Chapter Five #3
“Here is soap and a brush for your bath,” he said, setting them down on the chair he’d been sitting on. “I have clothing for you to wear once you are clean. It belongs to my mother, who is a little fuller than you are, but the clothes should fit nicely until you can change into something you own.”
Elle had stopped weeping from his question about the consummation of her marriage, but Curtis’ statement had her looking at him with a mixture of disdain and puzzlement.
“Something of my own?” she repeated. “I am wearing what I own. I do not come from a fine family where everything is provided for me, so what you see on my body is everything I have. There is nothing else I own.”
Curtis ignored her tone because he knew talk of her previous marriage had upset her.
He went over to the cot and held up the brown dress and the blue dress.
“You may wear either of these,” he said.
“Whichever one you like. These are traveling garments, so they are not as fine as a lady should have, but they are serviceable.”
For some reason, his kind gesture was having the opposite effect with her.
He was completely rubbing her the wrong way with his assumption that she lived the way any fine English noblewoman lived.
There was entitlement in his tone. This was a man born to privilege and raised in it, and it was the first inclination that he had no concept of how she lived or what her life was like.
If the man was still determined to marry her, then perhaps he should be aware.
“Let me be clear with you on a few things, Sir Curtis,” she said, standing up from the little stool she’d been perched on.
“I do not, nor have I ever, lived as a fine lady. I told you that I was born to a father who did not want a daughter and a mother who hated the sight of me. I’ve never owned a gown in my life.
I’ve never had anything given to me. Everything I have, I have had to earn myself.
You wanted to know if my marriage was consummated?
I was given over to Cadwalader ap Dai when I was barely thirteen years of age and he had seen seventy years and six.
He’d been married before, several times, and he only had one daughter as a result.
My father and Cadwalader were hoping I could produce a son of Gwent, to carry on the Gwent kingdom and forever ally it to Powys.
But I married a shriveled old man who could not perform as a husband should and then blamed our lack of children on me.
He told everyone I was barren. Was the marriage consummated?
It was, in the most horrible and humiliating way imaginable.
Now you know enough about me to go to your father and tell him that we should not be wed.
I’ve been telling you that from the beginning. Mayhap now you will believe me.”
With that, she turned her back on him and sat on the stool again. The only reason she turned her back was because hot, furious tears had popped from her eyes and were now coursing down her cheeks. She didn’t wipe them away because she didn’t want him to see her doing it, so she let them fall.
But Curtis didn’t turn away from her. In fact, he didn’t move. He just stood there, and Elle swore she could feel his stare against her back. Then she could hear his joints popping behind her as he moved, undoubtedly to tell his father.
But he did something else.
“I like the blue dress,” he said quietly, picking it up from the cot. “It will match your eyes. I believe my father has a screen that can give you some privacy as you bathe. He uses it to block the wind from the tent opening, but I am certain he can spare it.”
Elle looked at him sharply. “Do you not understand?” she said. “I do not know anything about a noble household. I do not know anything about being a lady. You are a titled lord who will inherit an empire someday. What a sorry sight I will make as your countess.”
He still had the dress in his hand as he snorted wryly. “Do not make this sound as if you are being altruistic,” he said. “You are trying to make it seem like the best thing for me is not to marry you. Mayhap that is true, but I will make my own decision. You will not make it for me.”
“Have I not presented sufficient evidence to help you make that decision?”
He held up a hand to beg pause while he called to a soldier and muttered something to the man about the screen. As the soldier headed away, Curtis returned his attention to Elle.
“Let us speak more when you’ve had a chance to bathe,” he said. “Then I will make my decision.”
Elle wasn’t sure if she felt better or worse. “Then you understand that I am unsuitable?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I understand that you want me to consider you unsuitable.”
“But I am!”
“The truth is that you do not want to marry an Englishman, and for no other reason than that.”
That brought her pause. “That is true,” she said. “I’ve not made any secret of it.”
“You cannot always have what you want.”
Elle sighed heavily. “So I have been told.”
He gave her a long look and turned away, tossing the garment back onto the bed.
Then he returned to his table and writing kit, sitting down to continue recording the battle.
Elle sat there in silence, listening to him scratch his quill against vellum, her attention turning toward that steaming bath.
She could see the soap and scrub brush on the chair, and she had to resist the urge to smell the soap.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had bathed, but because she lived with men and lived as one of them, things like baths—and the lack of fine garments mentioned by Curtis—meant nothing to her, not really.
But perhaps there was a part of her that wished that weren’t so.
Truth be told, there had been a time when she wished for that kind of thing, back in the days when she was envious of a woman with a pretty dress or flowers in her hair.
But she knew she would never be that kind of woman, nor have pretty things, so she told everyone she didn’t care.
She’d said it so much that she’d talked herself into it.
She had talked herself into the life that she had because there was nothing better in her future.
Not even Cadwalader offered her any hope for a better future where she wasn’t entrenched in regaining lands from the English or plotting ambushes for enemies.
But now…
Now, she was in a completely different world as the prisoner of the English.
It occurred to her that perhaps there was a future ahead of her that she hadn’t expected.
When this day began, she hadn’t anticipated it to go in this direction.
She hadn’t anticipated being in this particular situation, but here she was.
Life was funny sometimes.
She remained quiet, huddled on the stool, while Curtis scratched away on the vellum.
He must have been writing an entire epic volume, from what she could hear.
She’d been sitting for several minutes when the soldier who had been sent away for the screen suddenly appeared again, bearing the mythical de Lohr screen.
It was three attached panels of wood, painted in blues and yellows.
Curtis took it from the soldier and propped it up in front of the pot half filled with water that was still steaming.
Silently, he went to the bed, picked up one of the shifts, and slung it over the panel.
Then he went to dig around in his own chest again, only to come forth with what looked like a cloak or a coverlet.
Elle wasn’t sure what it was, but she’d been watching him curiously since the screen came. She watched him toss the cloak or coverlet over the screen so it, too, was hanging. When he noticed she was looking at him, he simply gestured to it.
“You can use it to dry off with,” he said. “And you can sleep in the shift.”
He went back over to his table and sat down again. Unable to withstand the lure of hot water and soap, Elle stood up.
“Aren’t you leaving?” she asked.
He was looking at his writing. “Nay,” he said. “That is why I brought the screen. So you could have some privacy.”
She stiffened. “I will not—”
“And I am not leaving you alone so you can try to escape,” he snapped, looking at her. It was an uncharacteristically severe expression. “Get used to it, lady. You will do as you are told. Get into that pot or I’ll put you in it myself.”
That sounded much more like the knight Elle had hit in the midsection and toppled off the wall.
That harsh knight with the iron grip who had manhandled her and spoken harshly to her.
The man who was three times her size and far more powerful than she was.
It didn’t occur to her that she probably should have a healthy fear of the man, but she genuinely didn’t like being ordered about.
Still…
She wasn’t stupid.
Without another word, she stepped behind the screen and began pulling off her smelly, dirty clothing.
It wasn’t even completely dry from having been in the moat, and as she pulled it off, layer by layer, she came across leaves and debris trapped in the fabric and, eventually, against her skin.
When she was finally stripped down, with only her damp, dirty hair and her grimy skin exposed, she quickly climbed into the cauldron to discover that it was, indeed, still fairly hot.
As she sat in it, cross-legged, the water rose almost to the top, nearly covering her completely.
With a sigh of delight, she submerged her entire body, including her head.