Crusader's Lady. Lynna Banning
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his. ‘Look again.’
It was an order, not a polite request. Marc understood at once. Richard would be private with the Templar grand master.
‘You are right,’ Marc amended. ‘Young Soray looks to be in need of…direction.’ In truth, young Soray had things well in hand, but Marc quickly excused himself and started across the hall toward the servants’ table.
‘De Valery!’ the grand master abruptly called at his back.
Marc halted.
‘I would not wish you to roam freely about this keep. My servant will conduct you to your guest quarters.’
A moment of silence, then the low murmur of voices resumed, the disguised king’s and the grand master’s. What mischief was Richard stirring up now?
A paunchy, grey-haired man in a white surcoat appeared out of the gloom, sidestepping both hounds and refuse without breaking his stride. ‘This way, sir knight. Follow me.’
Marc stopped at the servants’ table and spoke at Soray’s back. ‘Come on, lad. To bed.’
Soray scrambled off the bench, resisting the impulse to throw her arms around her rescuer. ‘Oh, thank you, lord. Thank you!’
‘That tired, are you?’ he said, an edge in his low voice.
‘Oh, no, not tired,’ she blurted. ‘But I have been…quite busy here.’
‘Ah,’ said her knight. ‘Commendable aim you have.’
She gaped up at him. ‘You saw?’
‘I saw.’
Soraya flinched. His world, even the small part of it she had seen, was ugly beyond words, full of rudeness and noise and awful smells. She hated it.
But she did not hate him. On the contrary, she was beginning to like him. He roared and grumbled, but he did not strike. He fed her, warmed her at his fire, protected her from angry merchants…even laughed at her remarks. Apparently he found her acceptable company.
She followed him out of the great hall and up a winding staircase, the stone steps unevenly worn with long use. Up and up it went, curving always to her right. By the second landing, she was so dizzy she feared she would stagger off the edge. Blindly she reached out toward her knight, caught a handful of his tunic and held on.
‘Better than the tail of a horse, is it?’ he said over his shoulder. The amusement she heard in his rough voice made her grin.
‘Much better, lord,’ she said at his back. ‘A horse could never climb such steps as these.’
He chuckled and shortened his steps. ‘But a horse has no need for guest quarters in a Templar keep.’
They both laughed.
On the next landing, the grey-haired man led them down a short hallway, through a wooden door that screeched on rusty hinges and into a small chamber with a single window cut into the stone wall.
‘Here it is, my lord,’ the man puffed. ‘Fine view. See all over the city, you can.’ He surveyed Soraya with a measuring eye. ‘Mind you don’t lean out too far past the shutters, boy. Many a young page has found himself swimming upside down in the moat.’
She stared at the window and fought down a shudder.
‘Anything you be wantin’ from the kitchen my lord?’
‘Hot water and soap,’ de Valery replied.
‘I’ll send it up with a page. Don’t think I can manage this climb more than once a night.’
Water and soap? ‘You would bathe?’ she blurted. Here, in front of her?
‘I would,’ he snapped.
‘Now?’
‘Aye, lad, now,’ he growled with impatience. ‘What better time?’
The old man started for the door. ‘You’ll be wantin’ a large tub for the likes of one tall as yerself. I’ll see to it.’
From the rank smell of bodies in the dining hall, she knew that knights did not bathe often. She caught her lower lip between her teeth. In a few moments de Valery intended to disrobe; as his servant she would be expected to help him shed his garments and then…
She swallowed hard. She had never before seen a full-grown man naked.
‘What ails you, lad? Help me get these boots off.’
She ducked her head and tugged at the spurs and the tarnished buckles on his blackened leather boots.
Chapter Nine
It took seven buckets of steaming water to fill the wooden tub. The last servant, panting from his exertions, set a bowl of soap, a cloth and a towel on the floor next to the tub, and by the time the door closed after him, the knight was shrugging off his tunic.
‘Open the window. I smell like no rose.’
‘Oh, no, lord, you smell just as you should!’ The words spattered out of Soraya’s mouth like sand blown in a wind-storm. ‘You need not bathe at all. You smell…just like a rose. A musky one, like the pink rose my uncle Khalil trained over an—’
‘Enough!’ he roared. He began stripping his legs free of the mail stockings. Soraya looked everywhere but at him, the fireplace set deep in the thick stone wall where lazy flames threw out a flickering light; the simple rope chair upon which he draped his discarded garments.
‘Don’t stand goggling, boy. Give me a hand with this mail and my hauberk.’
Soraya stepped forward. Don’t think. Just do as you must. Three hard tugs and the mail shirt rolled off his torso with a soft crunch. Then she untied the laces of the padded hauberk underneath.
‘The window,’ he reminded, his voice tight.
She swung the shutters as wide as they would go, gulped in the soft, scented night air. Below her, the moat gurgled as if in warning.
She was his servant, but she could not look at him. When she finally gathered her courage and turned back to the knight, he stood before her completely naked. She caught her hand to her mouth.
His body was beautiful, his chest hard-muscled, his waist narrow. His entire form looked lean and hard, as if chiseled out of stone. In spite of herself, her gaze drifted lower, to his battle-scarred thighs. And his…
Oh, my. Her breath whistled in through her teeth. That, too, was handsomely formed.
She looked away. ‘My uncle Khalil has a fine house,’ she stuttered. ‘In Damascus. With fine carpets and hammered silver chests, and the linen always spotless. And—’
‘What on earth are you chattering about?’
‘I was speaking of my uncle’s house,’ she said quickly. She knew she was talking nonsense to a knight who cared nothing about the house in Damascus, but it was all she could think of to distract herself. ‘I had a private bathing pool in my quarters. Heated. I bathed ev—’
‘You had your own quarters, did you?’ he said, his voice sharp. ‘A servant? Huh! You are a skillful liar, boy, but you do not fool me.’
He made a half turn away from her and lifted one bare foot into the tub. She forced her gaze to the floor, inspected the bowl of soap, the linen towel. She heard a splash and a groan of satisfaction, and she could not resist raising her head.
He was leaning back against the edge of the tub, eyes closed, a tired smile on his lips. ‘Start at my neck,’ he said in a drowsy voice.
Soraya went perfectly still. He wanted her to…touch him? Touch the naked flesh of a man?
‘Soray?’ came the grumbly voice. ‘Make haste, lad.’
She knelt quickly beside the tub, reached for