Chapter 33
BATHROOM BATTLEGROUND AND A VOCAL VICTORY
Last night, there hadn’t been words to describe how defeated Millie had felt, how miserably she’d ached, how pricked her pride had been when that insufferable apprentice had locked her in Dirk’s bedroom after dinner.
Dirk might claim Bradley Donmarin was a brilliant sorcerer, but she had her doubts.
The moron kept forgetting that a young woman couldn’t get her beauty sleep with her knees tucked up by her earlobes, nor with a dragon snoring in the adjacent bathroom. Nor the fact that she could pick locks.
So she’d waited a quarter-hour to make sure he’d truly gone, then done just that. That giant tub in his suite was singing a siren’s song more sweetly than any one of renowned opera singer Madame Palferoi’s arias, and she was going to whole-heartedly obey.
To her delight, she heard the apprentice puttering in the workroom, and he never went there unless he was planning to dedicate a considerable portion of time to his studies.
For at least the next sixty minutes, the tub was all hers.
And to her delight again, when she entered the bathroom, she discovered the tub was already half-full and there were plenty of salts and restorative oils that understood the plight of her muscles.
The milky bathwater rose to the base of her throat, embracing her in the warmest and most soothing of hugs, and only her arms propped up upon the rim had prevented her from slipping in and drowning.
Until sixty seconds ago, when she’d woken in confused alarm to the sounds of the apprentice barging into his bedroom. It’d taken only a second to realize she’d fallen asleep and only a second more to decide what she’d do next.
Millie swooped her arms inside the tub and disappeared under the water.
She would hold her breath until the apprentice was done brushing his teeth or flexing in the mirror or whatever his morning ablutions were.
This was good training, after all, for she was a sure that at some point in a pirate’s life, being able to hold one’s breath and avoid detection as an enemy passed by would be of critical importance.
Submerged Evasion for Beginners, as it were.
And then the fuckwit had sat on her.
Straight on her belly, too, squishing all the air out of her lungs.
Now, with milky water stinging her eyes and her bun sloughing off her head and unraveling her hair into thick brown curtains, she covered her breasts with her arms and screeched, “Can’t a girl enjoy some privacy without the threat of a staring tom barging in on her?”
Only the misuse of the idiom prevented Bradley’s brain from truly short-circuiting this time. “P-peeping.”
“Not the way you’re doing it!” Her gaze flicked below his navel. “And the same social norms that govern having tea with strangers without your genitals on display apply here, too!”
With his towel on the opposite side of the bathroom and his hands occupied with the soap, Bradley dropped into the water to cover his nakedness.
“But this is my bath!” She shoved at him with her feet.
“A-and th-this is my b-bathroom!” Harassed and harangued, Bradley cuffed the water and splashed some right into her open mouth.
While the princess spat and sputtered, he kept her in the corner of his eye so he wouldn’t be caught unawares if she tried to bite him or something and hurriedly soaped up his armpits. Oh this morning was turning into one bona fide disaster, but it was still salvageable.
Or so he thought until the princess kicked a wave of water that clobbered him square in the face.
On the bright side, it rinsed the suds off his skin.
On the decidedly not bright side, it sloshed a considerable amount of water on the bathroom floor, something he didn’t have time to clean up and something Miss Penelope would definitely notice.
He would definitely be reprimanded, maybe even expelled from the tower.
Because if he couldn’t even maintain his own living quarters, then what kind of respect was he showing the rest of the tower, and by extension, Master Excelsior’s generosity?
That water was spit in his master’s face. That water was the fate of Bradley’s future.
The apprentice, overcome by this extrapolation, snapped.
Bradley lunged for the princess, and Millie immediately retaliated.
The next few precious minutes were consumed by a ferocious splash war.
More than one person’s modesty was exposed, more than one bruise was delivered—the entire ledge of bath accessories was knocked over, not to mention more than half the bathwater joined the little puddle already on the floor—but none of it mattered, because one of them was going to win, dammit!
Bradley seized the princess’s arm, swirled her around, and trapped her back against his chest.
“Sir! You will unhand me at once.”
To antagonize her, he wrapped his legs around hers so she couldn’t stomp on his instep again. Payback was like the ocean—a salty wench.
The princess growled and thrashed, but the apprentice had wrangled slippery things before, though none with such soft skin that smelled faintly of jasmine.
“You’re such a beast,” she shouted. “If I had my hairpin, you’d be—”
She bucked, her backside sliding against the tops of his thighs and slamming into his abdomen. It didn’t have the desired effect on him, but stimulated a completely different reaction.
Electricity sparked everywhere they touched, zinging through his blood. Every thought vanished from his head. Except one.
The one that would compromise everything.
Hells of the deep, he had to get away from her.
Bradley stood with the squirming princess still trapped in his arms, stepped out of the tub, and, deciding that victory was more important than the floodwaters upon the floor, dropped her ass-first back into the water with the largest splash yet.
“You festering cesspit of disease,” Millie hurled at him when she resurfaced. “You dishonorable, tedious fungus upon the armpit of civilization! Hey, that’s my towel.”
Of course it wasn’t, because yesterday she’d concentrated only on finding clothes and accessories to match her brand instead of acquiring mundane necessities like towels.
But the same rules that applied to the bath—it was hers because she had commandeered it—applied to the towel—it was hers by extension because it was needed after the commandeered bath.
The apprentice told her exactly what he thought of her pronouncement by spending an outrageous amount of time drying off his buttocks and those exposed genitals she kept harping about . . . before wrapping her towel low around his hips and stalking out of the room.
It took only a second of panicked listening to discover what he was up to—that fumbling noise was definitely her carefully organized shoes being tossed about haphazardly. The man was a monster—he could be scuffing the suede of her boots or ripping the satin of her slippers!
Millie scrambled out of the tub and peeked out from behind the door. “Don’t,” she cried as Bradley went from pile to pile and heaved it all onto the bed. “Those are all organized!”
When her protest went unheeded—the apprentice actually increased the speed of his tossing and throwing—and when he showed absolutely no regard for vintage lace or the silk with the hand-sewn pearl embroidery, Millie forgot her nakedness.
That was her brand, her spoils! The essence of the woman she was striving to become.
She rushed out from behind the door, plucked up a purple dancing slipper whose mate was buried somewhere in the mound upon the bed, and flung it at his back. “You uncultured barbarian! You—”
He spun around, blue eyes ablaze, and seized her wrists. “We don’t have time for this, Tula,” he shouted. “You must hide. Now!”
She halted as if she had been slapped; her brown eyes widened to resemble chocolate buttons. “Mr. Donmarin,” she gasped, “you didn’t stutter!”
The apprentice blinked, stunned by the truth of her words. Then, with no hesitation whatsoever, he said, “Dirk the Dangerous dozes dreamily deep in dungeons dank.”
The pair shared a laugh of disbelief, amazement, wonderment, and a whole host of related emotions. In the light of Bradley’s vocal victory, the two forgot that the apprentice was clad only in a towel and the princess he held had not a scrap on her and only her long auburn hair to hide behind.
“How,” Millie began, but the nearby cry of a predatory bird shattered everything.
Bradley’s grip tightened once again on her wrists. “You must hide. For Dirk.”
At that moment, she realized the state of her undress, and the princess darted away for some clothes, which were all heaped upon the bed or soaking up the water upon the bathroom floor.
“I’ll gladly hear your explanation for why I must hide after I procure a—”
“Th-th-there’s n-n-no t-t-time!” Hells of the deep, his stutter was back.
The apprentice finished heaping the rest of her plundered items onto the bed, plucked up all four corners of the quilt, and thrust open the closet doors. With a jerk of his chin, he gestured her inside.
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,” the princess hissed.
Bradley shoved the bulging quilt-sack into her hands, backed it and the buck-naked princess into the closet, and closed the doors.
He had to lean his whole weight against them, while the muffled protests of the squished princess berated him from inside, but soon the latches clicked into place. He locked the doors, just to be sure.
Retreating to the center of his bedroom, he stole a moment for a deep breath.
Touched the tips of his fingers to his lips.
He hadn’t stuttered. For just a moment, he had been his articulate, confident self.
And then it had all vanished. But he’d had a moment.
Was it a fluke, or a herald of what was to come?
A light thump above him scattered his excited thoughts like the sparks of a firework. That had to be the griffin landing on the balcony. He was out of time.
Bradley spun a tight circle. Was everything out of sight? Yes. Bradley shoved Small Magicks under his pillow and checked on the bathroom. Were all princesses this messy, or was Dirk’s just special that way? He tossed everything into the hamper, had to punch it all down so the lid would shut.
“Are you wrinkling my taffeta?” came a muffled shriek.
“Shhh!”
There was no time to clean the tub, but he could rinse out the sink and give the toilet a vigorous albeit brief swirl of the brush. Those tasks completed, he yanked the towel off his waist and used it to push all the water on the floor towards the backup drain beneath the tub.
“Bradley?” It was a familiar voice, feminine and authoritative, and tinged with curiosity. Or maybe suspicion. It also belonged to a woman whose time was precious and was not to be kept waiting.
“Bradley, darling, are you there?” the voice echoed through the stairwell, “Zora’s massively pregnant and I want to get her back to the aerie as soon as possible. Hello?”
The apprentice tossed the towel over the side of the tub, yanked on a spare set of underclothes and his old robe, and bolted out of his suite.
Miss Penelope Shrewsbury stood on the stairs just below the workroom, her gloved hand poised on the rim of the trapdoor for balance.
Her griffin, of the blue jay and snow leopard variety, peered down through the gap after her.
Bradley bobbed a hasty bow before taking the steps two at a time. “Sorry. B-b-bathroom.”
“Nature’s call must be obeyed,” Miss Penelope replied solemnly, turning around to head back into the workroom. She had to shove Zora’s inquisitive beak out of the way, and the griffin backed up with a squawk.
The apprentice followed, hoping against hope that Dirk had handled the ministry official as successfully as he had the princess, or the ruse was up, and they’d both be sent back to the College in disgrace.