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 the cloth and lifted the bowl of soap. It was runny and smelled of sheep fat. She looked at his chest, at the bulges of muscle, the sprinkling of black hairs around his flat, brown nipples, his bare forearms resting on the tub edge. A peculiar feeling lodged deep in her belly.
‘One moment, lord,’ she murmured. She could not sully his wondrous body with soap such as this. She set the wooden bowl down. Yanking open the leather pouch she carried under her tunic, she poured in half a palmful of aromatic rosemary leaves, then plunged her hand in the mess and squashed the herbs into it. When it smelled fresh and pungent instead of rancid, she scooped up a glob with two fingers and dribbled it onto his bare skin.
‘Ah, smells good,’ he said.
‘So will you within the hour,’ she said without thinking.
‘So I do stink, do I?’ He laughed softly. ‘Small wonder. One Christian legion could flatten an entire army of Saracens just from the stench of our bodies.’
He did not stink. He smelled of sweat and leather, and his breath, when he blew it out, smelled of wine. But he did not stink.
He smelled like a man.
Marc did not open his eyes when the soap drizzled onto his chest. It smelled different, spicy and pleasant. He smiled to himself and began to let his body take its ease. He had managed to get King Richard safely to Cyprus. Also, after months of drinking sour ale, he was tasting good wine. And the soothing attentions of Soray, scrubbing gently at a month’s caked filth, were calming.
He opened his lids. ‘War is a dirty business. A warrior fights not only the enemy, but heat, desert sand, exhaustion, thirst, even hunger, while kings and princes negotiate behind each other’s backs and make secret bargains. Grasping power-seekers, the lot of them.’
‘Saladin is reported to be honest,’ the boy ventured. ‘And chivalrous.’
Marc huffed. ‘Saladin wants to hold Jerusalem at any cost. He is like a patient desert ant—truce or no, he will find a way, through force or chicanery. Or both.’
His servant uttered not one word. The rough cloth traveled back and forth across his chest, and when he leaned forward, it slid up and down his back from neck to tailbone. The lad might be unfamiliar with the ways of knights and armies, but he understood something about bathing. Marc turned one ear toward his bent knee to allow the boy to scrub his scalp and again he closed his eyes.
He was more tired than he had thought. So tired his brain was muddling things together, the scented soap, the sweet, warm air flowing in through the open casement, the feel of a hand other than his own giving attention to his body. It was soothing. Almost caressing.
He sat upright with a groan.
‘What is wrong, lord?’
‘Nothing,’ he grated. ‘Everything. I have been months without a woman.’
The washcloth halted and Soray sat back suddenly.
‘A woman?’
‘Aye. You are too young to know of such things.’
A look passed over his servant’s white face. ‘I have heard that other warriors, Christians, take Saracen women.’
‘Aye. They say such women are soft-skinned and perfumed. And skilled in dancing. And other things.’
‘And
