“There are visitors at St. Erth’s gates?”
“Nay, master. The visitors are right here.”
13
Philippa was shocked into numb silence. She didn’t move, but of course, she had no drier place to move to. Dienwald looked behind Northbert and saw Graelam de Moreton striding toward them, tell and powerful and well-garbed and clean, and he was staring toward Dienwald as if he’d grown two heads. And then he was staring at Philippa.
“God give you grace, Graelam,” Dienwald said easily. His eyes went to Kassia, standing now beside her husband, wrapped in a fine ermine-lined cloak of soft white wool. She looked beautiful, soft and sweet, her chestnut hair in loose braids atop her head. He saw she was trying very hard not to laugh. “Welcome to St. Erth, Kassia. I hope I see you well, sweet lady.”
Kassia couldn’t hold it back. She burst into laughter, hiccuping against her palm as she gasped out, “You sound like a courtier at the king’s court, Dienwald, suave and confident, while you lie sprawled in the mud . . . Ah, Dienwald, your face . . .”
Dienwald looked up at Philippa, who’d turned into a mud statue astride him. “Move, wench,” he said, grinning up at her. “As you see, we have visitors and must bestir ourselves to see to their comfort.”
Kassia, Philippa was thinking, her mind nearly as muddy as her body. Kassia, the lady that Dienwald held so dear to his wretched heart. And Philippa could understand his feelings for the slight, utterly feminine confection who stood well out of range of the mud puddle. That exquisite example of womanhood would
never, ever find herself sitting astride a man in a mud puddle. Philippa’s eyes went to Lord Graelam de Moreton, and she saw a man who would never yield, a man both fierce and hard, a man who was Kassia’s husband, bless his wondrous existence. She remembered now seeing him once at Beauchamp when she was very young. He’d been bellowing at her father about a tourney they were both to join near Taunton.
“Wench, move,” Dienwald said again, and as he spoke, he laughed, circled her waist with his hands, and lifted her off him. He carefully set her beside him in the mud.
She felt the black ooze sliding up her bottom.
“Graelam, why don’t you take your very clean wife into the hall. I will scrub myself and join you soon.”
“ ‘Twill take all the water in your well,” Graelam said, threw back his head, and laughed. “Nay, Dienwald, sling not mud at me. My lady just stitched me this fine tunic.” He laughed and laughed as he took his wife’s soft white hand in his and led her away, saying over his shoulder, “All right, but I begin to cherish that black face of yours. It grows closer to the color of your heart.”
Dienwald didn’t move until Graelam and Kassia, trailed by a half-dozen Wolffeton men-at-arms, had disappeared around the side of the weaving shed. He could hear Kassia’s high giggles and Graelam’s low rumbles of laughter.
Philippa hadn’t said a single word. She hadn’t made a sound, merely sat there in the mud, a study of silent misery.
Dienwald eyed her, then yelled for another bucket to be brought. “Get up, Philippa,” he said, and when she did, he continued, “Now, step out of the mud,” and when she did, he threw a bucket of cold water over her head. Philippa gasped and shivered and automatically rubbed the mud off her face. The late-April air was chill, but she hadn’t realized it until now.
After three more buckets she was ready for the soap.
“You will have to remove the tunic soon,” he said, then called for Old Agnes to fetch two blankets. He looked at the score of people staring at them, laughing behind their hands, and roared, “Out of here, all of you! If I see any of you in two seconds, you’ll feel the flat of my sword on your buttocks!”
“Aye,” Crooky yelled, “but the wenches would much enjoy that kind of play.”
Dienwald bellowed again, and soon he and Philippa were alone standing on the plank of lumber, scrubbing themselves with the newly made soap. Dienwald had simply stripped off his clothes. He looked up at Philippa, his face clean and grinning. “I’ve dismissed everyone, wench—you heard and saw. Take off the gown now.”
She did, without comment, seeing no hope for it, and together they washed and scrubbed and threw water on each other. At one point Dienwald paused, looking at her, beautifully naked in the April sunshine, and pulled her against him. He didn’t kiss her, merely soaped his hands. Philippa felt his large hands soaping down her back and over her buttocks. She felt his soapy fingers sliding between her legs and tensed, but his touch seemed impersonal.
It wasn’t, but Dienwald wasn’t about to let her know that. When he’d finished, Philippa cleaned his back, her touch more tentative than his had been. He stared at the mud puddle, then thought of the eyes that were probably watching them at this very minute.
Once dry, they wrapped themselves in the blankets. Dienwald looked at Philippa, her face scrubbed pink, her hair plastered around her head, and he thought her exquisite. He said instead, looking once again toward the mud puddle, “You made me feel very young with our play. Do you wish to come into the hall and meet our guests?”
Speak to Lady Kassia, Philippa thought. She would feel like a great bumbling fool, like a huge ungainly blanket-wrapped beggar gawking next to a snow princess in her white cloak. She shook her head and swallowed her misery.
“They are my friends,” Dienwald said, not seeing the misery, only the stubbornness.
“Not yet, if it pleases you.”
“Very well,” he said, her respectful tone softening him. “But if you wish to meet them, I would ask that you not tell them your name or that you’re my prisoner.”
“Then what am I?” she asked, irritation now writ clear in her voice.
Dienwald paused at that. So much for respect and deference from her. “My washerwoman?”
“No.”