At the door, she turned. “Your cousin Dafydd is here.”
He remembered the youthful visits with his cousin Dafydd and his siblings. “Only Dafydd?”
“His bothers Cynan and Gruffydd are with Maelgwn ap Rhys. And his sister Aelwen is married to a Welshman in the service of Madog and is besieging Harlech.”
“Why is Dafydd not fighting?”
“He was made lame from an accident that befell him in his youth.”
Robert could well imagine that had not pleased the high-spirited youth of his memory. Always eager he’d been for adventure and battle. “I’d love to see Dafydd, of course.”
His lady mother nodded and left, closing the door behind. He heard Kaytee emerge from her tub, and he returned to the bench to ruminate on Dafydd, his mother, and this entire infernal mess.
When the door clunked shut, Katy stepped out of the bath, and Elen vigorously rubbed her down with a linen cloth. Katy’s fingers flexed, wanting to yank the cloths from Elen and do it herself, but she resisted giving away that this was so not normal for her.
Her skin buffed pink, she breathed in relief when Elen shook out a white linen gown, revealing colorful garments beneath. She’d been dreading donning her grimy and worn clothes after getting so clean.
Elen first helped her into the thin gown, like a slip. Over that, a robin’s egg blue velvet tunic, followed by a buttercup yellow brocade surcoat with an apple-green lining. Unlike the men’s surcoats, or even the one women’s surcoat from the monks, this one laced up the front from her belly button to her low scoop neck, and was open on the sides all the way to her hips.
Oh, wow. It definitely, and flatteringly, emphasized her figure. Lastly, Elen placed a sheer white cloth on her head with a cloth band, but without a mirror, she had no clue what it looked like. She felt her hair being tucked up in it, though.
Delicious, so delicious to be in fresh, clean clothes, even if a strange design. She stood there and closed her eyes, cherishing the feeling of clean, natural fibers against her skin.
Elen helped her step into matching buttercup yellow slippers embroidered with blue vines.
Katy edged around the screen, and Robert turned to face her, his eyes widening as he took in her new look.
She couldn’t help it. She twirled in a circle, feeling like a princess in the tower.
“You are lovely,” he said in a low voice as Elen slipped out of the room.
“Thank you.” She smiled and sat down to help herself to more food. “More wine?” She held up the flagon.
“No. I shall use the water before it cools. You’re not the only one wishing to be clean.”
“After me? In the same water?”
He stopped, surprise evident on his face. “Yes. I have no time to wait for its disposal and for them to heat another batch.”
She stopped herself from saying, “eww,” aware her feelings were a cultural bias, ingrained since birth, but she must not have shielded her feelings completely.
He tilted his head. “You find this an odd practice, I see. However, we are due downstairs for supper soon, I was told--for unlike our people, the Welsh have their main meal in the evening.”
He stepped around the screen, and soon she heard his quick, efficient splashes as he also scrubbed off the dust and sweat from the road.
Oh, she did not need the visual of him naked, muscles bunching as he bathed. She needed a distraction. “Was that your mother?”
The splashing stopped. “Are you going to converse while I bathe?”
“Why not?”
“Feels rather unseemly.”
She laughed, picturing him sitting there, shocked and indignant. “We’re supposed to be married, right?”
“You have a point, however I would rather not discuss her right now.”
“I think you’re evading me.”
“Mayhap. Is it working?”
“For now. So we’re to have supper before talking terms with Madog?”
A large splash and the splat of wet feet on stone was her reply. Then, “Yes. Most likely he’ll not find time to meet with me until tomorrow.” He emerged, completely naked, as if that was quite normal. And it was, judging by the unconscious way he moved. Her gaze darted around the room, a nervousness prickling her skin, making her jumpy. The supposed intimacy it symbolized, as if they truly were married and at ease with each other, clashed with their true situation. Highlighted how fake their relationship was, like her relationship with Preston.
She shifted on the bench and cleared her throat. “So what’s a twel…a twello?”
“A tuelo? A Welsh prince’s personal guard. Usually around 160 men.” He pulled out a tunic and the funny Jesus underwear from his trunk, as well as a surcoat he hadn’t worn on the trip. “So the man has high aspirations.” He dressed with efficient movements.
“How come you don’t have a servant to dress you?” Didn’t knights and nobles generally have personal servants?
He paused, surcoat covering his head, and then pulled it down with a sharp tug. “I have not yet attained the means for one. For now, it is me.” His voice had gone flat, like how he sounded when she first met him.
Later that night, Robert shared a bread trencher with Kaytee. It seemed his host had decided to make supper a festive occasion. Word had spread he was Gwendolyn varch Llywelyn’s son, and the evening became an odd mixture of welcome to the family hearth, common Welsh hospitality, and celebration for capturing a Norman knight and his lady to ransom. Which mood predominated, he couldn’t tell, but they sat at the main table, a mark of honor.
Since no one nearby spoke French, he made sure to include Kaytee with a smile or look and, if he had the chance, a quick translation. He savored, as well, tasting remembered dishes of his childhood, taking extra portions of salt duck for their trencher and more familiar fare like numbles of a hart.
His cousin Dafydd sat to his left, and they amiably swapped stories about their lives since last they’d seen each other. Robert was careful to avoid all talk of his cousin’s accident and subsequent lameness.
“Your sister married Owain ap Owain,” Dafydd related, breaking off a piece of barley bread. His black hair shone in the rushlight, his features an adult version of the boy of Robert’s memory. Despite Dafydd’s misfortune, he was fit. He had a hitch in his step, but Robert wouldn’t wager on arm wrestling with his cousin.
“That wily bastard, huh?” Robert joked, but his throat tightened with a long-forgotten emotion.
When last he’d seen Marged, she’d been a wee lass of six, all dark hair and fierce eyes. From the moment he’d seen her swaddled in her cradle, so tiny, so trusting, he’d been swamped with a strange desperation and fear. Fear that such a tiny creature was vulnerable to the world, desperation that she might ever lack a protector. And so with that sense of desperation and fear, he swore he’d protect her with every fiber of his four-year-old being.
He was her champion against all taunts and teases from their many cousins and children inhabiting their family’s castle. And she repaid him by following him everywhere, looking up to him with big, intelligent eyes, his partner in their scrambles around the castle grounds, pretending they were Arthurian knights.
And then he’d left her and never returned. Did she remember him even?
Dafydd chuckled, no doubt also remembering their childhood pranks and fights. “Aye. He’s made her a good husband, in truth. They’ve settled near Flint.” He took a swig of wine and wiped his mouth. “Remember when the three of us were allowed to rub down Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffud’s favorite stallion?”
“And Marged braided his mane?”
“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that. Wasn’t the prince unhappy at that? I remember now. Made her take them out, he did.”
“Indeed.” Robert smiled.
“A great man, the prince. But not half as great as his uncle. If only he’d not been tricked. His murder was a sad day for all true Welsh, for his brother Dafydd was a fool.”
“Though Ed
ward is no fool,” Robert countered. “The outcome was inevitable.”
Dafydd stabbed his knife into the table and faced him, his features now serious. “How can you do it? How can you fight for them?” His host had avoided all talk of the war, but Dafydd obviously had no such qualms.
Robert’s shoulders tightened, and he gripped his tankard until his knuckles turned white. “I am half Norman. Have you forgotten?”
“No. Your attitude is beyond my ken. Even your father knew on which side to fight when it counted.”
As ever, when Robert thought of his father, a sense of shame heated his blood. “My father was a fool.” He wished to avoid the topic, as he always did, but also because Kaytee’s quiet presence beside him made him fully conscious of how isolated she must feel the longer the conversation could not include her. Her stiff posture indicated her awareness of their increased tension.
“Was he?”
Robert glanced around the great hall, but the revelers were too focused on their own food and their own cheer to pay them any mind. Nevertheless, he lowered his voice. “My father rebelled against his king, for whom he’d sworn an oath.”
“But he’d sworn an oath to uphold the Oxford Provisions, had he not?”
“A fool’s dream. The world is what it is.” He’d once thought elsewise, when a boy and reading of the quests of knights errant, but life had cured him of such twaddle. Again, that long suppressed memory of the day he’d witnessed that truth came to mind. That day when he learned ideals of a knight were just stories. The screams of that English milkmaid…
“Think you de Montfort was a fool?”
Yes. Simon de Montfort was the biggest fool of them all. “Reality allows naught for scruples. His cause was just, I grant you, but it’s unrealistic to expect a consecrated king to relinquish an iota of royal power.”
“So tell me then, you believe we should obligingly roll over and present our bellies? Roll over and accept that England wishes to subjugate our people and force their laws, which are inferior to ours, onto our people?”
Robert gritted his teeth. “Yes. Edward is relentless. You’ve witnessed this. He’s cunning and calculating. Already, he has built stout castles across Wales to shore up the gains he made in the last wars. Settled English and foreign merchants in his new towns and boroughs. Even now, he coordinates supply trains to bring in skilled workers and materials to build more and to clear roads—”
“And we attack every convoy he sends.” Whether Dafydd realized it or no, his hand had gone to his knife embedded in the table, and alternately gripped and flexed his fingers as Robert argued his point.
“He’s determined, Dafydd, to subdue your land. Better to make peace now than suffer his tender ministrations.”
“You do not understand, do you, Robert?”
“From your perspective, I suppose I do not.”
Dafydd grasped Robert’s sleeve. “We can regain our sovereignty. There’s talk of an alliance with Scotland. Balliol has been crowned king, but the Scottish are not happy the cost is homage to King Edward. If we join our strength to theirs?”
Now Madog’s bard caught the attention of all as he approached the main table with his harp, and Robert was thankful for the interruption.
He’d enjoy catching up with Dafydd, enjoy the Welsh hospitality, but he’d be damned if he’d let himself be pulled into another such conversation again. His talk with Madog, and discovering the terms of their release, couldn’t come soon enough.
And neither could finding his pleasure in Kaytee’s warm thighs.
Katy wound up the stone steps, her rushlight casting sputtering, smoky shadows along the curving wall. Robert’s sure tread echoed behind her, and Katy grew increasingly nervous.
His looming presence weighted the space between them, the possibilities, the inevitabilities, thickening the air. God. Soon, in maybe ten more measly steps, she’d be in their room. Alone. With him. With the sensuality he oozed so strongly she could almost taste it.
And to taste that again? No way.
Her resolve had firmed since their capture. Her desire to indulge before had been lust, pure and simple, and she’d mistakenly believed she could do so without ramifications. But she had lost control, and that had scared her. The forced break had given her time to reflect and re-erect her emotional barriers. Take back control.
Now that they’d gotten to know each other better, lowering those walls would be too risky, would invest any intimacies with more meaning. No good could come of falling for this guy, so it needed to stop. Now. Besides, it wasn’t as if he were the stick-around kind of guy, even if she could stay. Sure, he’d helped her, but he was a friggin’ knight in the middle of a war, and he’d been upfront about his inability to marry. No picking out copper kettles for their wattle and daub any time soon.
But marrying Preston was out of the question. Her betrayal was unforgivable, though Preston probably would forgive her…but she couldn’t.
Katy stumbled, and Robert put a warm, steadying hand on her back. She shivered as his warmth spread through her to places she was increasingly trying to get to stand the eff down.
Hell. Sleeping with Robert wasn’t the issue, only a symptom of her already-failing relationship with her fiancé. Without love and respect, their relationship would eventually have failed in its comfortable blandness, Robert or no Robert.
And while she was being honest…just the thought of experiencing Robert’s raw sensuality again left her feeling…discombobulated, as if she were skidding across a scary-long patch of ice in the dark.
The sound of the door closing, shutting them in for the night, jolted her into awareness. And there he stood. By the bed. The gorgeous, red-draped, white-picketed bed. She gulped, shuffled to the table, and picked up some cheese. And put it down. She readjusted the wine flagon and cups. Moved the bowl ever-so-slightly to the left. There. Centered.
She took a deep breath to summon her nerve, and that stupid, spineless nerve stuck in her lungs, cravenly hiding in all the little air sacs. He was undressing. She could hear the rustle of clothes. Over by the—gulp—bed. Heat flushed over her whole body.
She whipped around. He was sitting on the bed, taking off his soft leather half-boots.
She straightened and crossed her arms. “I can’t sleep with you,” she blurted.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Owain,” said Arthur, “wilt thou play chess?” “I will, Lord,” said Owain. And the red youth brought the chess for Arthur and Owain; golden pieces and a board of silver. And they began to play.
The Mabinogion, an ancient Welsh romance
Robert’s boot-clad foot thunked to the floor, the weight of his searching gaze on her. What did he see? She was too far away to read his expression well. Her heart pounded-pounded-pounded.
“As you please.”
“As you please?” She stepped back, the rough wood of the bench bumping her upper calf. She’d braced herself for a battle and now felt oddly deflated. “You aren’t going to try to talk me into it?”
“I need not talk women into lying with me. If you do not wish it, I will not seek to change your mind.”
“Oh.” She sat down hard.
He cocked his head. “Are you wanting me to talk you into it?”
“No! I just…” What?
“What?” he echoed her own question.
“I expected a different reaction. I didn’t think you’d understand.”
“I am not sure I do. I shan’t deny I still wish to lie with you. I know women’s lustful appetites are stronger than men’s, however, so if you no longer desire the same…” He shrugged, but it didn’t quite achieve the nonchalance he strived for—his eyes failed to completely revert to his standard flat. Confusion and, yes, desire coiled within.
And what was he blathering about women’s sexual desires being stronger? She got to her feet and stepped forward. “No, it isn’t that. I…I still find you attractive,” as hell, “but now that I’ve gotten to know you…”
<
br /> A frown crossed his face, and his eyes made the final switch to flat indifference.
“This isn’t coming out right. I’m sorry.” She spun around and paced to the window and back. “Now that I’m getting to know you, the risks…the risks seem greater. Does that make sense? And I’m not sure I’m ready.”
He tilted his head and continued studying her, which thrilled and scared her. He was so good at listening, paying attention. And knowing that one word from her could unleash his passion…?
“Things are very complicated right now,” she rushed onward, heart pounding. “I have to get a certain item from those villagers and return home. I don’t think—no, I know I can’t risk getting emotionally involved. Not that I think you would become emotionally involved too. I’m not saying that…” Good Lord, was she babbling! “But on my part…and I can’t risk that.” Logical reasons all, but a part of her feared the element of chaos unleashed when they had sex--his raw strength, his raw sensuality. Feared her inability to control that chaotic feeling, and thereby inability to protect herself from the inevitable hurt at his loss.
“So you are afraid that if we resume physical intimacies, you might form an attachment, and you do not wish to do so?”
“Yes.” She breathed a sigh of relief.
“I appreciate your honesty. However, I cannot ask for another room as Madog and his lady likely occupy the only other. Removing to a bench in the great hall would seem suspicious. I shall make a pallet on the floor, for I have slept in much worse conditions, believe me.”
Her relief, tinged with a thread of guilt, left her even more exhausted. “Thank you.”
He stood and nodded. “Get some sleep.” He grabbed a woolen blanket from the bed and, with an economy of movements, chose a spot near the fire and settled in. While she stood there.
“Robert?”
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