Her eyes grew wide, misting with tears, and then she smiled. A beautiful, soft, heart-stopping smile, like a caress. “I love you, too. Oh, Eirik, I love you, too. Always remember that.”
He gave himself freely to his passion then, pummeling her willing, spasming body with harder and shorter strokes until he embedded himself in the heart of her and filled her with his seed. He cried out once again, “I love you, Eadyth,” before he fell heavily on her.
An amazing sense of completeness enveloped him as he slowly came to his senses, rolling to his side and taking Eadyth with him. This wonderful thing that had just happened to them was so much more than a physical act. He tried to find the words to tell Eadyth of his feelings as he stroked her smooth shoulder, her silky hair. But then he noticed that Eadyth was weeping silently, profusely.
He leaned up on one elbow to look at his wife, his beloved wife. “So this is how you react to my first words of love to you, Eadyth?” he teased, oddly hurt by her tears.
She tried to smile, and failed. Caressing his cheek, she murmured, “Your love means everything in the world to me, Eirik. Know that, always.”
Always? The word had an ominous ring to Eirik’s ears. He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her more closely. Damn his bleary eyes! He squinted and drew back slightly to see better. Dark shadows marked the undersides of her eyes and tension bracketed her tight lips. Had she looked like this when he arrived? Or had his lovemaking caused her dismay? Or worse yet, his words of love?
“Tell me what troubles you, Eadyth,” he demanded, sitting up. “How have I displeased you?”
“Oh, nay, ’tis not you,” Eadyth reassured him, then shifted her eyes away guiltily, as if to hide some secret. Even with his poor sight, he could see that she seemed to be gathering her senses. She told him about Godric being missing and how she had been lost in the woods. But she deliberately looked away when he questioned her icily about having disobeyed his orders and leaving the keep and about exactly what section of the forest she had been lost in.
“We will find Godric,” he promised her and saw that her eyes darted nervously. He took her trembling hands in his and asked, “Is that all, Eadyth?”
She nodded, but her eyes had a faraway, unreachable cast.
“And you have had no more encounters with Steven?” he asked, lying back down beside her, tracing a fingertip lazily down her arm, then kissing the inside of her wrist.
She shivered, whether from his touch or the question, he could not tell. Then she shook her head. Eirik peered closer and saw that her face had flushed.
“Why would you ask about Steven?” she asked tentatively, and clenched her fists tightly at her sides.
Eirik shrugged, a dull ache of foreboding creeping over the back of his neck. “No reason. You just seem jittery and… frightened.”
He felt her pulse jump in her wrist. Looking at her closely, he studied every telling reaction. “And that is all?”
She hesitated. “Yea.”
And Eirik knew his wife was lying through her teeth. The woman to whom he had just pledged his undying love was keeping secrets again. A raw and primitive grief overwhelmed him.
Women and lies, the ageless, combination! Bloody Hell! Would he never learn?
Chapter Nineteen
“They are both hiding something,” Wilfrid told Eirik just past dawn the next morning as they broke their fast, alone in the great hall. He thumped his goblet down angrily, spilling some watered ale on the table. “Britta and your lady wife had their heads together all of yesterday. Whenever I asked Britta what it was about, she nigh trembled out of her skin.”
“Eadyth is the same,” Eirik said miserably. In his fury last night, he had been unable to bear the thought of making love to his wife again. She had lost her appeal after he realized she was involved in some new deceit, especially when she stubbornly refused to tell him the truth. He would not even share her bed, despite her tearful protests. Instead, he had laid his head on one of the hall pallets. But he had not slept.