Knights of de Ware 01 - My Champion (39 page)

“Harold,” Duncan said, “please accompany them to their quarters.” Then he added under his breath, “And tonight, keep a dagger close at hand.”

“Aye, m’lord. Where will ye bed down?”

Linet stiffened. She wondered just how presumptuous the beggar would be. Would he dare to demand her father’s chamber? The chamber that lay but a thin plaster wall from her own?

“I’ll sleep here by the fire,” he decided.

She should have been relieved. He obviously didn’t intend to compromise her under her own roof. But for some curious reason, she felt a twinge of disappointment.

“Very good, m’lord,” Harold replied. “I’ll bring ye a pallet.”

Maeve and Kate began clearing the remnants of supper from the table while Margaret fussed over a cauldron hung over the fire.

“Sir Duncan’s bath water is ready, m’lady,” she announced with relish.

Horror blossomed in Linet’s eyes. Duncan’s smile broadened. It was considered, of course, an irrefutable honor for the lady of the household to bathe visiting nobles.

In her solar, Lady Alyce tapped the rolled parchment upon the table with a great deal of satisfaction, making the candle flame dance merrily upon its perch. This afternoon a boy from the village had brought word of Duncan’s safe return and El Gallo’s demise. And less than an hour later, the parchment bearing King Edward’s seal had arrived.

The king had approved the match between Linet de Montfort and Duncan. Whether it was Lady Alyce’s flattering entreaty or her surrender of Holden to Edward’s cause that convinced him, she didn’t know and didn’t care. The two lovers—and if she knew Duncan, they were lovers by now—could be wed with the blessing of the king.

Her eyes gleamed as she imagined what a handsome couple they’d make, and what beautiful children,
her
grandchildren, children dressed, she thought wryly, in the most fashionable and fine woolens. Oh, aye, it would be especially delightful having a wool merchant in the family.

She slid a fresh piece of parchment across the table, dipped her quill in the bottle of ink, and began writing up the banquet order for a lavish wedding feast.

Margaret dipped a wrinkled finger into the cauldron of steaming water hung over the fire. “Do tell us, m’lord, how the two of ye came to meet at the fair.”

Linet stiffened as the beggar stretched his arm out possessively across the back of the bench he shared with Linet.

“It was love at first sight,” he confessed.

Maeve and Kate sighed. Linet drowned her irritation with a generous swig of wine.

“Aye,” he continued, toying with the end of Linet’s waist-length braid, “she took one look at me and said she couldn’t live without me.” He shrugged. “What else could I do but comply with her wishes?”

Linet choked on the wine.

“Are you all right, my love?” Duncan asked, patting her on the back a few times.

She longed to throttle him.

Margaret clapped her hands together suddenly. “Sir Duncan de Ware! Why, ye must be related to Lord James de Ware himself!”

“Aye,” he replied without embellishing the fact. “Are you certain you’re well, Linet?”

“I’m fine,” she managed to choke out.

“Well, then,” Margaret said, actually giving the beggar a little wink, “I’ll gather the linens. Then, m’lady, ye may have the honor of bathin’ Sir Duncan.”

“I’m sure Sir Duncan can—”

“Haul in the buckets of rinse water, of course,” he finished smoothly, laying his napkin down upon the table.

Margaret screwed up her wizened face. “Did ye say how ye’re related to Lord James?”

Linet held her breath.

“We’re kin,” he said with an evasive smile, downing the last of his drink and handing the cup to Kate. “This wine is excellent, Margaret. I commend you on your choice. My own steward could not have selected better.”

Margaret blushed with pride, effectively distracted.

“Let me do that,” he offered as Kate and Maeve began to dismantle the trestle table. “You two get some sleep. Young hearts need time to dream.”

The girls sighed dreamily and scurried off.

Linet sat stunned. Curse his arrogant hide! It was enough that she’d accepted him as a peasant, that she’d sworn her love for him despite his lack of lineage. But for him to put on the airs of a blue-blooded noble… He’d certainly outdone himself with this guise. And now he’d made accomplices of her servants. It annoyed her beyond words that everyone was so gullible to his charms. No doubt Duncan was enjoying himself immensely with her maids fawning all over him.

Dear Lord, now
she
was calling him Duncan.

“I’ll prepare yer room, m’lady,” Margaret said with a curtsey.

When everyone else was gone, Linet finally found her voice. She rose and wheeled on the beggar. “You may bathe yourself!” she hissed.

“I thought you’d say that.”

“Duncan de Ware indeed! I know what you are now.” She poked him in the chest. “You’re a player, aren’t you?”

He grinned that disarming, lopsided grin of his, but Linet held firm.

“Don’t try to deny it. I’ve discovered your secret.”

He leaned back against the cupboard and crossed his arms, apparently eager to hear her conclusions.

“You had me puzzled for a while, I admit, with your lack of skills and your abundance of coin,” she told him frankly, “but I haven’t survived in the wool merchant’s trade without a nose for this sort of thing.”

He sighed dramatically. “Alas, you’ve found me out. Where did I go astray?”

Linet smiled smugly. “It was in your choice of roles,
my lord
. If you were going to pretend to the nobility, you should have chosen a fictional title, not one known in these parts.”

“Margaret believed me. Harold believed me.” He blinked. “Gwen and Elise and Maeve and Kate—”

“Pah! They wouldn’t know a king from a kitchen boy. They’re—”

“Mere servants? Of inferior intellect?”

Linet pursed her lips. It sounded so harsh when he put it like that. “They simply don’t understand these things. But
I
…”

“You can tell the difference,” the beggar said with a nod, digesting this information.

“Of course.”

“Well then, I hope I can rely on your guidance concerning my performance. You’ll tell me if you spot any grave blunders?”

“You can rest assured,” Linet threatened with a triumphant smile. “And now I’m off to bed.”

Duncan watched her as she ascended the stairs, her hips swinging victoriously. “Margaret won’t approve, you know,” he called after her.

“Approve of what?”

“Your declining the privilege of bathing me.”

Linet cursed him with her eyes. “The devil take Margaret.”

Duncan chuckled and shook his head as Linet disappeared behind her chamber door. He went outside to fill the pair of buckets at the well, working quietly, alert always for stray sounds that might indicate an intruder. Then he hauled them inside.

The tub, cached in a corner of the buttery, was large and well-padded with linen. As he lugged the heavy wooden thing across the flagstones, he could hear the dissonance of feminine argument coming from above. He poured the cauldron of simmering water into the tub, tempering it with a bucket of the cold, and still the conflict continued.

The angry voices were muffled by Linet’s door. After several minutes of serious battle, the victor emerged. Margaret strutted out of the chamber and down the stairs, toting a stoppered bottle, a ball of soap, a stack of linen towels, and a deep blue velvet robe, which she pressed into his hands.

“There ye are, m’lord,” she said sweetly. “The lady of the house will be down shortly to do her duty.”

Duncan stifled a grin. “Thank you, Margaret.”

“Well, then, if ye’ll not be needin’ me, I’ll go to my bed now, clean things up in the mornin’.”

“Fine.”

“Ye’re certain ye won’t be needin’ anythin’ else? I won’t be peepin’ my head out again,” she said with a meaningful wink. “And, well, I wouldn’t wake up to the Crack of Doom.”

Nonplussed by the wily old maid’s frankness, he watched her bustle upstairs and into Linet’s chamber. Shortly afterward, Linet boiled out of the room, looking as if she’d like to poison someone. Duncan wondered what vile threat Margaret had made to ensure her mistress’s cooperation.

Linet ground her teeth and swore for the hundredth time that she’d turn Margaret out of the house—no matter that the old woman had been in her father’s employ for over twenty years. She stomped down the stairs in her velvet slippers and linen underdress, tossing her unbound hair over her shoulder. She’d already half undressed for bed by the time Margaret won the battle. She saw no reason to ruin a perfectly good surcoat with the splashes of a careless bather. So she hadn’t bothered to dress again.

It was an outrage, this bathing of strangers, she thought as she stormed down the steps—an archaic, stupid practice that her father had never once required of her. And now she was going to be performing the dubious
honor
for a commoner.

She hit the bottom step and froze. The tub was already brimming with steamy water. A large linen towel was slung over the beggar’s shoulder, and he was whistling. While she watched, he unstoppered the bottle of sweet woodruff, sniffed at it, and then dumped its entire contents into the tub.

She gasped. Woodruff petals weren’t cheap. She rushed forward and grabbed the bottle from him. Dear God, she thought, this wasn’t going to work. She still loved him, aye, and still desired to be his wife, but this deception in her own household was proving too much of a strain for her.

“Tomorrow,” she told him in a harried voice, “I’m afraid we must find you other lodging.”

“Must we?” He seemed amused.

“You deceived my servants. When they discover you’re not Sir Duncan de Ware—“

“And how will they discover that?”

She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “You can’t go on pretending to be a nobleman when—”

“My performance is flawed?” He frowned in concern.

She groaned. “Your performance is… is…”

“Not up to the standard of nobility?” he asked bleakly.

“Nay,” she replied, confused. “I mean, aye, but—”

“But your servants may suspect,” he ventured.

“Nay, it’s not that at all,” she answered, scowling. “They’re convinced. They’re
thoroughly
convinced.”

“Ah. I think I see,” he said brightly. “Are you afraid that
you
may give me away, not having the experience I have as a player?”

Linet looked at him as if he’d fallen from the moon. How could anyone so misunderstand her?

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you,” he declared enthusiastically. “I’ve seen dozens of baths given to nobles. I shall be happy to instruct you.”

Linet couldn’t for the life of her figure out how the beggar goaded her into it, but not a quarter of an hour later, his clothing was draped over the screen, and she was wringing out a linen cloth, sponging his back for him as if he were the king himself.

After she ran out of curses to whisper under her breath, she ladled water up over his shoulders at his behest, gritting her teeth and forcing herself to ignore both his lordly air and what lay beneath the surface of the water.

As he leaned forward so she could wash his back, it was difficult not to notice the muscled contours of his body. When his arms flexed, they seemed as thick and strong as oak limbs. She remembered how those arms felt in her grasp, how her hand couldn’t even reach halfway around the bulging muscle there.

Suddenly her knees felt weak, and her heart began to thump erratically. She took a deep breath to clear her mind and lathered the soap into Duncan’s thick hair. She scrubbed vigorously, hoping to dispel her wayward thoughts, muttering all the while about what a spoiled child he was.

The beggar sighed elegantly. “I may reconsider your marriage proposal, Linet. I could grow accustomed to having a bath such as this every night.”

Whether it was his insufferable arrogance or the way her body was playing traitor to her, Linet didn’t know. But she’d had enough. Before she could even think about what she was doing, she reached for one of the buckets of cold water and poured it over Duncan’s lathered head.

He inhaled sharply. Linet dropped the bucket with a loud crash and backed away in disbelief at what she’d done. The beggar shivered once and shook his head like a wolf coming from the stream. Then he turned and fixed her with eyes that took on a lupine gleam.

“Margaret,” Linet mouthed silently, then prepared to scream the word.

His gaze was unwavering. “Do you really want Margaret to know what you just did to Sir Duncan de Ware?”

“It was…an accident.”

He smirked slowly at her. “Aye, well, one never knows what accidents may occur in the bath, does one?”

With that, he rose up out of the tub in all his naked glory, and for one moment, the only sound in the room was the ominous dripping of water as it rolled slowly off his body and back into the bath.

The beggar took one step from the tub. Linet cowered back, bumping the screen. He towered over her, his body strong and dark and blatantly male. He took a second step just in time to grab her upper arm, preventing her from toppling the screen completely over.

She squirmed in his grasp, unable to do much more than spit quiet curses at him and pry at his fingers with her other hand. His head lowered to hers, and she leaned away from the wicked glint in his eyes. With his free hand, he scooped up the linen rag from the tub, dipped it into a cold bucket, and brought it near. Her eyes widened as she saw what he meant to do.

He let it drip in a tiny, icy stream down the neckline of her kirtle. She squealed. Then he squeezed his fist, and water gushed onto her bosom, spilling down over her breasts. She jolted with the shock of both the chill and what he’d dared.

He clucked his tongue. “Another accident,” he murmured, laying the rag across a chair and lowering his gaze languorously to the front of her gown.