Chapter 48
WHY LAUNDRY IS AN ABOMINABLE CHORE, UNEXPECTED KINDNESS, AND TEASING POSSIBILITIES
“I am not selfish,” Millie muttered.
Having returned to the sorcerer apprentice’s suite after her afternoon tea with Dirk, she snatched up her clothes from where they lay scattered about the bedroom. The stink of fermented sweat like sourdough starter left to rot on the counter had her sprinting for the nearest window.
She could never unsmell that.
As she sucked in a few breaths that would’ve been far more refreshing if they weren’t so blisteringly hot, she watched Dirk the Dangerous battle a Hero astride a white destrier.
Despite the horse’s large size, it moved agilely across the shifting sand.
The beast gave the Hero a considerable advantage, until the dragon knocked him clean out of the saddle with a bash of his tail.
“Good boy, Dirk.” She was glad he was feeling better after their impromptu tea. Her mood had soured, though, when she’d returned to the suite and found the evidence backing Bradley’s accusation strewn about the room.
Piss and plagues, how she missed servants.
Pinching her nose and squinting her eyes, for the fumes were exceptionally potent, Millie collected the rest of her offending attire and stuffed them into the tub.
Their odors blossomed into their fullest and finest bouquets in the hot water, that is to say, vile enough to slap the nasty attitude right out of a rattlesnake.
Millie rushed to her reticule beside the bed, extracted the dwindling bottle of jasmine perfume, and sprayed some directly into her nostrils.
Then, with a handkerchief soaked in the perfume masking the lower half of her face, she returned to do battle with her laundry.
And Bradley’s, too, as she’d tossed the contents of his hamper in there to prove she was indeed a saint of generosity and thoughtfulness.
She’d found a box of detergent under the kitchen sink and gave the sludge in the tub a thorough sprinkling (she emptied half the box).
Now what? Millie assumed it was like washing her hands for supper after her latest adventure in the forest—agitation and scrubbing were needed to lather the soap and get the filth off her skin.
She pushed out her lower lip as she thought about how best to accomplish that feat, fingers drumming on her hips.
There was always the washboard she’d seen when she’d first met Bradley on the balcony all those weeks ago, but she didn’t know where it was and she refused to seek him out.
She didn’t need that condescending apprentice’s help for anything.
It wasn’t her fault that she didn’t know how to do her laundry or remember to pick up after herself or clear her dishes every time.
Servants had always accomplished those tasks for her, and such things seemed trivial when compared to her training to become a pirate.
Trivial, but not unnecessary, she had come to learn from Bradley’s tirade.
But she hadn’t realized any of that until he’d brought it to her attention, however unreasonably harshly, in her opinion.
The wash water had muddied to a gray purple, reminding her of the time she’d watched the peasant women squishing grapes with their bare feet at a wine festival.
With their hems tucked into their belts, the women revealed long strong legs as they stomped the Wine Press Dance in circles around the wooden tub.
Nearby, a bard played his lute and sang an accompanying folk song.
Millie remembered the smiles and giggles of the grown women acting like frolicsome youths as they stomped the grapes into juice.
Inspired, she hiked her own skirts up into her belt, stepped into the tub, and got to stomping.
The clothes swirled and the detergent foamed, and Millie’s sense of accomplishment grew as the waters turned darker and darker.
She didn’t remember the bard’s folk song, but she sang what she remembered of Madame Palferoi’s “Bouncing Breasts of the Busty Barmaid.”
“So lift your mugs, let the ale flow free,
Salute the lass who brings such glee!
For who can brawl or stay downcast,
When the barmaid’s charms go bouncing past?”
Laughing, she stomped the dirty laundry some more and sang the bawdy chorus at the top of her lungs. Her voice petered out after the third downcast as a stinging sensation prickled her skin. She lifted a leg, eyes widening as skin red as Calumbria’s famous Empress tulips emerged from the water.
Contact with the air electrified the sensation, and Millie threw herself out of the tub with a howl. It was the burn of a thousand suns, a skillet full of hot bacon grease, a bonfire’s worth of coals against her skin, a forestful of stinging nettles.
The bedroom door burst open. “Tula!”
Bradley dashed into the bathroom, wildness in his blue eyes.
He took one look at her whimpering on the floor with her skirts bunched up to the tops of her thighs and her legs red and blistering, another at the tub full of filthy water.
He snatched up the box of detergent, gave it an experimental shake.
“Damn it, Tula, how much of this did you use?”
He shucked off his robe and plunged his arm into the tub to pop the drain. Quickly, he rinsed his skin off under the faucet.
“Dirk,” she wailed. “I need Dirk.”
“He’s outside battling one of your Heroes,” Bradley snapped. “You have me, Tula.”
He hissed an exhale through gritted teeth, realizing the tub was draining too slowly from the mass of clothes. With a grunt, Bradley heaved the clot out onto the floor, and the drain eagerly guzzled the caustic water.
By now, Millie was nearly incoherent and blubbering. Bradley cast her a twisted look in between rinsing out the tub. “Hold on, Tula,” he growled.
When it was free of detergent, Bradley bent and slung the princess’s arm around his shoulders.
He hoisted her into the tub, ripped the skirt off her, and tossed it into the heap on the floor.
She flinched, but she didn’t attempt to cover herself when Bradley knelt and filled up the bath ladle.
He sluiced her skin over and over with lukewarm water, occasionally running a hand brusquely down her legs to check for any detergent residue.
Her fingernails dug into the cotton undershirt at his shoulders as she fought to maintain her balance.
Her feet hurt something fierce, worse than the rest of her.
Suddenly, Bradley sniffed. “Do you smell something burning?”
“Crone’s Crooked Tits! That’ll be the scones.”
“The what?”
“There are scones in the oven.”
The apprentice thrust the bath ladle into her hand and bolted for the kitchen.
Millie collapsed into the tub and continued to rinse herself with the ladle, trying her best not to look at her inflamed skin. She turned the water to its coldest setting and shivered with relief as her legs grew numb. Numb was far better than being eaten alive by a million invisible fire ants.
A few minutes later, when her teeth had begun to chatter, the apprentice returned smelling faintly of charred pastry.
“D-don’t look at m-me,” she told him. Her sodden knickers were nothing but translucent tissue paper now.
He rolled his eyes and smacked off the faucet. “You’re not supposed to use cold water—you could go into shock!”
“B-but it felt s-s-so good.”
“Tula,” he said, exasperated. He flapped his fingers. “C’mon. Out.”
“I-I—”
With a huff, he bent and hauled her out with little regard to whiplash or propriety.
With her slung over his shoulder, he grabbed his towel off its hook, slapped it against her ass, and headed into the bedroom.
Business-like, he set her down beside the bed, wrapped the towel around her waist, and shoved her back on the mattress.
“Pat yourself dry. Don’t rub. I’ll be back in a second. ”
Grumbling at his high-handedness, she obeyed as he set the bathroom to rights.
Clothes went into the tub to soak, he mopped up the water from the bathroom floor, washed his hands and arms, then rooted around in the cabinet beneath the bathroom sink.
He returned with a pot of aquamarine-colored glass with a white scallop shell for a lid.
“Now what the hells happened.”
Millie crossed her arms over her chest and looked to the window, finally registering the sounds of battle. “How’s Dirk?”
“Enjoying a pathetically uneven fight in his favor.” He snapped his fingers for her attention. “Don’t change the subject—explain.”
She flung him a look. “I was doing my laundry, obviously.”
“Where did you find that detergent?” The mattress indented as he sat and shifted to face her. With a careful touch, he lifted the scallop-shaped lid.
“In the back of the cupboard under the kitchen sink. I found it when I was looking for more bar soap. That sponge is too feisty for its own good.”
“There was a reason it was shoved in the back, Tula. It’s concentrated lye soap.” He tossed back the folds of the towel to reveal her legs.
Millie quickly covered them back up. The cheek of this man! She had no problem flashing a bit of skin at him to make him blush, but only when she chose to. “Well I didn’t know that, did I?”
“And that catastrophe in the oven?” Bradley moved the towel again, smacked her hands away when she tried to stop him.
“I was trying to make scones. You know, for breakfast? Or an afternoon snack, though they really aren’t as fitting for tea as I hoped they’d be. They soften too quickly when they’re dunked.” She flapped the towel over her legs and gave the handsy apprentice a whack. “And what are you doing, sir?”
“You want the healing balm or not?”
“I’m fully capable of treating my own legs, thank you very much.”
“I’ve seen you with my bath oils—absolutely no restraint. This was made by my mother with seaweed from the Crystal Sea. No way am I letting you get your hands on this. Now hold still.”
She yanked the letter opener from her corset. “I will use this.”