Chapter Four #2
The cake of white lumpy soap in her hand smelled of lavender and she proceeded to soap every inch of her body from her head to her toes.
The hair was washed, her face washed, and everything else on down the line.
She didn’t have a scrub brush so she simply used her fingers, scrubbing until she could scrub no more.
Everything was washed, rinsed, scrubbed, and smoothed.
Not only did the bath clean her body but it seemed to clean her mind as well.
She was still fogged with fever but not nearly as bad as she had been.
She was thinking much more clearly, so much so that she perked up and began to really look at her surroundings.
The chamber was very well appointed with a comfortable bed, a big wardrobe, a small table with two chairs, and a big tapestry near the bed that seemed to depict a knight and lady in a romantic setting.
In truth, it was a wealthy room, much like the rooms at her home, Pelinom Castle.
Cloryn Castle. She had heard of it before.
In fact, she’d heard her father mention the name but little else.
Her father wasn’t one to discuss his business with his children, although he did discuss it with her older brothers, Coleby and Julian.
They were being prepared to take over her father’s empire one day so it was natural that her father spoke to them about such things.
As she sat in the cooling water, she began to think on her siblings, sisters and brothers she missed very much.
There was Coleby, her eldest brother who was big like their father but blond like their mother, and then Julian, who was the spitting image of her father.
She was next, as the eldest daughter, and she tended to favor her father more than her mother also.
Then came Effington and Addington, or Effie and Addie as they were called, two blond sisters that were born thirteen months apart and resembled twins more than single-birth siblings.
She missed them the most. Effie had a loud mouth and loved jokes while Addie was very sweet and sickly a good deal of the time.
Then, there was baby Cassian, who wasn’t so much a baby as he was an active toddler.
He was as smart as a whip and a joy to the family.
Aye, she missed her family very much. She hadn’t seen them in over a year and she could only imagine how her father was going to react to a gift of her hair delivered to his doorstep.
Even though she had never known her father to go to war since she’d been born, there was always a first time.
He was fiercely protective over his family and she knew he wouldn’t take her abduction lightly.
But she would not tell de Llion that, not when the man was so eager for Jax to respond to him.
So she sat in the tub and pondered her fears for the future as the water cooled.
Eventually, she was forced to climb out, drying off her prune-like skin with one of the shifts that Grayton had brought her.
She didn’t have anything else. The oil he’d brought her was still on the bed and she picked up the phial, smelling the contents.
It, too, smelled of lavender and she smoothed it sparingly over her parched skin before donning a second shift of very soft wool.
It was very fine and, she was sure, very expensive.
Much as Grayton had warned her, however, it was too big for her but she didn’t care.
She put it on, and gladly, and also put on a dark blue brocaded robe over the top of it.
The robe was very heavy, lined with rabbit fur, and sleeveless so the long, belled sleeves of the shift were revealed.
Digging around in the pile of garments, she came across a pair of mismatched woolen hose with no ribbons to secure them, so she simply put them on and folded them down so they would stay on her feet.
Dressed warmly for the first time in weeks, she sat by the fire to dry her dark hair, running her fingers through it because she had no comb.
She kept inspecting the ends, ends that de Llion had so brutally cut, lamenting the fact that he had cut her hair by at least two feet.
But in the same breath, she thought it rather foolish to lament cut hair when she would be cutting it anyway when she took her ecclesiastical vows. Still, it was her last claim to vanity.
On the floor next to the hearth, Allaston continued to dry her hair and reflect on thoughts of her family and future.
The fever still lingered and she would cough every so often, but overall, she felt much better than she had in a very long while.
She was lost in thought, basking in the warmth of the fire, when the chamber door opened.
Startled, she turned to see a most unwelcome sight.
*
Bretton was still in the great hall, still at the feasting table lingering over a sixth cup of murky red wine when Grayton entered.
Around them, the men had finished feasting and were now playing games of chance or telling loud stories over the buzz of conversation.
The hall itself had grown smokier from the fire that had been stoked into mammoth proportions as Grayton crossed the floor, kicking the wandering dogs aside and refusing to get sucked into any gambling games.
He managed to reach Bretton without getting pulled into a dice game, which was difficult for him.
He usually didn’t have much self-control when it came to games of chance.
“It seems that the men do not intend to sleep tonight no matter how weary they are,” he commented as he sat down on the bench next to Bretton. “We may end up breaking up fights from all of the money changing hands in these games.”
Bretton was exhausted and the wine was making him half-lidded and somewhat drunk, a rare state for him. But he had worked harder than any of them as of late and, for once, was letting his guard down. He glanced at Grayton as he took another deep drink from his cup.
“Mayhap,” he said, somewhat neutrally. “How is the prisoner, Mother?”
Grayton grinned. “She is in the keep and bathing three weeks of cold and filth from her body,” he said. “I will send our surgeon to tend her. There may be something he can do for her fever.”
Bretton scratched his head. “Is she going to die?”
Grayton shrugged. “It is hard to say,” he muttered, reaching to collect a cup of wine from the center of the table where it lingered with a full pitcher nearby. “I do not think so, but I suppose time will tell.”
Bretton grunted. He thought on his prisoner, a spawn of de Velt.
He hated her purely based on her father in contradiction to the lie he told earlier.
He had said that he neither hated nor loved her, which was far from the truth.
He hated her because she bore the name de Velt.
He hated her because the man’s blood ran through her veins, and he hated her because it was her father who had ruined his life.
He had abducted her because he knew what it was like to lose those he loved and he wanted de Velt to feel the same pain.
Aye, he wanted to hurt Jax, a man he didn’t even know, because Jax had hurt him in the course of his conquest. Twenty-five years of a simmering hatred had matured into a horrible vengeance.
The wine flowing through his veins was dissolving his self-control.
It was causing him to have wild thoughts.
So the prisoner was bathing, was she? Although he had given Grayton permission to tend the woman, he wasn’t particularly keen on the fact that his prisoner had some freedom.
He wasn’t too keen on a de Velt moving freely about the keep.
She was a prisoner, wasn’t she? She deserved no more consideration than she’d had before, languishing in a vault.
No de Velt deserved more than that, in his view.
The more he thought about it, the more agitated he became until he slammed the cup down and rose abruptly from the table.
His destination was the keep but he didn’t mention that to Grayton.
He didn’t want the man to come with him.
Therefore, he kept silent as he quit the hall, even when Grayton and Dallan called after him.
He ignored them. He had a prisoner to see.
The keep of Cloryn Castle was tall and built like a big, square box.
It even had stone steps leading to the second floor entrance which was a rare feature.
Most stairs that led into keeps were wooden so they could be burned and keep access cut off in the event of a siege.
But Cloryn’s keep had an enormous entry door that was made of iron, impossible to burn and nearly impossible to breach, so it was this door that Bretton moved through.
By the time he reached the steps that led to the upper floors of the keep, he was working on a righteous rage. Damn de Velts!
He hit the second floor landing and was preparing to take the stairs to the third floor when he heard coughing.
Lured by the sounds, he ended up at the second of two large chambers on that floor.
He could feel the warmth from the room escaping through the gaps between the door and the door frame.
Hand on the latch, he shoved the door open.
Very warm air hit him in the face. The first thing he saw was Allaston on the floor next to the hearth, her eyes wide on him and her fingers frozen in her hair as she had been raking the digits through it, trying to dry it in the warm air.
Bretton took several big, angry steps into the room, his gaze fixed on the prisoner, but as he drew close it occurred to him that she was an extremely beautiful woman.
Cleaned up, with some color in her cheeks, she was utterly spectacular.