Liar! He widened his eyes with forced delight. “Wonderful! I have a fearsome headache.” Then, before she could react, he unstoppered the vial and downed its contents in one long swallow.
She screamed then. “Oh, no! Oh, no! ‘Twas poison, my dearling! Quickly, try to vomit it up!”
“You wished to poison me?” he asked, blinking his eyes with deliberate hurt at his deceitful wife.
“Nay, ’twas Gravely.” She tried to stick her fingers in his mouth to make him throw up the potion, and he bit her, hard.
Pushing her aside roughly, he stumbled over to the bed and plopped down onto his back. With an exaggerated sigh, he closed his eyes, moaning, “My loving wife, I will miss you sorely,” and, with all the drama he could muster, pretended to die.
He could have sworn he heard Abdul snicker.
But Eadyth would not give up. She threw herself over his body, trying desperately to lift him up. Then she attempted once again to pry his mouth open and stick her fingers down his throat and bring up the fatal contents of his stomach. The whole time she was weeping and telling him how sorry she was and that she loved him dearly.
He gritted his teeth, faking the death stiffening of muscles. When she was unable to stick her fingers into his mouth, she began slapping his face back and forth, trying to awaken him from the dead. She even took both his ears in her hands and shook his head mightily, up and down off the mattress. His ears were ringing from her shrieking, as well as the head pounding on the mattress. Hell’s flames, he really was developing a headache now.
A loud knocking commenced at the door, and he could hear Tykir and Wilfrid and Sigurd shouting with concern. Apparently, they had heard Eadyth scream. Hell, the pigeons in Jorvik had probably heard her caterwauling.
Eadyth just ignored them all, keening like a banshee as she tried straddling his body and breathing her own air into his mouth. When she pinched his nose shut with the fingers of one hand, placed her mouth over his, trying to breathe air into his lungs, and bounced her rump up and down on his chest to restart his heart, he decided he had suffered more than enough. If he did not stop the wench, she would truly kill him.
Gasping for breath, he shoved her from his chest and rolled off the bed. “Save your ministrations, Eadyth. I want them not.”
She gaped at him. “You are not dead.”
“How observant of you!” He called out to the men still shouting outside the door, “All is well. I will be with you in a moment.” He heard them walking away, grumbling.
Eadyth shook her head, much like a wet dog, as if to clear her senses. When comprehension dawned, she lunged for him and began to pummel his chest. “You beast! How could you play such a cruel joke on me?”
“Cruel? Cruel?” he lashed out with savage anger, taking her wrists in both his hands and holding her away from his body. “I will tell you what is cruel. Having no faith whatsoever in a husband and his ability to protect you. Lying whenever ’tis convenient for you. Planning to fake your own death and that of your son. Leaving the man you claim to love, mayhap for a year, perchance forever. Not caring about the grief you leave in the wake of your thoughtless maneuverings. That is what is cruel, my lady bitch.” He released her hands and shoved her away with disgust.
Eirik knows. The message finally seeped into Eadyth’s muddled brain. Oh, Lord, will he ever forgive me now?
“I am going after Gravely. We know where he is now. Finally. And, yea, my, deceitful wife, I think I am capable of the task, despite your lack of faith.”
“Eirik, I never doubted your abilities—”
He raised a palm to halt her words. “Naught you could say now will ever erase your actions. Do not seek to excuse them. And do not blame Britta for confessing your lackbrain plot. ‘Twas unfair of you to involve her.”