Tykir exclaimed with a snap of his fingers, “Oh, I forgot something.” He went over to a chest and came back carrying a package.
“What is it?” Eirik asked suspiciously.
Tykir jiggled his eyebrows. ” ‘Tis my wedding gift to you. I purchased it, with Eadyth’s permission, in one of the market stalls yesterday.”
“For me? Why would you need her permission to buy me something? Besides, you already gave us that damn parrot for a wedding gift.”
“Nay,” Tykir corrected Eirik with a laugh. “I gave the parrot to Eadyth. This is a special treat for you.”
“Will I like it?”
“Eirik, you will thank me to your dying days for this gift.”
The brothers embraced again near the dock. Eirik was just about to leave and go to the home of Eadyth’s agent when Tykir snapped his fingers again. “Oh, there is something else I forgot.”
“What? Another secret purchase?”
“Nay. I just thought you would like to know where Eadyth is right now.” Tykir was leaning jauntily against a tall coil of ropes, and Eirik briefly considered picking him up and tossing him into the river. He just knew he was not going to like what Tykir had to tell him.
“Well?”
“She has gone to visit Asa.”
* * *
Asa’s jewelry stall was closed when Eirik arrived at Coppergate, and, at first, there was no answer when he knocked on her door. Finally, a servant answered. Recognizing him, she motioned him into the large hall. Eirik approached the small solar off the hall where the maid directed him, and then Eirik stopped mid-stride with horror.
Eadyth and Asa were sitting side by side on a bench at the window seat. Eadyth was weeping, and Asa had her arm around her shoulder, whispering words of comfort.
“Eadyth?” Eirik asked as he moved closer.
“Eirik!” Eadyth and Asa both said at the same time as they stood, Eadyth towering over Asa’s much shorter figure. He had always thought Asa was the most beautiful woman in the world. He realized now how wrong he had been. Eadyth, his wife, was much more beautiful. Gloriously beautiful. And she was his.
And I love her.
He smiled warmly toward Eadyth, expecting her to smile back. Instead, she looked with pain-stricken eyes from him to Asa. Her violet eyes turned luminously angry. “Oh… oh… ,” she sputtered and shoved him aside, running through the hall and out the door.
“Wha-at?” he asked Asa.
Asa just shook her head, as if he were the most dull-headed fool in the world.
Eirik spun on his heels and hurried after his wife, but she had already disappeared in the crowded street. He got his horse and rode toward her agent’s house. By the time he maneuvered through the bothersome crowd, his mood had turned sour. He entered the agent’s house without knocking.
A startled lady looked up—presumably Bertrand’s wife—and Eirik asked rudely, “Where the hell is Eadyth?”
“And you are… ?” the buxom woman asked, approaching with a raised copper ladle.
“Her husband.”
“Oh. The loathsome lout.”
Eirik grimaced at the woman’s words.
She lowered her weapon and jerked her head toward the stairs leading to an upper level. He thought he heard her say, “Mayhap now the maid will stop her constant weeping.”
Eirik found Eadyth in one of the guest bedchambers, packing her belongings in a leather bag. “Good tidings, wife,” he said in a silky voice, as if he had just returned from the exercise fields at Ravenshire a sennight ago, before all their angry words and separation, before Steven’s death. He pulled the door shut behind him and turned the lock so they would not be disturbed. Then he leaned lazily against the wall, watching her closely.
She looked up at him through red-rimmed eyes and gave him a condemning, condescending look—the kind Eadyth excelled in, the kind she flashed at doltish servants and lackbrain husbands. Lord, he loved the woman.
“Are we going home?” he asked, looking pointedly at her traveling bag.
“I do not know where you are going, but I am returning to Ravenshire.”
“Then we will travel together, I suppose.”
“I do not need your company.”
“But I need yours,” he said softly.