Their gazes locked,he said,"I made a mistake."
"Confusing your wife with a goat?"
What was that he had thought about the difficulty of having a wife who was a truthsayer?
He took a breath,let it out slowly, and sent with it a prayer. "There was a time-a brief time-when I considered you might be guilty."
Truth.
Rycca smiled. She freed her hands, cupped them to his face,and rose on her toes to touch her mouth to his.
"What is that for?" he asked, caught between relief and bewilderment. Likely she would always keep him so off balance and likely he would always be glad of it for truly fortune smiled upon him. A great knot seemed to be untangling in his chest.
"For believing me."
"I only briefly didn't," he repeated.
"No,I mean for believing I am a truthsayer."
"And you know that because-"
She laughed and took his hand again. "Because you are a wise and canny man, Lord Dragon. You could as easily have insisted you never even flirted with the thought that I might be guilty and thereby saved yourself what must surely have been an uneasy moment for a husband."
He was slightly stung but not too much, for her ready forgiveness was as a balm over all else. "Generally speaking, I do tell the truth for its own sake."
"I never thought otherwise. And I would be as truthful with you. Last night, I realized suddenly that I was not afraid. All things considered, that was rather ridiculous but it was how I felt nonetheless."
The knot was definitely gone. Indeed, a great warmth seemd to suffuse him. If a woman who had every reason to fear Vikings could be tied to a punishment post by her own Viking husband and not be afraid, that could mean only one thing.
"You trust me."
"And you trust me."
At that moment, looking down at her, his face held nothing of the mighty warrior and jarl. He looked instead like a boy handed the world. She wanted only to give it to him again and again.
"I would say," Rycca murmured, "that for a rocky beginning, we are managing well enough."
It was an incongruously happy note upon which to discuss a dead man.

Auteur: Josie Litton