“Do you? When yestereve you grumbled because you had lost your soft bed?”
“I did not grumble!” Kristen snapped.
“Oh, ho, what has you in such a grouch?”
That did not deserve an answer. “Why did he come after me, Eda? I was not gone so long.”
To that Eda shrugged. “He saw Uland come in and make his rounds with some story that had him excited. Milord sent Edrea to find out what. The fool boy thought it amazing that you should be greeted by those Vikings of yours like a long-lost sister, and that you would probably not have a bone uncrushed after being passed around and hugged by all those giants.”
“Thatmade him come after me?”
“Nay, he went on to eat. But I watched him.” Eda chuckled here. “And he watched the door, waiting for your return. I suppose at last he decided youweregone too long.”
And Kristen supposed that at that moment, Royce was not willing to let the King see his anger. But she had little doubt that she would feel it later. He would not let this incident pass unpunished, as he had her attempted escape.
She glanced his way, but could not see him, with Alden sitting this side of him and blocking him from her view. Alfred was on Royce’s other side, and she could not see the King, either, from where she sat.
Edrea came next to Kristen, setting down a wooden tray on the table. All that remained on it were a few bread crumbs.
“They liked it, you know, your bread,” Edrea said to her. “Milord even made comment on it, asking who had made it.”
“Did you tell him?”
“Nay, I feared half the lords would spit it out, fearing you might be poisoning them.”
Edrea’s dark-brown eyes were twinkling. She had made a joke. Kristen could hardly believe it, let alone that the girl was actually talking to her of her own accord.
“The time to have told them would have been after they had eaten it,” Kristen rejoined.
Edrea laughed outright now. “Uland was right. You are not so strange. Eda had said so, too, but then, Eda had taken a liking to you.Thatwas strange.”
Kristen grinned despite her bad humor. “’Tis hard to know it, when the old woman is such a harridan.” Her voice rose at the end so Eda would hear.
This got a snort from Eda, and an answering grin from Edrea. “Aye, Eda can be deceptive in her moods. Mayhap the Vikings are not so fearsome, either.”
“His name is Bjarni,” Kristen offered.
“Who?”
“The one who likes you.”
The poor girl did not know how to hide her pleasure. Her pretty face lit up in wonder. “Did he say so?”
Kristen was not exactly in the mood to further Bjarni’s and the others’ cause at the moment, but at least talking to the girl was distracting. “He frets because he cannot tell you so himself. He is having Thorolf teach him your words, but do not be surprised when you hear them if you cannot understand, for Thorolf does not know your tongue too well himself.”
For the next hour Edrea would not stop asking questions about the young Viking, and Kristen painted a glowing picture that would no doubt lead to disappointment in the end, for Bjarni was not the paragon of virtue she made him out to be. He was a man to be enjoyed, not taken seriously. But if Edrea was foolish enough to believe anything he would tell her in order to enlist her aid in an escape, then Kristen could not pity her.
Her friends and their freedom came before the feelings of one Saxon girl. If Kristen could get to Lyman and that key, she would do it herself. But already she was to be installed back in the lord’s chamber.
“You sit there doing nary a bit of work,” Eda came over to grumble at Kristen when Edrea was called away to refill some ale horns. “You might as well go on to bed, so you can have an early start on the morrow. Lady Darrelle has herself requested more of your nut bread. She thinks ’tis a recipe I have kept to myself all these years.”
“And of course you let her think so.”
“Of course.” Eda chuckled. “And what were you and Edrea bending heads about?”
“She likes one of the prisoners.”
This brought a sharply raised brow. “I hope you told her naught could come of that.”
