Sandra Hill - [Vikings I 03] (17 page)

“Vile business?” he asked incredulously. “That is the first time I have heard any woman refer to coupling with me as ‘vile business.’ You insult me, my lady.”

“Oh, I am sure lustful play is not distasteful for some females, but I—”

“Eadyth, did you not enjoy making love with Steven?”

“Enjoy? What was there to enjoy—betwixt the blood and the pain?”

“But after you lost your maidenhead, did Steven not give you pleasure the other times?”

“Other times? Are you daft? Why would I participate in
such an odious act more than once?”

Eirik smiled then, and shook his head in wonderment. “I thought—”

“You thought I had developed round heels and was spreading my thighs like a dockside trollop?” she said with disgust. “Oh, you are just like all men, especially the lecherous ones who approached me as fair game with their indecent proposals after John’s birth.” She glared at him hostilely, but he continued to grin like an idiot. “Well, leastways, I will only have to do it this one more time, and be done with it.”

Eirik shook his head with amazement. Supremely informed in some areas, Eadyth was totally naive in others. He could not wait to hear what she said next. Truly, he was enjoying this new wife of his more and more.

“Wha…what?” Eadyth asked suspiciously.

Eirik brushed his index finger back and forth over his upper lip, watching her closely, trying to imagine just how young and comely she really was under those voluminous garments and the ridiculous scowling wrinkles.

“I find I have grown fond of children now that John and Larise and Godric are about so much,” he said softly. “I have been thinking that mayhap I would like to have another child, perchance a son.”

In truth, it was the first time the thought had entered his head. Once the newness of the idea wore off, however, he found he was not so averse to having another babe. After Elizabeth’s death and his determination never to remarry, he had grown used to the idea that he would never father legitimate children. And he had missed Larise and Emma sorely. Now that Larise was back at Ravenshire, he determined to bring Emma back, as well.

“A babe?” Eadyth inhaled sharply in surprise. Then, she, too, seemed to consider the idea’s merit. “After Steven’s betrayal, I had grown accustomed to the idea of bearing no more children. It is a tempting prospect, but…” Cautiously, she asked, “How many times do you think it would take? I quickened after only one time afore.”

Eirik smothered a chuckle at her apparent distaste for the bedding, but her obvious yearning for another child. “’Tis hard to say,” he replied, struggling to remain straight-faced. “The seed may not take so quickly at your advanced age.” He barely stifled a laugh before continuing, “For some, once is enough. For others, it takes fifty or sixty tries, or more.”

“Fifty?” she squeaked out, clearly horrified at such a repulsive prospect.

Eirik slanted a look of irritation her way when her body shuddered involuntarily with revulsion.

“Well, I am sure you are just as repulsed at the prospect of bedding an aged woman as I am by the prospect of bedding yo…anyman.”

“If the bedchamber is dark enough, I think I will be able to perform,” Eirik commented dryly. “I can pretend the wrinkles on your face are smile lines. And I could fantasize that the legs wrapped ’round my waist are firm and well-curved, not bony and knob-kneed.”

Eadyth gasped at his insulting, intimate words, but he just went on as if he did not sense her embarrassment. “Mayhap you could even pretend an enthusiasm for the bedding if my manhood needs any prodding to action. Do you think you could moan passionately on the odd occasion?”

Eadyth’s mouth dropped open in amazement at his vulgarity. “Oh, you truly are a loathsome lout.”

“Now, now, Eadyth. No need for shyness betwixt husband and wife. If you do not know how to make passionate love sounds, I can teach you.” Then, in a falsely feminine voice, he moaned, “Oh, oh, yes, ah, that feels so-o-o good.”

Eadyth stood indignantly, casting a look of horror at Wilfrid who chortled with laughter. Eirik had forgotten his seneschal was still there, hearing all his provoking words. He winked conspiratorially at his friend.

“How dare you speak thus to me?”

“Sit down, Eadyth,” Eirik said, elbowing Wilfrid to behave himself. “I was merely making a jest.”

“I am not laughing.”

“Mayhap you should. It might loosen your stiff countenance. Most times you look like you have a pike up your arse.”

Wilfrid chortled gleefully, but flame-hot anger turned Eadyth’s face blood red, even through the ashes. She looked as if she would love to throttle him with her bare hands.

“You filthy-mouthed, wicked man!”

Eirik shrugged. “And you are a carping crone, my lady wife. Mayhap we make a good pair.”

“Bloody beast!”

“Dour dowd!”

“Lecherous lackwit!”

“Shrill shrew!”

“Odious oaf!”

“Wench!”

“Wretch!”

Eirik smiled widely, enjoying their exchange and her anger to the fullest. He grabbed her arm, pulling her forcibly back to her seat.

Visibly fighting to control her roiling temper, Eadyth finally managed to speak in a level tone of voice, “I do not deserve to be treated in such a crude manner.”

“Do you not? Ah, well, then I must be sorry, I suppose.” He knew he did not look one bit apologetic. Eadyth turned to Wilfrid, glaring her distaste at his continuing mirth. Wilfrid had the grace to duck his head sheepishly.

“Here, wife. Methinks you could use a cup of your own mead.”

Eirik reached in front of her for the tankard on her other side, accidentally brushing her left breast with his hand in the process. His eyes shot wide in response to the sensuous feeling it invoked. Testing, he surreptitiously repeated the stroke when bringing the tankard back in front of him.

He felt Eadyth’s nipple peak against the hairs of his forearm, and a red-hot spear of sensation shot to his fingertips, which yearned to examine the shape and texture of her firm breasts. He licked his suddenly dry lips and tried to ignore
the hardening evidence of his arousal beneath the constraint of his tight braies.

And he noted that Eadyth’s body reacted involuntarily to his touch, as well, in a way she obviously could not comprehend. She stared at him in confusion before crossing her arms across her nipples, which were clearly outlined against the thin fabric of her gunna.

Despite Eirik’s deplorable behavior, despite her aversion to the act men and women performed together, did her body ache for his caress? Was her blood thickening? Did her limbs grow heavy with longing?

“You are a perverted man,” Eadyth exclaimed, jarring him from his sensuous reverie. “Do not mistake me for some lackwit maid who will spread her thighs for a mere whiff of your man scent.”

“Ma…man scent?” Eirik sputtered out.

“Do not think you can bewitch me with your unholy ways.”

“’Tis naught unholy about the coupling betwixt a husband and wife.”

Eadyth snorted in a very unfeminine fashion. “Go thee off to Jorvik and ease yourself on your mistress, but leave me alone.”

Eirik smiled, realizing his new wife was finding it hard to resist his considerable charms. She would completely lose her sanctimonious self-control if he had any say in the matter.

She stood, preparing to leave the dais.

“Did you suckle your baby?”

“What did you say?” Eadyth asked, plopping back into her chair. Then she noticed, with consternation, that he was staring at her breasts.

Eirik loved it.

She folded her arms again, glaring violet fire at him.

“Did you suckle John as a babe?”

“Why?” she choked out through deliciously soft lips.

Eirik shrugged, finding it harder and harder to hold on to his anger in the face of her seductive allure. “I just wondered
if your nipples were still pink, or a dusky rose as some women’s are wont to be after bearing a child. And—”

“Argh! You are truly loathsome.” Eadyth jumped to her feet, scowling equally at Eirik and Wilfrid, who both chortled gleefully at finally breaking the shell of her haughty composure. This time she would not allow Eirik to pull her back into her seat. The tune of their laughter followed her as she stomped down the dais steps and through the great hall.

Eirik realized that Tykir had been right about the sway of her hips. His eyes followed her form until she started to climb the stairway to the second floor and her bedchamber.

Several hours later, when Eirik entered the dark bedchamber, he lit a candle, then chuckled aloud when he looked toward the bed. His recalcitrant wife was lying under the bed linens, no doubt sweltering in the May heat. She hugged the edge of the bed frame, pretending to be asleep.

Eirik grinned.

First, he pissed noisily in a chamber pot behind a screen at the side of the room, certain that this intimate aspect of married life would annoy his prickly wife. After washing his face and arms in a bowl of water, he removed all of his garments and slipped naked into the huge bed which dominated the center of the room.

He slid a bare leg over to Eadyth’s side of the bed, nudging her with his big toe. She jerked and almost fell off the bed. He smiled to himself, then exclaimed, “By the Faith, Eadyth! Why are you wearing so many garments?”

“I got a chill,” her weak, muffled voice said from beneath the bed covers now pulled up to her nose.

“Show me yer legs,” another muffled voice, a mite more squawkish than Eadyth’s, called out from the corner where a dark fabric had been thrown over its cage. Then, “Would ye like to see me arse?”

Eadyth groaned and muttered something about making parrot porridge.

Eirik shook his head in wonder at the comedic turn his
somber life had taken of late. Then he grimaced with self-disdain when he remembered that he was the target of the biggest jest of all—his lady wife’s grand charade.

“Take the damn shroud off, Eadyth. You will make the bed too hot for me to sleep with your body heat.”

She grumbled something under her breath, and Eirik could have sworn he heard Abdul snicker.

“At least, snuff the candle. ’Tis immodest,” she demanded shrilly. When he did not immediately do her bidding, she turned in chagrin, no doubt intending to land him a good clout to the head. She inhaled sharply when she saw his nude body reclining indolently alongside her, with hands folded behind his head. Quickly, she turned her face away in embarrassment.

“Ah, well, I can understand a bride’s shyness with a new husband,” he said in a voice oozing with solicitude before rising to do her bidding. When the room was in total darkness, he returned to the bed, realizing that Eadyth had removed her gown in record time and was naked but already covered once again by the bed linens.

Oh, Eadyth, you are sadly mistaken if you think you can hide from me. You are going to pay for your deceit. In good time. In my own way.

She lay on her side with her back to him, stiff as a cold poker. Slowly, he slid his leg closer to hers, testing her reaction. At just the slightest caress of his furred leg against her smoother calf, she jolted. Eirik felt a jolt, as well, but his was of raw desire shooting up his leg and ricocheting to all the important sensual spots on his body—especially those centered in his aching staff.

Suddenly, he wished he had not snuffed the candle. He would like to better see this new wife of his. And that long, curly hair he had barely glimpsed this afternoon. How would it look spread out against the white bed linens?

Eirik reached blindly toward the vicinity of her pillow but felt no strands of silky hair. Feeling his way closer, he eventually found her head, but the wily witch had braided her hair
and wound it into a tight coronet around her head. And even worse, it was covered with a thick coating of grease. He sniffed his fingers.
Lard. So, that is why her silvery-blonde hair appears to be gray with age. Eadyth has gone to much trouble to dupe me. Why?

Suddenly, Eadyth shoved his hands away with a sound of disgust and sat up in the bed, making sure the linens were pulled up, hiding her breasts from his scrutiny. Not that he could see them in the dimness anyway.

“Listen, I do not believe in delaying the inevitable, no matter how distasteful. I have much to do on the morrow. ’Tis time to gather honey from some of my hives. Bertha and I intend to strain it all and put it in containers for market. Let us get this…this bedding over with so that I can get some sleep.”

“Huh?”

“Just do…it.”

Good Lord! The shrew thinks she can “manage” the coupling betwixt man and wife, as well.

He heard a rustling of cloth and moved closer to see what she was about. By the moonlight coming through the two arrow slits in the near wall, he could see, just barely, that his dutiful wife was lying on her back, arms frozen stiff at her sides, eyes squeezed shut and her legs spread wide like some sacrificial victim. And she was bare-arsed naked!

Despite the lack of sensuality in Eadyth’s martyr-like pose, Eirik felt his heartbeat accelerate. His fingertips yearned to examine all the mysterious places that his wife had been hiding so long. His lips ached to shape her finely defined lips with his kisses. His tongue thirsted for the suckling of her mouth and for the taste of her supple skin, and, oh, Lord, even the nectar between her legs.

And his staff! His rock-hard staff wanted nothing more than to plunge deep into her virgin-like body and be caressed by the inner folds of her femininity.

Eirik inhaled deeply to slow the raging fire that threatened to consume him, then knelt between her legs. The only sounds
in the room were his heavy breathing and the occasional flutter of Abdul’s wings as he shifted in sleep. Eadyth appeared to have stopped breathing altogether.

Placing his hands on each of her widespread ankles, Eirik slowly brushed his fingertips up her calves, trying to learn the shape and texture of her body by touch alone in the near-darkness.

He had no intention of consummating their marriage tonight, not until he was absolutely certain of her motives in deceiving him. But he could still enjoy teasing her, though he was beginning to suspect that he might not emerge from the night’s play unscathed.