“Why?” she asked, her forehead furrowing with puzzlement.
“So you would not tempt me into consummating our marriage ’til…” Eirik’s words trailed off as he saw the fury boiling in her luminous violet eyes. Perchance he had revealed too much too soon. Some women were quick to temper and needed to be “handled” carefully. In his anger, he had forgotten to employ tact.
“Tempt you? Tempt you?” Eadyth sputtered. Then that iron-willed chin of hers raised to the heavens and she turned the tables on him. Raising two fistfuls of mud that he had not seen her gather, she hurled them into his face. Momentarily blinded, he sat back on his haunches and released her, trying to wipe the oozing mud from his eyes. When he could finally see again, Eadyth stood before him, hands on hips, glaring at him with affront. “You truly are an arrogant bastard.”
“I do not like your choice of words, wife, nor your tone.” Realizing they still had an audience, Eirik barked out to all the spectators at the kitchen door, “Depart! All of you. I would be alone with my lady wife.”
Britta snickered and said something about them looking like two sows in a sty. Bertha laughed lasciviously and made an odd remark about even the flattest breasts appearing to wobble when covered with mud. Sigurd and Wilfrid merely chuckled.
When they were finally alone and stood facing each other, panting for breath, Eadyth reproached him, “You set spies on me even when I gave my word that I was true. You believed I conspired with your most hated enemy—my most hated enemy. And you planned to bed another woman just to avoid the odious prospect of my touch.”
“Odious?” he choked out. “My lady, you are suffering from delusions if you cannot see that I crave your body… and your touch.”
“You do?” The pleasure that flickered momentarily on her face disappeared as she realized the implications of his words. “Are you saying that you deliberately staged that scene in your bedcharnber with the Moorish woman?”
“I repeat, it was a ruse. I did not intend to couple with the maid. She is married to one of my men.”
“How deceitful of you!”
He raised a brow mockingly.
Eadyth blinked to keep the tears welling in her violet eyes from overflowing.
He felt a momentary twinge of guilt. “I had to know for sure,” he said defensively.
“Why could you not ask me? I would have told you the truth.”
“Would you?” he asked softly.
He knew.
In that moment, Eadyth saw the light of recognition in Eirik’s pale blue eyes, and she realized that he knew of her masquerade. Suddenly, she understood his odd behavior these past few days.
“How long?” she asked, backing away defensively. “How long have you known?”
He shrugged. “Long enough.”
“Are you… angry with me?”
He nodded, taking one step closer to her.
She took one step backward.
“Well, I am angry with you, too.”
“Oh?” He took one more step.
This time, she took two steps backward. “You spied on me.”
“With good reason.”
“Mayhap I had good reason for my… my innocent little harmless masquerade.”
Eirik grinned at her choice of words, and Eadyth realized that he taken two more steps closer to her while she talked. She stepped backward five paces, just to give herself more distance, and he smiled at her in a predatory fashion that she did not like one bit. She felt like a helpless bird being stalked by a wise old cat.
“Mayhap you would like to enlighten me as to your motivations,” he asked, rubbing his muddy upper lip thoughtfully.
“You look ridiculous standing there practically naked, covered with mud,” Eadyth snapped without thinking. Actually, he looked remarkably virile and alarmingly handsome, Eadyth admitted to herself. She would never tell him that, though.
Eirik’s wonderfully clear eyes sparkled mischievously. “Ah, then, ’tis only fair that we should even things up.”
Eadyth’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. She had said he looked ridiculous, standing naked and covered with mud. Looking down, she saw that she, too, was completely covered with mud. That only left…
Her mouth dropped open. He would not!