to avoid the odious prospect of my touch.”

  “Odious?” he choked out. “My lady, you are suffering from delusions if you cannot see that I crave your body…and your touch.”

  “You do?” The pleasure that flickered momentarily on her face disappeared as she realized the implications of his words. “Are you saying that you deliberately staged that scene in your bedchamber with the Moorish woman?”

  “I repeat, it was a ruse. I did not intend to couple with the maid. She is married to one of my men.”

  “How deceitful of you!”

  He raised a brow mockingly.

  Eadyth blinked to keep the tears welling in her violet eyes from overflowing.

  He felt a momentary twinge of guilt. “I had to know for sure,” he said defensively.

  “Why could you not ask me? I would have told you the truth.”

  “Would you?” he asked softly.

  He knew.

  In that moment, Eadyth saw the light of recognition in Eirik’s pale blue eyes, and she realized that he knew of her masquerade. Suddenly, she understood his odd behavior these past few days.

  “How long?” she asked, backing away defensively. “How long have you known?”

  He shrugged. “Long enough.”

  “Are you…angry with me?”

  He nodded, taking one step closer to her.

  She took one step backward.

  “Well, I am angry with you, too.”

  “Oh?” He took one more step.

  This time, she took two steps backward. “You spied on me.”

  “With good reason.”

  “Mayhap I had good reason for my…my innocent little harmless masquerade.”

  Eirik grinned at her choice of words, and Eadyth realized that he taken two more steps closer to her while she talked. She stepped backward five paces, just to give
herself more distance, and he smiled at her in a predatory fashion that she did not like one bit. She felt like a helpless bird being stalked by a wise old cat.

  “Mayhap you would like to enlighten me as to your motivations,” he asked, rubbing his muddy upper lip thoughtfully.

  “You look ridiculous standing there practically naked, covered with mud,” Eadyth snapped without thinking. Actually, he looked remarkably virile and alarmingly handsome, Eadyth admitted to herself. She would never tell him that, though.

  Eirik’s wonderfully clear eyes sparkled mischievously. “Ah, then, ’tis only fair that we should even things up.”

  Eadyth’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. She had said he looked ridiculous, standing naked and covered with mud. Looking down, she saw that she, too, was completely covered with mud. That only left…

  Her mouth dropped open. He would not!

  Eirik lunged for her.

  Apparently, he would.

  Throwing Eadyth over his shoulder, Eirik ignored her squeals of protest and flailing arms and legs. By the time they reached the pond, he was shaking his head at her unladylike language.

  Lord, he loved a good battle, and this stubborn, domineering, stiff-backed wife of his was going to provide him with good sport. Without any hesitation, Eirik waded knee-deep into the ice-cold water of the spring-fed pond. Despite the hot sun, their baths would be coldly invigorating because of the recent rain. He smiled widely and dumped Eadyth, clothes and all, into the watery depths.

  She came up sputtering, calling out every epithet she could name. “Loathsome lout! Odious oaf! Bloody bastard! Lusty Lackwit!”

  Shamelessly, Eirik removed his loincloth and approached her. “Let us see just what I have bought in this marriage bargain, wife.”

  “Bought? Bought? You have not bought me, you wretch. If anything, I have bought you with my dowry,” she shrieked, trying to walk past him to the shore with as much dignity as possible in her water-heavy garments. She had already lost her head-rail and wimple in the dunking, and the rest of her garments molded her body with enticing promise.