Page 111 of The Discount Damsel

When the barmaid’s charms go bouncing past?”

Laughing, she stomped the dirty laundry some more and sang the bawdy chorus at the top of her lungs. Her voice petered out after the third downcast as a stinging sensation prickled her skin. She lifted a leg, eyes widening as skin red as Calumbria’s famous Empress tulips emerged from the water.

Contact with the air electrified the sensation, and Millie threw herself out of the tub with a howl. It was the burn of a thousand suns, a skillet full of hot bacon grease, a bonfire’s worth of coals against her skin, a forestful of stinging nettles.

The bedroom door burst open. “Tula!”

Bradley dashed into the bathroom, wildness in his blue eyes. He took one look at her whimpering on the floor with her skirts bunched up to the tops of her thighs and her legs red and blistering, another at the tub full of filthy water. He snatched up the box of detergent, gave it an experimental shake. “Damn it, Tula, how much of this did you use?”

He shucked off his robe and plunged his arm into the tub to pop the drain. Quickly, he rinsed his skin off under the faucet.

“Dirk,” she wailed. “I need Dirk.”

“He’s outside battling one of your Heroes,” Bradley snapped. “You have me, Tula.”

He hissed an exhale through gritted teeth, realizing the tub was draining too slowly from the mass of clothes. With a grunt, Bradley heaved the clot out onto the floor, and the drain eagerly guzzled the caustic water.

By now, Millie was nearly incoherent and blubbering. Bradley cast her a twisted look in between rinsing out the tub. “Hold on, Tula,” he growled.

When it was free of detergent, Bradley bent and slung the princess’s arm around his shoulders. He hoisted her into the tub, ripped the skirt off her, and tossed it into the heap on the floor. She flinched, but she didn’t attempt to cover herself when Bradley knelt and filled up the bath ladle. He sluiced her skin over and over with lukewarm water, occasionally running a hand brusquely down her legs to check for any detergent residue. Her fingernails dug into the cotton undershirt at his shoulders as she fought to maintain her balance. Her feet hurt something fierce, worse than the rest of her.

Suddenly, Bradley sniffed. “Do you smell something burning?”

“Crone’s Crooked Tits! That’ll be the scones.”

“The what?”

“There are scones in the oven.”

The apprentice thrust the bath ladle into her hand and bolted for the kitchen.

Millie collapsed into the tub and continued to rinse herself with the ladle, trying her best not to look at her inflamed skin. She turned the water to its coldest setting and shivered with relief as her legs grew numb. Numb was far better than being eaten alive by a million invisible fire ants.

A few minutes later, when her teeth had begun to chatter, the apprentice returned smelling faintly of charred pastry.

“D-don’t look at m-me,” she told him. Her sodden knickers were nothing but translucent tissue paper now.

He rolled his eyes and smacked off the faucet. “You’re not supposed to use cold water—you could go into shock!”

“B-but it felt s-s-so good.”

“Tula,” he said, exasperated. He flapped his fingers. “C’mon. Out.”

“I-I⁠—”

With a huff, he bent and hauled her out with little regard to whiplash or propriety. With her slung over his shoulder, he grabbed his towel off its hook, slapped it against her ass, and headed into the bedroom. Business-like, he set her down beside the bed, wrapped the towel around her waist, and shoved her back on the mattress. “Pat yourself dry. Don’t rub. I’ll be back in a second.”

Grumbling at his high-handedness, she obeyed as he set the bathroom to rights. Clothes went into the tub to soak, he mopped up the water from the bathroom floor, washed his hands and arms, then rooted around in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink. He returned with a pot of aquamarine-colored glass with a white scallop shell for a lid.

“Now what the hells happened.”

Millie crossed her arms over her chest and looked to the window, finally registering the sounds of battle. “How’s Dirk?”

“Enjoying a pathetically uneven fight in his favor.” He snapped his fingers for her attention. “Don’t change the subject—explain.”

She flung him a look. “I was doing my laundry, obviously.”

“Where did you find that detergent?” The mattress indented as he sat and shifted to face her. With a careful touch, he lifted the scallop-shaped lid.