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12
HASTINGS LAUGHED AS SHE LEANED OVER HIS BACK, a sponge filled with her lavender soap in her hand. His muscles were deep and hard. She was startled to find that she liked the feel of him, the texture of his flesh. He wasn’t very dirty and she was surprised at that. Surely he had ridden hard many days he had been gone, surely he had not been near too many bathtubs.
“Ah, that is good,” Severin said, leaning back against the edge of the tub, his eyes closed. Though at each of his keeps he had visited, the castellan’s wife or one of the ladies had performed this ritual for him, this was different. The way she touched him was different. He didn’t believe, at this moment, that he had enjoyed a scrubbing more. He wished it were her bare hand rather than the thick sponge.
“You are very big,” she said at last, and her voice was just a bit thin. But then she laughed again. Mayhap that laugh was a bit on the thin side as well, but Severin didn’t care. He turned and grabbed her wrist. “Hastings,” he said. He saw indeed that her laughter was now forced, that her smile looked painful, her eyes a bit wild. She was chewing on her lower lip. This laughing bride of his wasn’t all that certain of herself or the new role she was playing with him.
He thought of Gwent’s awed words about an epiphany, released her wrist, and said, “Kiss me and then leave me else we won’t enjoy MacDear’s capon until tomorrow.”
Her eyes nearly crossed. Then she lightly touched her fingertips to his wet shoulders, leaned down, and kissed his closed mouth, her lips even more closed than his. Sewn together, he thought, but it didn’t matter. He waved her away with the thick sponge.
Hastings closed the door behind her and slumped against it. She drew a deep breath. This was all very strange. Because she had met him with kisses and hugs, he seemed a different man. Could Dame Agnes and Alice be right? All she had to do was laugh and feed him well and kiss him and then he would not force her again? He would go gently with her? He would no longer yell at her or shake her until her head snapped on her neck? She pushed away from the wall and walked quickly down the solar stairs.
She wondered where Trist was. She had missed the marten. She would oversee boiling an egg for him herself.
Severin was wearing the new tunic she’d sewn for him. It was pale blue, soft as Trist’s pelt, and beautifully made. It was too tight across his shoulders.
But he had worn it. To please her. She had left it smoothed out atop the bed and kept her fingers crossed. He had worn it. When she met his eyes, she smiled. Then, before she could lose her courage, she skipped to him, stroked her palms over the wondrous soft wool, and said, “You are magnificent. I am sorry, Severin, but I did not think you were so wide. I will make the next tunic larger.” She measured him with her fingers, making the calculations in her head.
“It is a fine tunic,” he said, and his voice was low and gruff. He looked as if he would say more, but both of them became aware that there was a growing silence in the great hall. Even Edgar the wolfhound, who had been barking his head off just a few moments before chasing one of the little girls about as she waved a ball of wool in his face, was silent, sitting on his haunches, staring toward them.
“I was wondering why you always wore gray.”
“I believe it is because the women who did all the weaving and dyeing at Langthorne only knew how to dye gray. After I left, I suppose it was just a habit and I sought nothing but gray. You believed perhaps it was a superstition for me? Some sort of ritual?”
“Aye, perhaps. I know how to dye beautiful colors, Severin. May I sew you more tunics, each a different color?”
“You may do whatever you wish with my tunics. This one is very soft. I thank you.”
“Everyone is wondering what has happened between us,” Hastings said, and to prove to herself that she knew exactly what she was doing, she thrust her chin in the air and looked him right in his dark blue eyes.
“Shall I tell them that nothing has happened as yet?”
“But it has,” she said, just a bit of desperation seeping into her voice.
“Aye, I much enjoy hearing you laugh. I have never heard you laugh before today.”
“It is not ordinary?”
“Nay,” he said, smiling down at her. Then he rubbed his knuckles lightly over her cheek. “You are so soft,” he said, then leaned down, kissed her lightly. “Softer than my new tunic.” He laughed at her stunned expression and strode to the lord’s high-backed chair.
Trist had wrapped himself around Severin’s wine goblet. He stretched out his arm to pet Trist, feeling the tightness of the material under his arm. Too, he wished the new tunic were more full-cut. He was hard and hurting. He quickly sat down. Trist unwrapped himself and came to rub his whiskers against Severin’s hand.
He stroked the marten’s soft fur until Hastings herself placed his pewter plate in front of him. There was a thick, rich slab of white bread and atop it was a capon, perfectly roasted, with honeyed almonds, peas, cabbage, and onions around it. He had been well fed in his three new keeps, but none could compare to MacDear. He fell to his meal, wanting to eat quickly so he could grab Hastings and haul her to their bedchamber. She wouldn’t fight him tonight. She would smile. She would hold out her arms to him. Just as Anne had. No, he wouldn’t think about Anne, that woman child who had given him so much guilty pleasure that he’d almost swooned with it. No, he should not have felt guilt. Hastings was his wife, nothing more, nothing less.
There was nothing to change here. Except her. Aye, she had changed, and he was pleased. He hoped the changes continued.
He would not rub her nose in the dirt for bending to him. No, he would be magnanimous. He wondered what had happened to turn her from a bold-tongued shrew—who had helped him, he admitted that—into this lovely smiling girl who looked at him as if she were actually enjoying looking at him.
No, he would not muck up this miracle.
His men talked at him, around him, through him, but it made no difference, he merely nodded at them and ate. He knew MacDear’s capon was delicious, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care about anything except shoveling down MacDear’s food and getting to the bottom of that well-shined pewter plate.
The meal had
just in fact well begun when he shoved back his chair and grabbed Hastings’s hand.
Every head in the great hall slewed around to look at them. He felt Hastings grow stiff as the beautiful silver laver that had dents in it. He said out of the side of his mouth, “Ignore them. They have no idea what we are about.” That was more surely the biggest lie he’d told in many a month. “Come, Hastings, I will please you.”
