In the midst of trying to shake the limb and answer him and move a little farther out onto the branch, Eadyth lost her balance and began to fall. Reflexively, Eirik jumped onto the divided tree trunk and began to climb in hopes of rescuing the foolish woman. Eadyth managed to regain her balance, but in the process the hem of her robe and full-length veil got caught on a branch and pulled upward over one leg. At the same time, her head rail fell off, and a cascade of curly blonde hair escaped its confinement.
Curly!
Blonde!
His mouth dropped open in amazement as he gaped at his wife’s exceedingly long leg exposed from trim, bare ankle, to slender calf to dimpled knee, all the way up to the top of her marvelously shaped thigh. And one fact became clear in that moment before Eadyth adjusted her clothing.
His wife was not old, or uncomely.
Bloody Hell! In one explosive instant, all the pieces of the puzzle came together in Eirik’s mind.
He noted the smoothness of his wife’s leg, unpuckered with age. Gentle curves and lean, youthful muscles molded her calves and thighs into a beautiful sculpture of visual delight. No bones protruded as he would have expected in an aging crone. Aging crone? Hah! The deceitful witch was younger than he, certainly no more than twenty-five.
Quickly, Eirik backed down from the tree and stepped away a short distance, unwilling just then to let Eadyth realize that her masquerade was over. Thoughtfully, he rubbed his upper lip, forgetting that he had shaved his mustache the day before to alleviate the itching bee stings. His disoriented mind tried to assimilate the implications of his discovery.
“Eirik, are you still there?” she asked in a nervous voice.
“Yea, but I stepped away some distance to avoid your bloody bees,” he lied.
He heard a rustling noise and knew she was arranging her garments. To continue her disguise. Damn her!
He smacked himself on the side of the head, suddenly understanding so many things: how she could have a child so young, why Steven would have been attracted to her in the first place. He squinted up at Eadyth, who had finally loosened the bees and was shouting instructions to her assistants on the ground. The Silver Jewel of Northumbria! The title referred to her hair, of course—not an aging gray under all that grease, as he had assumed, but that rare shade of silver blonde.
Eirik was not amused.
In fact, when he recalled his brother Tykir’s words to him at the wedding banquet about a secret he and Eadyth shared, he realized that his brother had known of Eadyth’s deceit. Yea, deceit. And Tykir had laughingly said he might have a skald put this secret into a saga. Eirik’s temper rose another notch. If his brother dared, he might just wring his frivolous neck and save King Edmund the trouble.
And worse, Eirik suspected that the snickers and soft whispers he had overheard the last few days amongst his men meant they knew about Eadyth, as well. No doubt, they all laughed behind his back at Eadyth’s grand jest, and his dim vision. He gritted his teeth angrily.
Eadyth dropped lithely to the ground and closed the lid on the damned bee box. Eirik started forward, but then he stopped himself. Nay, he needed more time to understand Eadyth’s motives. And to think of the best possible punishment for this deceitful witch of a wife.
One thing was certain. She would regret the day she ever entered Ravenshire. But not before he peeled away the layers of her disguise and discovered exactly what he had in this mysterious wife of his. And not before he brought her to heel.
Eirik smiled with grim anticipation.
Chapter Ten
“Bloody Hell! Would you look at the way she walks,” Eirik commented to Wilfrid as they watched Eadyth deliberately stoop her shoulders and limp a bit as she made her way through the hall toward the dais that evening.
Eirik had to restrain himself from leaping over the table and strangling her bony neck. No, not bony, more like gracefully slender, he reminded himself with self-derision.