Chapter Thirteen #2
hackles up, but he didn’t care, and was almost disappointed when
Ranulf stepped back.
“Why not?” Ranulf sneered
slyly. “The word got me under your lidi’s skirts. It should work for a
bit of information from you.”
He said it loud enough for all to
hear, playing to his audience as he had at Mallus, but this wasn’t
Mallus, and they weren’t in his father’s hall. Talon was done
talking with the braggart. He cut the steps between them when a
flash of elbows and cloth flew at Ranulf, someone shrieking like a
fury and smashing a lead pitcher up the side of his
head.
Ranulf crumpled to the ground, and
every man there stood speechless, staring at Hamm, whose fist still
clenched the pitcher, then at Ranulf, who lay unmoving and
groaning.
“He had no right,” Hamm
spat down at Ranulf. “No right to be saying those things about
her.”
The lad’s chin came up and so did his
gaze. Disbelief turned to certainty, then to anger as Talon stared
into hazel eyes sparking bright with amber and fringed with dark,
sooty lashes.
“You cut your hair,” he
said, and Hamm raised a slim hand to his greasy mop. “You go too
far, Lara.”
***
Lara
The captain scowled at Lara, his glare
daring her to defend herself, the scar on his cheek blazing white.
All around them the names Hamm and Lara were being spoken over and
over again, the voices changing in tone from surprised mumblings to
grumbling mad.
The captain jerked his head at
Phillipe. “No one is to go near the river until I
return.”
“Aye, Captain.”
He grabbed Lara by the arm. “You, with
me.”
“Where?” She almost
tripped as the captain pulled her away from the crowd of angry men,
and she glanced over her shoulder to the wagon where Plutarch stood
with a ladle in one hand and his short sword in the other, a dazed
expression on his face. “What are you going to do?”
“Drown me a
wildcat.”
Lara dug her heels in, but it did no
good. The captain only pulled harder, half dragging her over to his
bedroll and saddle. He dug into his saddlebag and palmed something
wrapped in linen and a clean tunic, then he pulled her to the
river, stopping at the shoreline and stuffing the small package in
her hand.
“In you go.” He nudged her
toward the water.
Lara eyed the freezing cold water.
“Now?”
The captain’s steely glare took her in
from boots to cap. “Now. Be sure to wash your hair. I’m not
smelling that greasy mop all night.”
Lara didn’t ask what he meant. She
didn’t dare. She stepped into the river, trying not to gasp as she
waded waist deep into the bone-chilling water. She spied a small
pool formed by a breakwater of large rocks upriver and made her way
to it. The package he’d given her was the bar of rose soap he’d
bought from her, which she’d assumed he’d intended for some other
woman.
She set the soap down on a rock and
eyed the pool. Shivering, she considered inching her torso down
into the water, but that would only prolong the inevitable. She
took a deep breath and dropped until her backside hit the river
bottom, her head completely submerged. Pushing up to her feet, she
shook the water from herself as she spit and cursed. “Jesus, Mary,
and Joseph it’s freezing.”
“Then quit your
caterwauling and start scrubbing.”
Teeth chattering, Lara glanced around
the pool as the captain gathered wood at the shore. She could wash
herself fully clothed and sit by the fire he was building to dry,
but that would take all night, and neither she nor the captain had
that kind of patience. Besides, if she was already going to be
soaking wet, she might as well get her body and her clothes as
clean as possible, and her clothes would dry much faster off her.
Plus, she could finally be free of her tortuous
bindings.
She peeled her jerkin off her
goose-pimpled body and then her under-tunic, breeches, and
breechcloth and laid them on the rocks, then glanced at the shore,
where the captain was tending his kindling fire. She attempted to
untie the knot to her bindings, but her fingers were too cold.
Biting her lower lip, she looked over at the captain as he stood
watching her.
“What?” he
barked.
Lara shook her head and worked harder
at the knot. The splash of water caught her attention and she
looked up. The captain strode through the river toward her, the
water darkening his leather breeches to the tops of his
thighs.
“Here.” He stopped in
front of her, so close she could have reached out and touched the
stubborn set of his jaw. “Let me.” He took the knot by each end,
and Lara glanced down quickly, grateful that the water came up to
her waist, hiding her nakedness below. “Don’t worry,” he said.
“You’ve got nothing I haven’t seen before.”
She didn’t know if he was speaking of
her in particular or women in general. Either way it brought hot
blood to her cheeks and chest as he deftly untied the soggy knot.
He held the loose ends out to her sides, and she took them in hand
and turned her back to him, waiting for him to leave the pool,
knowing better than to demand he return to the shore when he didn’t
move. Not with the mood he was in. Her fingers shaking from more
than the cold, she peeled the sweat-stained bindings
away.
“I hope you brought some
healing salve with you,” the captain said, his voice rough and
close. “You’ve got a few raw spots from the bindings.”
She dunked underwater, relishing the
numbing cold on her sores and an inner ache that had started
somewhere deep in her belly and moved lower. Coming back up, she
reached for the soap on the rock, only to find it gone. She looked
over her shoulder to where the captain stood no more than two paces
behind her, brandishing the soap with a determined set to his
jaw.
“Your back could use a
washing.”
Lara reached back to pull her hair up
but found only air and wet skin. She dropped her hands to her
sides, and the captain muttered something about manes to mops as
she stood waiting for the scrubbing that Sophie would’ve given her.
She almost jumped out of her skin at the first touch of his hands,