The women murmured sympathetically as they adjourned to the bath. Jane sank into the water, immediately ducking her head to give her hair a good soaking. She came up and looked critically at Sibelle, who was letting one of the maids give her back a thorough scrubbing. Alais and Marguerite had been complaining that their dear lamb had barely touched a morsel since Sir Stephan's return. Jane suspected the girl was just practicing a little crash dieting. She was looking a bit thinner. Good.
Besides, weren't brides supposed to diet so they could fit into their wedding gowns? Even with the one-size-fits-all draping fashions of the moment, Sibelle obviously wanted to look as slender and delicate as possible on the big day. She had the whole neighborhood, as well as Stephan, to impress at the ceremony.
Jane gave thanks they'd started to work before Stephan ever came home on the sky-blue silk dress Sibelle would wear for the wedding tomorrow. Otherwise, they would never have managed the finishing touches in six days, not even with every woman in the
place doing nothing but stitch on the eight-inch-deep bands of embroidery edging. She was also glad there had been enough silk left over to make up a tunic of the same shade for Stephan. The embroidery wasn't as fancy, but she had worked a few lapis beads into the pattern around the neck opening.
She leaned her head back against the edge of the tub and smiled smugly. The hot water was working its magic, relaxing all the days' exertions out other muscles. Tomorrow there would be the wedding and a feast. All the local notables would be at Passfair for the celebration. She'd arranged it all. She was tired, she was frazzled, and she was very pleased with herself. Tonight was a time to congratulate herself and share in Sibelle's joy and anticipation.
She welcomed the hard work of the hasty preparations, really. During the day she was too caught up in details to think. In the hours after day and before bed, she concentrated fiercely on the music Michael drew forth on his lute. They taught each other songs. She was endlessly fascinated by how much she had to learn. She listened in amazement to the tunes he picked out to go with the words and avoided conversation with anyone but her young pupil.
She refused to brood. She'd been falling into her bed too tired to dream.
Six days. Was it seven or eight since the attack? She'd managed to pry Stephan away from his lady fair long enough to discuss Berthild. He'd frowned thunderously at learning one of his household was a victim of the outlaws and taken Jonathan out hunting in the woods, but no sign of Sikes's men was found near Passfair. Well, at least Stephan had tried. She sighed. There was nothing more she could do. She almost wished she could forget.
Around her the women were talking. Sibelle was giggly, and Marguerite, of all people, was making ribald jokes. The hot water was strewn with dried herbs and rose petals, jane took deep breaths of the heady steam.
She opened her eyes and murmured placidly, "This is living."
"Oh, aye," Alais agreed. "The young men looked so handsome and refreshed coming out of their bath." Her eyes twinkled with merriment as she gazed at the blushing Sibelle. "I was mending the tear in your bed curtains, my lady," she explained. "Though how it got torn I couldn't say. Still, wanting the bedchamber to be perfect for Father Jonathan's blessing tomorrow, I kept working after the men came in. The door was ajar a little, but they took no notice of me."
"You spied on them!" Sibelle exclaimed, her eyes round as saucers. Far from overwhelmed with shock, she leaned forward and demanded eagerly, "What's Father Jonathan like? Is he as handsome and well made as my lord? Not that anyone could be!"
"Of course not, my lady," Alais hastened to assure her. "There's no fat on any of them. Good, firm flesh, with clean, honorable scars from many a battle. Father Jonathan's all shoulder and muscular thighs with a fine, strong back. But he doesn't compare to Sir Stephan, of course."
Then why was she licking her lips at the thought of him? Jane wondered.
Alais went on. "Raoul's a spindly-legged old warhorse with a great scar across his chest."
"It's what's between his legs you should be consid-
ering," Marguerite said tartly. "If it's marriage to the old routier you're thinking of."
Jane looked at the plump and prim Alais with a new light. Her and Raoul? She considered this coupling with a sardonic smile. It would seem Alais was adjusting well to life outside the walls of Davington Priory.
"I looked," Alais confirmed, her chin wobbling with an emphatic nod. "He'll do for as much as I'll need." She threw a sly glance Jane's way. "It's a pity Sir Daffyd sent word he couldn't be here for the wedding. Sir Stephan would have liked him to stand by him." She gave a deeply wicked chortle. "And I'd have liked to see what that golden cockerel keeps under his armor."
"Muscles," Jane said, the word escaping without thinking. She blushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. She was certain the heat she was
generating raised the water temperature by several degrees.
Muscles covered in a mat of gold fur, she couldn't help but recall as images of Daffyd and another bath teased her memory. She swallowed hard, trying to banish recollection. She didn't know why the sight of him had been so—memorable. It wasn't as if she'd never seen a naked man before. Of course, compared to Daffyd ap Bleddyn . ..
And why was Alais looking at her like that? Berthild must have found out and gossiped about the little incident with Sir Daffyd and her bathwater. Not that it was all that. . . little. She made a small, disquieted sound. She didn't like thinking of it as a whimper.
"But why?" Sibelle asked in astonishment. "Sir Daffyd must be nearly as old as Raoul DeCorte! And he never smiles!"
"Does he have to?" Marguerite questioned merrily. "He has a sultry way of looking that tells a woman he knows what to do with her. He's not old," she went on. "He's experienced. Experience has value, doesn't it, Lady Jehane?" Jane blinked stupidly, at a loss for any
reply.
"My lord has all the experience I need," Sibelle said loyally. "I've heard how Sir Daffyd rides all over the countryside seeking out women."
He undoubtedly did, Jane thought sourly. How many gold-haired, green-eyed bastards did the man have running around Kent? Some women just couldn't resist a man in a uniform. Especially one with a knowing smirk and a chocolate-rich voice that purred in their ears like a big, sensual cat.
She thought perhaps the water temperature was rising again. Hers certainly was. She would not think about it—him, she declared firmly. It didn't help when Alais went on.
"Women with experience of their own," the woman elaborated, looking eagerly to see Jane's reaction. "He's the despair of all the pretty young maidens who long for him to turn his attention their way. It's not tumbling with just any skirt he seems to be after. Perhaps he's looking for someone special. Do you think so. Lady Jehane? He seems to enjoy talking to you."
Jane didn't know why the older women seemed to think she should be interested in contributing to their gossip. Or why they were interested in her conversations with Sir Daffyd. Her few encounters with the man had always been full of barbs and antagonism.
And a physical tension she couldn't deny.
She didn't want him, she told herself fiercely. She was grateful for what he did, certainly, but there was nothing else there. Just because he had saved her life, she didn't have to faint with longing tenderness over some big dude in armor who rode up and saved her hide. He hadn't even been riding a white horse.
She wasn't going to talk about it. About him. She didn't trust herself to express any opinion on the matter of Sir Daffyd.
Sibelle was looking at her a little oddly, too. "You're embarrassed, Jehane."
"No, I'm not," she protested quickly.
Sibelle was looking at her breasts. "Or cold, perhaps?" she questioned.
Jane glanced down, noticing for the first time that the tips of her breasts were tight and hard. She crossed her arms over them. "Yes. Just cold."
"Of course." The girl gave her a smile that was far too knowing. What had she and th
at boy been up to in here?
Sibelle rested her chin on her upraised knees and changed the subject. "Should I really wear my hair unbound tomorrow? I'm no longer a maiden."
Her statement set off another fit of giggles. There ensued a long and only occasionally serious discussion of propriety mixed with gossip and tales illustrating numerous acts of impropriety.
After a few confused and aloof minutes, Jane joined in happily, making up outrageous lies about court life in the beleaguered kingdom of Jerusalem. Eventually the water turned tepid, then cool, as did the spring breeze coming in the window, but the girl talk went on. Even as they donned undershifts and helped braid each other's damp hair, they continued to joke and tease each other. The subject of Daffyd ap Bleddyn did not come up again, though the memory of surprising him at his own bath replayed relentlessly through Jane's thoughts. She remembered how she'd longed to trace her fingers along the sharply outlined muscles of his arms and chest. She'd itched to play with the gold matted chest fur, to run her hands downward, stroking and rousing his blatantly displayed manhood. She hadn't actually realized at the time that was what she'd wanted to do. In retrospect she knew it was what her body had longed for even as she'd been lashing out at him in outraged anger.
He made her feel too much like a woman, she realized. She wished she'd met someone like him in her own time. Though she might not have noticed someone like Sir Daffyd in her own world. It seemed as if she'd only begun to notice her own sensuality since she got dropped into the persona of Jehane FitzRose. And little good it would do her, she also realized.
To keep her mind off all her own longings, she concentrated harder on enjoying the company, the conversation, and the bath. By refusing to dwell on her own homesickness she managed to push it into the background and ended up having a wonderful time.
It was only Stephan's banging on the door, demanding entrance into his own quarters and time with his dear lady in his own bed, that broke up the festivities.
Jane left with a smile, surrounded by a sense of fragile serenity. She felt as if she'd stepped into a little kingdom inside a bubble. It was full of laughter and love and dreams come true. It wasn't a real place, of
course, and she wasn't really a part of it, but for now she was able to dwell inside the bubble, safely away from the terrors of the real world.
The sense of serenity helped her sleep through the night before the wedding without having to resort to complete exhaustion to keep the nightmares away. That night there was a great deal of splashing going on in her dreams, with love play and laughter mixed with soap bubbles.
19
"Lavender," she said as she woke. She sat up sniffing, but there was no scent of the flower anywhere in the room. Jane blinked and rubbed her eyes. "Must have dreamed it," she murmured as she got out of bed. As she combed her hair, she noticed it was still scented with last night's bathwater. Maybe that was where the lavender came from.
She was reminded of the day, and she smiled happily. "Beginnings," she said. She dressed hurriedly and even said, "Good morning," as she passed her maid on her way out the door. It wasn't the poor woman's fault she wasn't Berthild, and it had been foolish to try to pretend the new maid wasn't there. Today, Jane resolved, she would put both the past and the future behind her. No comparisons, no regrets. Today she would live only for the moment. She didn't want the magic bubble to burst.
The household was already abuzz by the time she came downstairs. Several of the guests had arrived in time for the evening meal the night before, finding
bed space in chapel and pantry as well as around the hearth. Every landholder within a twenty-mile radius of Passfair was invited and had until high noon to arrive if they wished to witness the ceremony.
Jane was greeted enthusiastically by the earliest and most boisterous of the arrivals, Osbeorn of Blackchurch, a widower of substantial size. He'd arrived with his four offspring in tow and a gift of two barrels of French wine for the bride and groom. He was known locally as Osbeorn the Fat. Fat and Pickled, Jane thought, would be more appropriate.
He had tapped one of the barrels at supper last night and had been happily swigging, singing loudly to Michael's playing, when the women adjourned to the bower for their bath. From the looks of him this morning, rumpled, red-faced, and still boisterous, Jane didn't think he'd stopped celebrating all night.
He approached her with a flagon of wine in each hand. His smell reached her first. She blinked to keep her eyes from watering. "A good day to you. Sir Osbeorn," she greeted, taking the cup he held out.
"A toast to the happy couple," he proclaimed as his two adolescent sons came up to join them. He drained off his own wine while Jane took a tiny sip, then put the cup on the table.
Draping his arms around the boys' shoulders, he said, "Lady Jehane's a widow, lads. As sad and bereaved as we are. Such a sad thing not to have a good, stalwart lover in her bed." He peered blearily at her while the boys looked her over with less than boyish interest. "How you must grow cold at night," he elaborated. "Aching for a man's strength between your legs. Ah"—he sighed dramatically—"how I miss my own good woman." He perked up. "A toast to good women."
Jane backed away, smiling stiffly, happy to escape to her duties and leave Osbeorn the Fat to his celebrating. She was living for the day, she reminded herself as she stepped into the sweltering heat of the kitchen. But she would be happy when the guests went home.
Preparations for the feast were going on with frantic haste. The room smelled of cinnamon and cardamom and the ever-present onions. She stood in a corner, chewing on a warm, crusty piece of white bread just brought in from the ovens behind the kitchen building. Wonderful, great round loaves of bread had been stacked on one of the tables like a mound of gold coins. It was planchet, white bread made from fine milled flour reserved for the nobility, and was a rare treat after the coarse grain produced by Passfair's mill. There were also pigeons and dried-fruit pies and honey cakes cooling on the table. She'd sent a bag of silver, a small part of the dowry Sibelle brought to Passfair, to Canterbury for supplies for this feast. She'd also accepted some of Sibelle's silver in exchange for the spices used to flavor the dishes.
The cook was working at the chopping block in the center of the room, sweating profusely, bloody up to the armpits, using his cleaver to whack great hunks of beef into chunks for a savory stew. He was having the time of his life with this bounty. The scullions were busy stuffing chickens with a mixture of saffron, raisins, onions, and rice from her supplies. There were dozens of eggs boiling in a blackened kettle. Bowls of tiny strawberries were being cleaned by another pair of boys. There were suckling pigs and
geese roasting on spits over slow, carefully tended fires. There would also be dishes of fish and eels and lamb.
And all this bounty was as much for the villagers as for the household and guests. The people of Pass-fair and Hwit had been talking of nothing but the upcoming feast for six days. It was more meat in one day than they usually saw in five years.
Nothing in the kitchen needed her attention, so she finished her bread and left. A group of riders was dismounting in the courtyard, two separate parties that had entered the bailey one after the other.
She'd never seen the thin, hatchet-faced man in the soiled gray and yellow surcoat who came with a half dozen men-at-arms trailing behind him. The device on his shield was a long, sinuous white dragon on a red field. Dragon, she thought. A dragon was a drake, if she recalled her heraldry. Lilies were white. Hugh of Lilydrake, then. So, he styled himself the White Dragon. White Snake would have been a more suitable title.
She turned her attention to the other arrivals, recognizing the colors of Sturry. She went to greet the man who'd ridden in while his groom took the horses to be stabled. He had brown hair liberally mixed with gray, and a slight paunch. He introduced himself as Yves, seneschal to the baron.
He looked around the bailey with sharp brown eyes, then said, "I commend your efforts here. Lady Jehane." His smile was both f
riendly and assessing as he looked her over head to foot. She was dressed in layers of bright yellow and white, trimmed in blue embroidery. She knew the colors flattered her tawny complexion.
"You are a widow, are you not?" he inquired curiously.
She wanted to cover her face with her hands and mutter, "Oh, God, not another one." Instead she gave him a polite smile and said, "I must greet our other guests."
When she approached Lilydrake, all the thin man said to her was, "You're DuVrai's spare woman. Fetch me some wine."
She could see why he wasn't popular in the neighborhood.
She bridled angrily beneath a fixed, polite smile and called for a servant to see to Lord Hugh's needs. She then went into the castle and sat in the bower with Sibelle and the other women until word was brought that all was ready in the courtyard. Yves came up to escort the bride to her lord. Jane, Sibelle, and Alais followed them outside. Jane was happy to note Sibelle's steps were firm and sure. Her head, hair flowing loosely, was wreathed in flowers.
They stepped out into the sunlight, halting at the top of the steps where Stephan, Raoul DeCorte, and Father Jonathan waited before a courtyard crowded with onlookers.
Jonathan took Sibelle's delicate little hand from Yves's and placed it in Stephan's. Jane watched, her joy mixed with curiosity as the wedding proceeded. It was very different from the ceremony she thought of as a wedding. First, Yves read the marriage agreement aloud. During the recitation, someone, she thought it was Hugh of Lilydrake, kept hawking and spitting on the flagstones.
Then Jonathan listened as the couple exchanged vows. He blessed them as Stephan then put not one,
but three rings on the fingers of Sibelle's right hand. The last and largest ring was slipped onto her ring finger while Jonathan murmured a benediction.
When Sibelle knelt and prostrated herself before Stephan, Jane stiffened all over with shock. She felt herself staring, a shudder going through her. She was a historian, and medieval history was her specialty;
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