“Can you not don some small clothes?”
“Why?”
” ‘Tis immodest of you to… to flaunt your body thus.”
He laughed mockingly. ” ‘Tis naught you have not seen afore with your lover. Or is Steven’s cock so different?”
Eadyth blanched at his vulgarity. Then shock quickly yielded to anger. She lifted her fisted hand and prepared to punch him in his stomach, but Eirik grabbed her wrist and held it in a painful grasp.
“Do not even think of striking me. In my present mood, I would not hesitate to hit you back.”
“Your mother should have soaped your mouth as a child. You have a filthy tongue.”
“I had no mother.”
“Were you born under a rock?”
He twisted her wrist tighter and scrutinized her coldly, as if contemplating whether to break the bone or not. Finally, he dropped her hand with a snort of disgust.
Tears smarted her eyes, and she blinked to hold them back as she rubbed her sore wrist. “Why are you being so hateful? I have done naught to hurt you.”
“You think not? Well, think again. The one thing I demanded of you afore signing the betrothal agreement was fidelity. Hah! The ink is barely dry, and you have spread your thighs for another. And our marriage not yet consummated!”
Eadyth stiffened and tilted her head questioningly. “You think I have lain with another man?”
“Yea, I do.”
“Who?”
“The bloody bastard—Steven. Who else?”
“Are you daft? You know how I hate him.”
“Nay, I realize now that I know naught of your true self. But know this, my lady wife, you will pay tenfold for your treachery, and I do not just refer to the bee stings.”
Eirik’s ludicrous accusation cut Eadyth deeply, and the hurt soon turned to blood-boiling anger. She spun around and proceeded to walk toward the door, needing to be by herself to understand the charges he leveled against her. Perhaps Girta could explain. But Eirik grabbed her by the forearm and hauled her back.
“Finish the work you started.”
She lifted her chin defiantly. “You can do your neck and face yourself with the aid of a mirror.” She pointed to the framed piece of polished metal on his wall.
“Nay. You will tend my bites—all of them. After all, ’tis you who caused them.”
Eadyth opened her mouth to protest her innocence, then forced herself to remain silent. Until she understood what had happened in her absence, what prompted Eirik’s ridiculous belief that she had taken a lover, her protests would be meaningless.
His eyes blazed blue fire at her, all-devouring in their intensity.
“Sit down again,” she ordered icily. “And close your eyes.” She did not want him looking at her face this close up.
Only a few stings remained on the sensitive skin of his neck, and those she easily removed. She was becoming quite adept at flicking her fingernail in just the right spot to pop out the stingers. Then she moved up to his face, which he lifted for her ministrations.
The crinkles of humor that had formerly webbed his eyes and lips had somehow turned into marks of cruelty. Eirik’s long lashes lay like silky black fans against the shadowed underside of his eyes. He must not have slept much last night—no doubt, plotting ways to torture her on her return, she thought ruefully.
Carefully, she held his stubbornly jutting chin in place, unable to ignore the angry twitch beneath her probing fingers. She removed one stinger close to his right eye. It would probably swell shut before nightfall. She brushed back several strands of his long, tousled hair to get at the four bites on his forehead and thought irrelevantly that he needed a haircut. The straight ebony hair hung down to his shoulders in the Saxon style, but was much too long.
She was almost done. Thank God!
“You have several bites in your mustache. Mayhap you should shave it off in order to get the stingers out.”
“Why is your skin so smooth?”
It took several moments for Eirik’s words to register. She realized then that his eyes—brilliant blue, like glacial ice—were wide open, and that he had been watching her closely. At close range.