Chapter Fourteen #2
Fortunately, the pond wasn’t very deep, but Diara had gone in over her head.
She came up, sputtering, with leaves on her head, as the girls danced around her, splashing water.
Roi was still laughing, trying to get up and help her up at the same time, but she shoved him away by the face and he fell on his backside.
It was Kyne who extended a hand to her to pull her out of the pond while Roi sat there, up to his chest in the water, while his daughters splashed murky water on him.
“I am sorry, my love,” he called after Diara as he wiped his eyes. “My dearest? I’m terribly sorry. I did not mean to toss you like that. Blame Adalia and Dorian. They are the enemy!”
Diara was soaked. She was also partially covered with stringy algae. She peeled it off her arms and tossed it at Roi, hitting him in the face.
“I hope those fish eat you,” she said, pushing her wet hair out of her face. “I hope they strip your bones.”
“Shall I just stay here, then?”
“Aye!” Diara said, half teasing, half angry. “Look at me! I’m covered in slime!”
“You are still beautiful,” Roi said. “May I come out now?”
Diara was on the move, holding up her soaking skirts. She passed behind Roi as he sat there then she picked up some mud at the edge of the pond, flinging it on him from behind. It hit him in the back of the neck and the head, and immediately, he bolted to his feet.
“That is all I will take from you,” he said, turning swiftly for her. “Be prepared to defend yourself.”
With a yelp, Diara took off at a run. She was at a distinct disadvantage because her clothing was soaked and very heavy, and by the time she reached the kitchen door leading into the keep, Roi was on her.
Picking her up, he slung her over one broad shoulder as he carried her through the kitchens, with her yelling and fussing all the way.
The kitchen servants looked at them in shock, but Roi simply grinned.
“Send the bathtub and hot water up to our chamber immediately,” he said. “Lady de Lohr is clumsy and fell in the pond. Had I not saved her, she would have drowned.”
That brought a screech of outrage from Diara, who began slapping his behind. But she was laughing, and he was laughing, as he carried her up two flights of stairs, leaving a watery trail, until he reached their bedchamber. Once inside, he carefully set her to her feet.
She rushed him.
Roi was unprepared for Diara running at him and wrapping her hands around his throat. She was giggling as she did it, being playful about it, but when he stepped back, he ended up tripping and falling, hard, to the floor.
The giggles stopped.
“Roi!” she gasped, on top of him as he lay there. “Did you hurt yourself?”
He groaned. “I’ve broken something.”
Diara pushed herself off him. “Where is your pain?” she asked seriously. “What did you fall on?”
He continued to lie there and grunt. “Everything,” he said miserably. “Everything is broken.”
Diara ran her hand against the back of his skull, looking for bumps or blood. “My love, I cannot help you if you do not tell me where it hurts,” she said patiently. “Where is your pain?”
She was checking him all over for damage when he reached up and grabbed her, pulling her against him.
“Everywhere when I am not with you,” he said, nuzzling her ear and cheek. “Every moment I spent away from you causes me excruciating pain. Even when I am in the bailey and you are out of my sight, my thoughts are only of you.”
Diara was quickly succumbing to the man, as she had every night since their marriage, but it was still the middle of the day and Roi had ordered a bath. She knew the servants were on their way, and she didn’t want to create a spectacle for them.
“I’m covered in pond scum,” she reminded him, pushing against his chest as he tried to embrace her. “We both smell like dirty fish.”
“I do not care,” he said before finally slanting over her mouth and kissing her deeply. “I will kiss my wife no matter what she smells like.”
Diara started to chuckle. “What about me?” she said, avoiding his seeking lips. “Am I not allowed an opinion in this directive? What if I do not want to kiss you because you smell like fish?”
“Then you had better learn to like fish, lady.”
She continued to chuckle as he tried to pull her against him.
The more he would pull, the more she would push, until he finally managed to move her arms out of the way and trap her.
Once he did that, he had her, for she could no longer fight him off.
But his victory didn’t last for long because the door swung open and two male servants lugged in an enormous copper tub.
“By the hearth, please,” Diara said, pushing herself away from Roi by using his head for a brace. “Fill it halfway and then leave me a few buckets of hot water, please.”
Servants began moving in and out as Roi climbed up from the floor and went to a chair to remove his soaked boots.
Diara supervised the servants as Roi’s major-domo showed up, helping with the water brigade.
His name was Finnick, and he had originally served at Lioncross before Roi brought him over to Pembridge when he took command.
Finnick was quiet, efficient, and bright, and he and Diara had come to a somewhat symbiotic relationship since she arrived.
Finnick deferred to her in all things, and they were still in the process of working out what his duties would be, but so far, it had gone smoothly.
He was a man who knew his place.
“Lady Dorian and Lady Adalia have had the same mishap in the pond that their father and I have had,” she told Finnick as he passed by with an empty bucket. “Please find something they can bathe in because, between my lord and I, we are going to be using the big tub for some time.”
Finnick nodded quickly and headed off to assist the younger ladies.
Diara returned to the cabinet where she kept her bathing things, including soap and scrapers, razors, and more.
When she’d come to Pembridge, Roi didn’t really have anything other than a comb and a razor, so she’d been generous in lending him her soap.
Actually, she’d insisted on it, and he started using it, afraid to smell bad for his new wife.
He hadn’t cared much how he smelled for the past fourteen years, but now he did.
He had a wife he wanted to be worthy of, and he didn’t want to smell like a stable.
When the servants were gone and the door closed and bolted, Diara set out the soap and oils and scrub brushes on a small table next to the tub and had Roi help her out of her sticky, heavy, damp garments.
When they came off, all of them, she slipped into the hot tub and instructed him to do the same.
The tub was big enough for them both, even if there wasn’t a lot of room to move around, and he eagerly climbed in with her as she took a pitcher and poured water over them both, several times, before rinsing out the nasty water so she could scrub them both with the soap.
As Roi relaxed in the hot water, Diara washed herself first, including her hair, before starting in on him.
He was more than happy to let her.
“I’ve been thinking something,” he murmured, eyes closed as she washed his hair.
“What about?” she asked.
“That mayhap you would like to go to Paris,” he said. “When we were married, I was thinking about taking you on a trip because you seemed so interested in talking to people from different places. Realizing that you’ve probably never been out of England, I thought you might enjoy a trip.”
She stopped washing, forcing him to open his eyes and look at her. She appeared completely surprised.
“Paris?” she repeated. “Oh… could we? Do we dare?”
“Why wouldn’t we?”
She shrugged and resumed washing. “Because you have many duties here that require you,” she said. “You could not leave for a long period of time.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you have duties that require you?”
He kept his eyes closed while she poured water on his head to rinse the soap out. “I am responsible for the southern border of my father’s property,” he said. “But before Beckett died, Henry had been demanding my return to London.”
“Why?”
He lay back against the tub as she used the scrub brush and began to wash his arms and hands. “That is a question with many answers,” he said. “Up until two years ago, I was in Poitou for the king. He had issues with his French neighbors, to put it mildly. That is where your father was, also.”
She nodded as she used the brush on his dirty nails. “I know,” she said. “I remember when he went there with his army. He came back to tell me that I was betrothed to Beckett.”
“Right,” Roi said. “I returned when your father did, but I remained in London at the head of Henry’s council, along with a few others, while he argued with the Capetians for a while.
But my father was having some trouble with a local Welsh lord, so I resigned my post and returned home to command Pembridge and hold the southern border of my father’s property.
That’s when I brought Adalia and Dorian home. ”
Diara was listening with interest as she continued to wash him. “And Henry wants you to return?”
Roi nodded. “That has been my lot in life,” he said.
“A proctor for the king. With the legalities of treaties and such, he needs my knowledge of the laws. While I’ve been here at Pembridge, I’ve also been an itinerant justice.
I hold court here about once a month to solve local grievances.
I’ve even gone into Hereford to settle cases there as well.
Beckett was being trained for the same work. ”
In all of the conversations they’d had since their introduction, he’d never really spoken of his work or background. Diara only knew what she’d heard and a few cursory things he’d told her. She picked up a rag from the nearby table, soaked it, and put it on his face to soften his beard.