CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I leaned forward in the tub as Pauline scrubbed my back, savoring the slippery luxury of the bath oils on my skin and the hot water soothing my bruised muscles. Pauline dropped the sponge in the water in front of me, splashing my face.
“Come back to earth, Lia,” she called.
“It’s not every day one has a first kiss,” I said.
“May I remind you that it wasn’t your first kiss?”
“It felt like it was. It was the first one that mattered.”
She had told me as we were drawing water for our baths that everyone could hear us yelling from the dining room, so Berdi and Gwyneth had started another round of songs to drown out our words, but Pauline had heard me shout go away, so she never thought she’d end up interrupting a kiss. She’d already apologized several times, but I told her that nothing could take away from the moment.
She lifted a pitcher of warm rosewater. “Now?”
I stood and she let the fragrant water trickle over my head and down my body into the tub. I wrapped myself in a towel and stepped out, still reliving every moment, especially that last brief exchange looking into each other’s eyes.
“A farmer,” I sighed. “Isn’t that romantic?”
“Yes,” Pauline agreed.
“So much more genuine than a stuffy old prince.” I smiled. He worked the land. He made things grow. “Pauline? When did you—” And then I remembered it wasn’t a subject I should broach with her.
“When did I what?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
She sat on the end of the bed, rubbing oil onto her freshly bathed ankles. She appeared to have forgotten my half-said question, but after a moment she asked, “When did I know I had fallen in love with Mikael?”
I sat down across from her. “Yes.”
She sighed, pulling her knees up and hugging them. “It was early spring. I had seen Mikael several times in the village. He always had plenty of girls around him, so I never thought he’d noticed me. But he had. One day as I walked by, I felt his gaze on me, even though I didn’t look his way. Every time I went by after that, he stopped, ignoring the attentions of those around him, and he watched me until I passed, and then one day—” I watched her eyes looking at the opposite wall but seeing something else. Seeing Mikael. “I was on my way to the dressmaker, and he suddenly fell in step beside me. I was so nervous I just looked straight ahead. He didn’t say anything, just walked beside me, and when we were almost at the shop, he said, ‘I’m Mikael.’ I started to reply, and he stopped me. He said, ‘You don’t have to tell me who you are. I already know. You’re the most exquisite creature the gods ever created.’”
“And that’s when you knew you loved him?”
She laughed. “Oh, no. What soldier doesn’t have a posy of sweet words at the ready?” She sighed and shook her head. “No, it was two weeks later, when he’d exhausted every posy at his disposal, and he seemed so dejected, and he looked at me. Just looked at me.” Her eyes glistened. “And then he whispered my name in the sweetest, weakest, most honest voice, ‘Pauline.’ That’s all, just my name, Pauline. That’s when I knew. He had nothing left, but he wasn’t giving up.” She smiled, her expression dreamy, and resumed massaging oil into her foot and ankle.
Was it possible that Pauline and Mikael had shared something true and real, or had Mikael just drawn from a new well of tricks? Whichever it was, he had gone back to his old ways and warmed his lap now with a fresh supply of girls, forgetting Pauline and tossing aside whatever they had. But that didn’t make her love for him any less true.
I bent over and rubbed my hair with the towel to dry it. I want to feel your skin, your hair, run every dark strand through my fingers. I pulled the wet strands to my nose and sniffed. Did he like the scent of rose?
My first encounter with Rafe had been a contentious one, and not by any stretch had I been smitten the way Walther was when he saw Greta. And Rafe certainly hadn’t wooed me with sweet words the way Mikael had Pauline. But maybe that didn’t make it any less true. Maybe there were a hundred different ways to fall in love.
From the loins of Morrighan,
From the far end of desolation,
From the scheming of rulers,
From the fears of a queen,
Hope will be born.
—Song of Venda