Too stunned to rebuke him, Eadyth lingered even after he had gone to his bedchamber to bathe. Did married couples do such perverted things? It was perverted, was it not?
* * *
Eirik lay soaking his weary muscles in the huge wooden tub long after the water had cooled. Blessed Christ! He wished he could just meet Steven face to face and end his evil misdeeds. Surely God would not condemn him for such. Surely the world would thank him for it.
And Eadyth? What of his lying wife? Should he allow her to confess her duplicity, as she so obviously chafed to do now? Or should he continue his own deceit a short while longer in hopes of discovering her true motives?
Eirik did not doubt that she was surprised and sorely grieved by Steven’s burning her bees today. Unless…
In some ways, it was too convenient that Eadyth had given him a goodly number of her precious stock for dowry and that she had just happened to remove them from Hawks’ Lair before the fire. The puzzle nagged at Eirik and he saw no ready answers. But he was determined to clear up the mystery. And soon.
While he lay in the tub, he sent Wilfrid to fetch Sigurd. His trusted friend from the Norse lands listened carefully to his instructions. Eirik instructed Sigurd to go to Hawks’ Lair, the surrounding villages, even Jorvik, and learn everything he could about Eadyth and her associations with Steven of Gravely over the past years. If anyone could discover whether Eadyth was in collusion with Steven, it was his crafty retainer. He directed Sigurd to return as soon as possible.
Aside from the danger, Eirik had another reason for wanting an answer with all haste. Of a sudden, he ached to consummate this marriage with his wedded wife. He had not bedded a woman for many, many sennights, and his body craved satisfaction between a woman’s thighs. But not just any woman, he realized with chagrin. He wanted to make love with the feisty Eadyth. Who would have ever believed it possible that The Raven, infamous for his woman-luck, lusted after his own true wife? Not the drab sparrow she pretended to be, but the sleek bird he suspected he would find under all her dowdy raiment.
Throughout the day Eirik kept remembering her nude body in his bed the night before, wondering exactly how she would look without the ashes and drab garments, with the grease washed from her hair. Under his body in the throes of passion.
Like a blind man the night before, he had begun to learn the womanly shape of her. Beneath that cold facade she liked to portray, he suspected there lay banked the embers of a hot sensuality, just waiting for the right man to blow them to life.
Could he be that man? Did he want to be?
Hell, yes!
Eirik shook his head in self-derision, then lathered his hair and slid under the water to rinse. When he came up for air, Eadyth stood frozen in the middle of the room carrying a bundle of folded linens. She gawked at him in amazement, as if he were a whale blowing water through its breathing hole.
He used both hands to slick the wet hair back off his face. And stood.
Her jaw dropped like an iron weight.
Eirik barely stifled a grin. “Would you hand me one of those drying cloths?”
Eadyth was staring at a part of his body that liked to be stared at. Very much. He felt an immediate reaction, and his wife’s eyes shot upward in embarrassment.
“What did you say?” she squeaked out.
“When?”
“Just now.”
“Would you hand me one of those cloths in your hands?” he asked with amusement.
“Oh.” She stepped closer, making an obvious attempt to keep her straying eyes above his chest as he stepped out of the tub.
Quickly, she laid the rest of the cloths on a chest and turned to leave.
“Could you dry my back?” he asked, trying to delay her departure.
He thought he heard a choking sound.
“Please?”
She returned to his side, practically dragging her feet. Reluctantly, she reached for a cloth and began to dry his back, starting with the shoulders.