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“Feelings change. Circumstances change.” Her eyes fell to my work table. “People’s interests in woodworking apparently change.” Her gaze met mine once more. “All I’m saying is, don’t let her leave without telling her how you feel. That wouldn’t be trapping her. By then, she’ll be paid in full. She’ll have a choice. She’ll have power. She can choose you, or not. But give her that choice, Sigwulf. I’m begging you, before we all go mad watching you pine.”
That perhaps scared me more than anything.
That I could give Wynthea the choice – ask her to choose me – and that she wouldn’t.
I ignored Hildfree’s demands, instead growling, “I haven’t been pining.”
She gave a short bark of a laugh.
“If you don’t think you’ve been pining then you truly do not know the meaning of the word,” she chuckled. “Goodnight, Sigwulf.”
She left the room. I glared at the empty doorway.
Then, I got back to work.
Chapter 14
Hildfree
I’d always considered Sigwulf to be among the cleverest men I’d ever known.
I was coming to learn that, at least in some areas, he was rather an idiot.
That dollhouse was the final straw. I knew he cared for Wynthea, knew he wanted her, and badly. But I was now entirely convinced that he was jaw-clenchingly, knee-weakeningly, head-and-heart-poundingly in love with her. I’d known him our entire lives. I’d seen him have dalliances with other women. And I’d never, ever, seen him like this.
Good thing he has friends who know what’s good for him, I thought wickedly, taking the stairs two at a time until I reached the hall that would bring me to Wynthea’s bed chamber.
I knocked on her door, hoping that she was still awake.
A moment later, the door swung open. Wynthea stood before me in a fraying slip of a nightgown. Its thin white cotton was slightly see-through, exposing the dark circles of her nipples and the opaque triangle of her panties beneath.
My wickedness grew, turning to a cackle inside my head.
Absolutely perfect.
“Sigwulf needs your help in the workshop. I believe you’ve been there once – do you remember the way?”
“Oh! Of course. Let me just dress and-”
“No time,” I said hastily. “It’s an emergency. You’ll have to go in that.”
Wicked, wicked, wicked.
He should count his lucky stars that he has such a deliciously wicked friend.
I almost wished I could spy on them to see Sigwulf’s reaction to his human love in her barely-there nightgown. To see my wicked work come to fruition. But I had a feeling the situation was very likely to turn pornographic, and quickly, too. Since I wasn’t interested in seeing anyone rutting and heaving about beyond my own wife, I decided to remain where I was as Wynthea ran down the hall and eventually disappeared.
Chapter 15
Wynthea
I reached the workshop, panting, wondering what could have caused such an emergency that required me to run here in my nightgown. It was foolish, I realized, to have been so worried when I saw Sigwulf perfectly well and calm, working on something at a table. Part of the reason I’d run here so fast was because I’d worried that he’d been in some kind of trouble. But then why would Hildfree have left him and come to fetch you?
I really had no idea why Hildfree had come to fetch me at all. I saw no evidence of the emergency she had mentioned.
Embarrassment heating my face, I turned to go, hoping not to have been noticed.
My shoes – the new shoes, damn it – squeaked on the stone as I did so.
