Two more trips, she guessed, and there would be enough water for her to slip beneath the surface if she wished. She did wish it, though her hair was clean, having been washed in a basin yestermorn ere the wedding, and effort having been expended to secure it atop her head.
She leaned her head back against the tub’s rim, became only distantly aware of Tina moving about the solar that was now more the maid’s responsibility to keep clean and neat than that of Lothaire’s squire. Doubtless, the young man would be pleased to spend more time out of doors.
When the water covered Laura’s shoulders, Tina began soaping and scrubbing her lady. As ever, the lingering would commence once the water was clouded and Laura could feel without seeing it caress her skin.
As she bent forward to give the maid her back, she remembered how abrasive the brush had been across skin which, in recent months, had been subjected to no more than a vigorous washcloth. She did not miss the brush that had left her with healing scratches that sometimes itched so much she could not leave a room fast enough to rub her back against a stone wall.
She sighed. “I think I am nearly all the way awake now.”
Tina squeezed Laura’s shoulder. “I am glad, milady.”
It was worrisome she had spoken her thoughts aloud. She must not do so in Lothaire’s presence. “As am I,” she said.
Another squeeze. “Ye are clean. Now rest.”
Laura sank back and closed her eyes. And let her thoughts go to the night past, which she had tried to avoid since departing her troubled dreams.
She feared Lothaire knew she had cried herself to sleep. It had shamed that she could not control her emotions, but she had turned the damp pillow wet as she spilled out her hurt over the exchange with her husband and regret over not following Michael’s advice. But she would follow it to its cruel end. Regardless of whether Lothaire believed how Simon made a child on her, he would be told. And then…
He could refuse to believe her and resolve to live his life bound to one he thought a harlot and liar, or he could verify Simon’s character with Michael and his wife. She almost preferred the former, so much she hated the thought of Michael’s pain over his brother’s perversion and Lady Beatrix being made to relive what she had suffered at his hands that had seen her stand trial for his murder.
The door opened.
Startling at the possibility it was Lothaire, she gripped the tub’s rim and looked around.
But ere she laid eyes on him, Tina exclaimed, “Milord!” confirming it was the one Laura wanted least to see this morn.
He halted just inside the solar, and his eyes received hers the instant they flew to his. In a voice so tight she hardly recognized it, he said, “What do you?”
She tore her hands from the rim and crossed her arms over her chest though he was too distant to see anything below her shoulders. “I bathe, of course! What do you here?”
He glanced at Tina where she stood alongside the bed with the cradle made of her apron holding rose petals plucked from the sheets, looked back at Laura, spread his arms. “Obviously, I require a change of clothes.”
She could see that now the shock of his entrance was past. The perspiration darkening the neck and shoulders of his gray tunic tapered down his chest to his waist, and his chausses were dusty and sliced at his left knee.
He had been practicing at swords, here the reason that sound was heard earlier than usual.
“So you do,” she said. “Take them and be gone.”
His brow furrowed, and she regretted not saying it better. It sounded more a demand than a request, but she was naked in the presence of a man who had yet to know her. And growing colder by the moment despite water so heated steam puffed above the surface.
He strode toward her.
“I bathe, Lothaire!” she cried and clasped her body closer.
“In our bedchamber.” He halted alongside the tub, stared into her wide-eyed face.
Laura bore his gaze until it moved down her neck to the soap-clouded water, then she lurched forward and turned her shoulder to him. “Pray, leave!”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lower to his haunches. A moment later, he touched her upper arm. “Lest you forget, I am your husband.”
She drew what should have been a calming breath, but it pulled his salty, masculine scent into her, and so disturbed that the water no longer soothed. She snatched her arm away. “Not yet you are. Not truly.”
His silence was of such depth she thought she might drown in it, then he put his mouth near her ear, a reminder they were not alone. “Something we must needs remedy. And soon.”
“Leave!” she rasped. “I do not want you here!”
He stood. His boots sounded over the floor, the lid of a chest banged against the wall, moments later dropped. Boots again, then the slam of the door.
Sinking back against the tub, Laura covered her face with her hands.
“Oh, milady!” Tina hastened forward. “I knew not if I should stay or go—knew not what to say.”
Laura dragged her hands down her face. “I said enough, Tina, and I wish I had not, but I could not think. I just…wanted him gone.”
“I must say, he was fair tolerant, milady. I thought he would send me away and the two of ye would have done with it.”
“As did I,” Laura whispered.
“Ah, look! Now I must pick the petals from the rushes.”
What had been strewn across the sheet was strewn across the floor between bed and tub. “Leave them,” Laura said. “And me. I wish to be alone.”
“Very good, milady. I will be belowstairs. I should return in…half an hour?”
Laura nodded. When the door closed, she unpinned her hair, drew the fat braid over her shoulder, and loosened its weave.
Had not the maid appeared, he would have waited until this eve to confront Laura over her behavior in the presence of Tina who was to know more of the intimate details of the lives of her lady and lord than any other. All day he would have borne the roiling. But the day need not be entirely ruined.
Tina had not seen him where he stood outside Angus’s chamber seeking to calm himself ere entering lest it was occupied, the knight also having departed the training field to change his clothes.
When the maid turned opposite and quickly descended the stairs, Lothaire determined he need not avail himself of Angus’s chamber. The solar was no longer exclusively his, but as Laura’s husband he could enter at will.
When he strode inside, surprise at finding his wife absent made him leave the door wide, then realizing she must be in the garderobe, he seated the door and moved toward the bed where he would shed his garments and don fresh ones regardless of how Laura found him when she reappeared.
He was feet from the bed when the trickle of water returned his regard to the empty tub.