The Rose at Twilight Read Online Free PDF

Indeed, even at Drufield, I was accustomed to share my bathwater only with the other girls who fostered there. Men did not enter our chamber upon such occasions except to fill and to empty the tubs.”
    “Even as a duke, your liege lord behaved in a right royal manner, I’m thinking,” he said, still looking directly at her, “and seems to have allowed those in his charge to do likewise.”
    Much though Alys would have liked to debate the subject with him, she felt too much at a disadvantage, too vulnerable in her present position. Jonet continued to scrub her back, ignoring their visitor, but Alys feared that she would rub the skin right off if she worked at it much longer. She looked pleadingly at the Welshman, noting the twinkle in his eyes and the way his lips turned upward at the corners. He was amused.
    “I should take it kindly in you, sir, if you would be so generous as to grant me my privacy,” she said quietly. “Truly, ’tis what I am accustomed to, and your presence does disturb me.”
    “Does it, wench?” His voice sounded lower, throbbingly so, and she saw the tip of his tongue dart to touch the back of his teeth. He had not turned his head away.
    The warmth that began in her cheeks spread rapidly through her entire body, heating it as the water had not done, stirring her nerves to tingling just beneath the surface of her skin. She could feel her heart beating—no, thudding—in her breast, and when he continued to gaze down at her, it was as though his large hands reached out to caress her, as though he touched her in places where even Jonet had never dared to touch her before.
    “Please, sir,” she whispered, unable to speak the words clearly. She looked away.
    “Aye, mistress.” His voice sounded hoarse. “I’ll go.”
    A moment later he was gone, and she breathed a sigh of relief. No man had gazed upon her naked body since she had left Wolveston nine years before. In fact, she could not remember the last time one had done so, but she was as certain as she could be that the looking had never stirred such feelings in her as she was feeling now. Even now that he had gone, the tingling continued, though it seemed to have focused itself in one particular area of her anatomy. She squirmed in the tub.
    “Straighten up now, Miss Alys,” Jonet said, “so that I might soap the rest of thee.”
    “I’ll do it,” Alys said quickly, taking the sponge and rapidly soaping her breasts and stomach, then rinsing herself. “The water turns cold, Jonet. Fetch my towel. And stop talking to me as though I were four years old.”
    “Aye, mistress.”
    Jonet hurried to do as she was bid, and Alys stood, keeping a wary eye on the door, fearing that Sir Nicholas, or even one of his men, might enter again. No one did, however, and she was soon wrapped in a large rough towel. At her command, Jonet unearthed a French surcoat from one of the coffers, and with that over her linen smock and woolen overdress, she was nearly as warm as she would have been in her own cloak, or in Merion’s, which still lay in a tumbled heap on the floor where he had dropped it.
    “Shall I call in the lads now to empty the tub, my lady?”
    “Aye,” Alys agreed, “and we will go stand out by the fire.” Lifting the front of her skirt, which had been hemmed long enough to puddle fashionably about her feet, even in clogs, she turned, pushed aside the flap with her free hand, and stepped outside.
    She half expected Merion to take exception to their joining the others, particularly since she had refused to wear the cloak he had brought her, but he just smiled at her. She was grateful then for the darkening gloom, because her cheeks warmed again the moment he glanced at her and she found it difficult to think of anything but the moment inside when he had stood gazing down upon her naked body like a hound eyeing a favorite bone.
    Looking at him from beneath her lashes, she noted as she had before that he was a handsome man and strong.