wandering down to the pouting softness of her lips. Equally alluring was the telltale prominence of the two hard buds of flesh straining against the sea-green velvet of her gown. A corresponding hardness in his own body was giving him some reason for distraction, and for the briefest of moments he allowed himself to recall the taste and feel of her, and the sound of the ragged little gasps that had almost been his undoing the other night in the garden.
He drew a deep, cleansing breath to fill his lungs, then flexed his arms. “Friar’s skill seems to have taken a heavier toll on my old wounds than I had supposed. I have in my mind a hot soak would ease them.”
“A hot soak? As with every other basic convenience you have so thoughtfully provided, both tub and hot water are but dim memories.”
“If I could provide you with both? Would you then play hostess to my aching muscles?”
Servanne was instantly on guard and this time her gaze climbed as high as the sardonic grin tugging at his lips. Playing hostess by way of assisting a man to bathe was a duty often performed by the chatelaine of a castle, paying honour to a visiting guest of importance. But this was no castle, she was not the chatelaine of the forest, and this pagan renegade was of no importance to anyone but himself! Furthermore, there was no bath anywhere on or near the abbey grounds. Biddy had already conducted a most thorough search and there had been no receptacle large enough to escape her keen nose.
He was still grinning—a grin that was widening over her perplexed expression.
“Would you not even condescend to scrub my back?” he murmured. “Tsk tsk. Poor Sir Hubert. Was he made to groan and grovel to you each time he sought to beg a favour?”
Servanne’s eyes flicked up to his, driven by a reckless sparkle of disdain. “Sir Hubert never had to beg for anything. All I did for him, I did gladly and willingly, and … with the greatest of pleasure.”
It was the Wolf’s turn to stare, for she had melted her tongue around the words greatest and pleasure, and had done so with enough relish to win snickers of delight from Mutter and Stutter.
“An obliging wife and hostess, were you?”
“Obliging … and eager.”
“I would see some of this saintly domesticity firsthand,” he mused, the silkiness of his voice as deceiving as the stillness of his body. “Come. The thought of a bath grows in appeal.”
Servanne flinched as if it were a hot coal being extended toward her instead of a hand. “Certainly not!”
“No? Do I still frighten you, my lady?” he asked with mocking indulgence.
“Not by half so much as your incredible arrogance would lead you to believe, wolf’s head,” she retorted.
“My arrogance?” he laughed softly. He turned away, leading Servanne to believe she had emerged from the fray unscathed, but in the next gasped breath, she felt her hand firmly grasped in his, her arm stretched nearly out of its socket, and her wimple flung end over end to blind her as she was lifted like a sack of grain and slung over his shoulder.
Shrieking with indignation, she was carried across the courtyard, her hands beating against his back, her feet kicking and her limbs wriggling in outraged mortification. Biddy’s screams echoed her own for a moment or two, along with her rushing footsteps, but both were silenced under a round of hearty laughter.
Upended in this inglorious manner, Servanne was bounced, jostled, and manhandled perfunctorily through the garden and out the breach in the wall. She knew they were walking through the forest by the crunching underfoot and the saplings that snagged the folds of her wimple. She surmised they were skirting the bank of the Silent Pool when she rode out the sickening descent along the crumbled embankment.
He did not stop there as she expected, but kept walking, entering deep thick brush again and lurching down yet another, steeper incline. The bright sunlight they passed through at the pool disappeared, smothered under a dark, damp blanket of shadow. The muscles across his shoulder and back tensed as he used his falchion to hack a path through the underbrush, but by then, so much blood had rushed to fill her head, there was no room for questions, fears, or recriminations. Servanne’s body went limp. Her hands lost their frenzied grip on his shirttails and started to slip down, hanging as forlornly as the