Someday.
But Asa didn’t seem to be in any hurry.
As Melusine passed through the bailey, she heard someone calling to her. Turning toward the sound of her name, she could see Christin coming up behind her.
“Good morn, my lady,” Christin greeted her pleasantly. “I wanted to tell you how much we enjoyed your food last night.”
Melusine liked Lady de Sherrington, at least what she knew of her. She’d had a chance to speak with the woman at the feast last night before the chaos erupted, and she found Lady de Sherrington to be kind and curious.
A nice lady… for an English lass.
“I am glad to know that,” Melusine said. “The cook and kitchen servants worked hard on the meal, so I will tell them that you appreciated it.”
Christin nodded. “Please do,” she said. Then she glanced around the bailey. “I was looking for Lady Leominster. Have you seen her?”
Melusine nodded. “I was just going to her,” she said, pointing in the direction of the kitchen yard. “She is off to wash clothing.”
Christin’s brow furrowed. “Washing?” she repeated. “Does she not have a maid for that?”
Melusine shook her head. “She prefers to do it herself,” she said. “She considers it a wifely duty.”
Christin grinned. “Ah,” she said. “Then I shall go with you. My brother is a very lucky man to have married such an industrious woman. Has she always been like that?”
They began walking toward the kitchen yard as Melusine nodded her head. “Always,” she said. “Ever since she was a child, she has been very busy. She is not afraid to sweep a floor or pick up a sword in equal measure. She is brave and determined.”
Christin laughed softly. “I think I have seen a bit of that,” she said. “My father told me how my brother and his wife met. Did she really throw him off the wall in battle?”
Melusine grinned in spite of herself. “That is what I have heard, too,” she said. “As Elle tells the story, she saw a very big knight come to the top of the ladder as he prepared to mount the wall. She was so angry that she charged him, and they both fell off the wall together.”
Christin had to cover her mouth to keep from laughing out loud. “God’s Bones,” she muttered. “And I thought I was bold.”
“Are you?” Melusine said, having no real idea of Christin’s background. “Your mother seems to be a direct sort of woman, too.”
Christin half nodded, half shrugged. “My parents met in much the same way that Curtis and his wife met,” she said. “I think it is in the blood with de Lohr women to be rude to the man you are going to marry when you first meet him.”
“Were you rude to your husband?”
Christin did laugh out loud then. “The great Alexander de Sherrington?” she said, feigning shock. “Surely not. I was so in awe of him I could hardly speak.”
They were walking past the western side of the great hall at that point, with the kitchen yard directly ahead. There was a wall around the yard, covered with vines, and a gate in the middle of it. Melusine led Christin toward the gate.
“Then if you could hardly speak to him, how did you convince him to marry you?” Melusine asked with genuine curiosity. “Did your father speak to him?”
Christin shook her head, frowning. “My father did not want us to marry,” she said as they reached the gate. “He thought Sherry to be too old for me.”
“Was he?”
Christin reached out and opened the gate before stepping through with Melusine. “Of course not,” she said, her attention moving to the kitchen yard and the search for Lady Leominster. “He was just the right age. In fact, he…”
Her sentence ended unnaturally fast as she spied something over near the laundry. A servant was holding someone down into the laundry basin. Someone in a linen dress who was struggling fiercely. Melusine’s gaze fell on the same scene, and she immediately screamed, which spurred Christin into action.
She took off at a dead run.
Christin had been trained for survival and protection. She wasn’t a wilting flower or a weak woman. She was a de Lohr, and they were the best of the best, the toughest women in England. A servant was clearly trying to drown a woman, and her instincts took over. As she ran for the laundry basin, she grabbed the first weapon she came across, which was a heavy piece of wood for the fire beneath the great cauldron in the kitchen yard. It was a rough piece of wood, with small branches sticking out of it like spikes, and she ran at the servant, who had yet to see her.
She used that to her advantage.
Flying up on the servant’s blind side, she swung the wood with all her might, right at his head. She ended up catching him in the neck, causing him to stagger away from the struggling body he’d been on top of. As the person came up for air with a great, ragged gasp and Christin saw that it was Lady Leominster, she charged the servant again and hit him twice more in the face and chest with the wood. It was enough to send him backward and rip the cowl from his head. As he fell to his knees, Christin got a look at his face.
