Eadyth was stunned speechless by his words of praise. Before she had a chance to step back, he leaned down and brushed his lips across hers in a feather-light caress, murmuring, ” ‘Tis sorry I am, wife, to abandon you alone to the wedding feast. I know ’tis not the husbandly attention you deserve on this night.”
Amazed, Eadyth stared after him as he led his guests to the private room. Oh, she knew the kiss was just a gesture meant to perpetuate the charade of beloved bridegroom before the staring guests. But she could not help touching her lips in awe with the tips of her fingers, or imagining his taste still lingering.
More than that, she could not stop herself from wondering if the wedding night she had been dreading would be as bad as she had imagined. An odd thrill rushed through her, turning her face hot and her pulse racing as she thought of Eirik’s bedchamber above stairs and the night to come.
Chapter Six
Eirik and his guests sat around a small table in the private chamber, their empty trenchers put aside and more mead poured into their goblets.
“The king asks that you come immediately,” Oswald said. “Even knowing of your wedding, he believes the situation of such urgency to demand desperate actions.”
“I heard yestereve from a passing wayfarer that another attempt was made on Edmund’s life,” Eirik said, stroking his mustache thoughtfully. “Poison, this time.”
The three men nodded gravely.
“And is his brother Edred—that misbegotten cur—responsible?”
“No doubt,” Robert opined, “though it cannot be proven, of course.” He shook his head woefully. “Our king could live one sennight or a hundred. No one knows for sure, except our Good Lord, but many say Edmund is doomed to a short life, the way the attacks have been increasing.”
Eirik had heard as much but was still greatly saddened at the prospect of losing such a good man. As young as he was, Edmund tried earnestly to follow in the footsteps of his brother Athelstan, the warrior-scholar, the first “King of All Britain.”
“Already the vultures await Edmund’s death to divide the kingdom,” Robert went on, “and a devious lot they are, led by the likes of Steven of Gravely.”
Eirik’s back straightened at the mention of his hated enemy, but he said nothing.
“Even as he fights off his assassins, Edmund worries over the new influx of Norsemen from Ireland,” Robert added, running his widespread fingers anxiously through his hair.
“And ’tis the very vipers who inhabit your hall that cause him so much distress,” Oswald accused.
Eirik bristled. “Do you question my loyalty to my liege lord?” he asked hotly.
“Nay,” Oswald said, backing down, red-faced at his hasty words. “But ’tis jarring to see the very men who would devour our king sitting about your hall in companionship.”
“Oh, do not call it companionship. More like… what shall I call it?… let us say a fishing expedition.”
“And you the whale?” Oswald asked with a chortle.
They all laughed, and Oswald’s tense posture eased as he commented, “I wonder what other sea creatures they will snare as they troll the troubled waters of Northumbria.”
“No doubt there will be many,” Eirik admitted. “We all know Anlaf itches to regain the Norse kingship of Northumbria. And many there are who would follow him to shrug off the Saxon yoke.”
“And the wily Wulfstan backs him, I wager,” the cleric added from the corner where he had been sitting, quietly nursing his goblet of mead.
“Yea, he does,” Eirik admitted. “Long has he supported the Norse cause from his pulpit in Jorvik, but even more so in his clandestine meetings throughout the shires.”
“And Orm?” Oswald asked warily, knowing Earl Orm and Eirik shared a Norse heritage. “Does he join in their cause or will he play both sides of the coin, as usual, waiting to see which way the winds will blow?”
Eirik weighed his words carefully before answering. “I know that Orm, and Wulfstan, as well, prefer my uncle Eric Bloodaxe to Anlaf. Eric flatters the Norse nobility in Northumbria, tantalizing them with the prospect of an independent Northumbria under a king of royal blood. So, yea, I think ‘twould be accurate to say that Orm and Wulfstan support a Norse infiltration, whether from Dublin or the Orkneys.”