Wonderful (22 page)

He held out five balls of soap. “Which would you prefer to use?”

“To do what? Heave at you?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “The biggest one, then.”

He leaned forward. “Wash my back with one of them.”

“You have servants to perform such tasks.”

“Would you have me wake them at this time of night after working hard all day just to do what you could do so easily?” He had her and he knew it, but he decided to prick her pride, too. “There was time when a woman took honor in her duties, including bathing a knight.”

She stared at him. He could see her thoughts cross her expression, flashes of panic and anger, curiosity and wounded pride.

Time seemed to stretch out between them the way it did when diplomats were wary and kept their tongues silent.

But just because there was no sound did not mean they did not understand each other. They did.

You push me too far, my lord.

You ask for it, my lady

With a disgusted snort she snatched the cloth from the side of the tub and scoured a soap ball across it until lather was foaming and white and spilt over her hand and onto the stone floor.

“Lean forward,” she snapped, and slapped the cloth on his back with a
smack
!

Solely to irritate her, Merrick casually rested his elbows on his raised knees and bent his head, then moaned as if he were in ecstasy; it did feel good after riding all over Wales hell-bent to find her before she got herself killed or raped or maimed.

She rubbed his back harder and harder.

Her movements were so vigorous that he glanced back at her, wondering if he were the one being maimed.

His timing was perfect, for at that exact moment she gripped the cloth in two hands and pushed it over his skin the way someone shoved a heavy chest across the floor. Her lower lip was tucked under her teeth and her face was strained, as if she were scrubbing as hard as her puny woman’s strength would let her.

Any moment he expected her to grunt.

He waited a count of ten, then stood suddenly, water sloshing about him and onto her. His own bit of vengeance.

She gasped and fell back on the floor with a muttered curse to Saint David.

Acting perfectly natural, he turned and faced her, then purposely stood there longer than necessary, while she was on the floor, forced to stare up at him. Her gaze traveled down the length of his body.

He watched her eyes grow wide and her skin flush. Then he stretched, twisting this way, then that way before he sat back down in the tub.

There was long telling silence.

This was almost too easy, he thought, resting his arms on the rim. With a relaxed sigh he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

She said nothing.

He opened his eyes and gave her a long searching look. After a moment he tossed her a ball of soap and said, “Now my chest.”

Chapter 24

I wonder if the king would have me beheaded for throwing one of his earls out the tower window?

Clio slowly looked from Merrick to the arrow loop, and back to Merrick again. She tapped one finger thoughtfully against the cleft in her chin.

No. ’Twouldn’t work. He would not fit; his head was too big.

Which also ruled out bashing him a good one. She had scrubbed his skin until it should have been red and raw, but all he did was moan the way Cyclops did when she scratched his belly.

Thick skin, thick head, so went the saying.

In his case, a whole hive of Old Gladdys’ bees couldn’t have stung Merrick’s skin. So, she thought it was doubtful that even a solid oak battering ram could dent his thick skull.

He picked that exact moment to crack open one eye and say, “I’m waiting.”

For the briefest of moments she relished a few of her usual visions of dire retribution. Of course, after their wedding she would have a lifetime to get even.

Quite a pleasant thought.

She rose to her knees and smiled sweetly, lathering his hairy chest with the cloth and watching his eyes slowly slip closed again.

Men, she thought, were almost too easy.

Merrick stood at the side of the bed, looking down at Clio, who was curled on her side in the bed.

She looked up at him from over her shoulder, frowning. “What do you mean move over?”

“I’m tired and need to sleep.”

“As I told you earlier, my lord. I allowed you to bathe here, but that is all.” She pulled the covers tighter over her shoulder and turned her face away from him.

“’Twas not a simple task spending the last few days chasing you from Brecon Beacons to Cardigan.”

“This is my bed and my chamber.”

“Not any longer.”

That got her attention. She ceased trying to ignore him.

Her ugly cat was asleep on the bed, snoring. It sound like it had lung fever. He picked up the thing and dropped it onto the floor. The cat looked up at him from its one eye, then it looked at the bed as if he was contemplating leaping up again. “Do not even think about it, cat. I do not sleep with animals.”

“Neither do I,” Clio snapped, glaring at him.

Merrick stared down at her challenging eyes and planted his hands on the bed, bending over so his face was close to hers. “Unless you wish to see what kind of animal I can be, I suggest you don’t test my patience any more. I will tell you this now and you will understand it. I will not waste any more precious time following you all over the countryside, fending off Welsh arrows and water barrels and God knows whatever other trouble you can manage to find.”

She started to speak, but he shook his head, warning her.

“I will know where you are, Clio, at every hour of the day, and especially at night. I will sleep in this bed.”

She opened her mouth to argue, and he jerked the coverlet from her clenched fists, which shut her up.

He crawled into bed and pulled the covers over him with a hard yank. “I am not in the mood to argue with you.”

She scooted over to the very edge of the opposite side where there were no covers and sat up. A moment later she pulled the coverlet off him and up around her chin.

This from the woman who had dropped her towel. If he hadn’t been so blasted tired, he’d have laughed out loud.

“You cannot sleep with me! I am a maid!”

“Good, then I won’t have to worry about another man’s bastard, now will I?”

She was quiet. Too quiet. He could almost hear the cranking of her brain.

“Are you going to …” Her voice trailed off.

He punched his pillow a few times, then plopped his head back down, facing away from her. He closed his eyes. “I’m going to sleep. Not ravish you.”

She was quiet, blessedly so. He was drifting off to sleep and almost there …

“Then I was right that day in the bailey when I said I do not appeal to you.” Her voice was annoyed.

Damn her. “Do not start with me.”

“What? All I said was that I was right.”

He turned to her and pinned her with his hardest look. “I suggest that you do not question my manhood, woman, when I am in the same bed with you. It would not be a wise choice.”

“Do you always threaten people when you do not get your own way?”

“Aye, the way you always change the subject when you have no good argument.”

“I do not do that!” She paused. “I always know what subject I’m speaking about.”

“Perhaps you do, Clio, but no one else does.” He yawned, then added, “I think you know exactly what you do when you are doing it.”

He had her then. She could say nothing because if she changed the subject again, she would prove him right. He closed his eyes again, knowing he’d won this battle.

She jerked hard on the coverlets. “You took all the covers.”

He smiled to himself, then said, “Clio.”

“Aye,” she said in a snippy tone.

“You changed the subject.”

Morning sunshine spilled into the chamber in bright golden light, the kind that made you see double. Clio waited for her vision to clear. She moaned a little, some part of her wishing it were still night so she could go back to sleep.

Sighing, she closed her eyes again.

A blast of hot breath hit her neck. Her eyes shot open and she slowly turned, wincing with a small groan as she remembered just what was in her bed. A huge and hairy male arm was clamped around her body, and her back was pressed against his hot belly.

His hard knee poked her in the derrière. Still annoyed, she picked up his heavy arm and dropped it on his hip. But before she could scoot out of the bed, his thick leg sprawled across her hip and waist and left her pinned to the mattress again.

She was stuck and had little to do but stare at his foot poking out from the coverlets. Bored, she wiggled until her own foot was sticking out below his.

She stared at their feet.

She turned hers this way and that, eyeing it. She had short feet and stubby toes and her second toe was longer than the biggest one. She barely even had a toenail on her smallest toe, which had a fat top and a skinny little bone. Her feet were uglier than a basket of eels.

What was the purpose of toes?

One did not pick things up with their toes as did the monkeys at the Michaelmas Fair. When she walked, ’twas on the balls of her feet. Did her toes help her keep balance? Birds used their toes to hang on to branches or a falconer’s glove. What good were toes?

She looked at his toes, which were long and more even than hers; they were like gate guards lined up according to size. Regimented and in order. She should not have been surprised. Leave it to Merrick to have perfectly formed toes. Except for the black hair on them.

She had bald toes, yet hers looked like a row of jagged teeth, not unlike the old Roman walls that randomly dotted the countryside. And rather like her life, with ups and downs and filled with dips and wrinkles.

Perhaps toes were something that gave clues to your what your life would be, the way Old Gladdys swore that you could read your future in the lines of wee brown sunspots across your nose, or the way your hair waved when it was damp from May dew.

Toes might be there solely to help you understand the direction your life would go. After all, she thought with great insight, you were born with toes. You didn’t grow them, like you did hair and breasts. She decided she would have to remember to examine the toes of her babes when they were born.

Her babes.

She turned and looked at the man who would father them. In sleep he did not look like an infamous and ruthless knight. Nothing about him gave clue to the man who was known as the Red Lion, the man she herself had seen wield a battle sword.

He was a quiet sleeper. She was certain he had no idea that Cyclops was curled against his back, so close that it looked as if her cat were growing right from the small of Merrick’s broad back.

His hair was slicked back and past his shoulders, and he had grown a thick black beard in so few days. But the thing she noticed again with a stunned fixation was the length of this man’s eyelashes. In sleep she could see how thick and dark they were, and she understood why when his eyes were open they looked so very very blue.

He breathed evenly in sleep and did not snort through his nose as her father had. For years the whole castle would awaken to what sounded like wild boars in the keep.

It had only been her father snoring.

She missed him. Her father had been a good man, kind and loyal to his king, Henry, even when the other barons had risen and followed de Montfort against the king they had sworn fealty to.

Her father believed in oaths taken. The one single oath he had made her give him was that she would obey their king and marry the man chosen for her. She had given her father that promise about wedding the knight called the Red Lion.

She had not known that same knight would hurt her so fully by treating her as if she did not matter to him.

Those long days in the convent hurt her deeply. But like her father, she would not disregard her oath, even though he was dead; she took pride in the fact that she had his sense of honor.

She told herself with complete assurance that her oath to her father was why she agreed to freely marry Merrick.