Chapter 19
ERIKA STARED ATthe large wooden bath with baleful eyes. Steam rose from it. It looked deliriously inviting. But it was set in the center of the room, with the bed not so many feet distant. And Selig might be lying there with his eyes closed, still on his stomach, but she didn’t for a moment believe him sleeping this time.
The servant Eda had untied her. Clean clothes, along with washing and drying cloths, waited atop a stool for her use. Beside it were shoes, not hers. Someone had noticed she was lacking.
Erika hadn’t moved from her position in the corner, except to rub her limbs when the ropes had come off. She still couldn’t bring herself to move. She had said she would bathe here. The alternative was unthinkable. Yet she couldn’t garner the nerve required to actually do it, now that the time was at hand.
She could run. She wasn’t restrained. No one else was in the room except Selig, and he could never rise quickly enough to stop her. But the stairs led to the hall below, and the only exit she had seen was across thatlong length of hall. She had nowhere to run to that she wouldn’t be brought back from and subjected to worse than this. But this…
“Ivarr can still be summoned.”
As she thought; not sleeping, waiting. And what he waited for was to experience her humiliation. If she had not hated him before, she did now.
“You are despicable!”
“A matter of opinion, and yours is irrelevant. Do I summon Ivarr?”
He rolled onto his side, facing her, to hear her answer. Those gray eyes rested on her without mercy. It would be pointless to ask for some. This was part of his revenge, a minor part to him, but not so minor to her. Yet he would have it with or without her cooperation, and the indifference in his tone said he really didn’t care which way it was to be.
Erika got slowly to her feet. She could have wished for concealing night, for candles, instead of the bright light of late afternoon coming in through the open window. No such luck for her. The most she could do was keep her back to him and pretend he was not there. Enjoy the bath. Deny him her blushes. Think of other things.
All she managed was to keep her back to him as she disrobed.
The tub was large in its roundness, not its depth. It came only to her knees. A short bathing stool had been set in the center of it, just barely covered by the foot of water she had been allowed. She disdained the useof it, preferring to bury herself as deep in the tub as she could. He permitted that for only a few minutes.
“Wash your hair.”
She was so rattled by the entire situation, she wouldn’t have thought to do that. But she hated being told to.Orderedwas more like it. What would happen if she refused? Ivarr, of course. Selig was going to hold that damn Viking over her head like a whip.
It took a while to get her braids undone, after so many days and so much dirt matting them. She had to sit up to do it, but once her hair was loose, she dropped down to her back to submerge her head, briskly rubbing her itching scalp under the water before she came up to cover it with the soft soap.
There had been only one bucket of water left for her to rinse with, so she had to save it until she was done. But three times she soaped her hair, until she was satisfied it was clean, so three times she had to dunk her head to rinse it. By the time she finished, a layer of soap scum floated on the water, but she had yet to wash herself.
Ordinarily she would have stood up to finish. Sitting in water turned dirty was distasteful at any time, and this time was no different. The reason for the stool. But she refused to sit or stand, which meant she had to wrap her hair in a towel to keep it out of the dirty water. She had to get up on her knees to do that, and was bright pink again before she was able to duck back down below the rim of the tub.
“You will not get clean in that filthy water.”
He was guessing. He couldn’t see it. “The water is clear enough,” she said, but needn’t have bothered. He had decided on further torment for her, and nothing she said would deter him from it.
“Stand up,” he commanded. “Should you ever have the opportunity for a private bath, I need to be assured you know how to wash yourself properly. I will not have my mother’s nose offended again.”
She wondered if giving her these ridiculous excuses was part of his game. Was she supposed to argue with him, remind him that she was not a Saxon, many of whom superstitiously thought bathing an unhealthy practice? His excuses were worth arguing over. Even “offending” his mother with her stench, which he was ultimately responsible for. They had crossed rivers, camped near creeks, but she had not been allowed to wash in them as everyone else had.
His excuses begged for argument. She could at least deny him that.
She stood up, carefully keeping her back to him. The hot color came anyway. She couldn’t help that. But she was actually feeling somewhat triumphant. She had thwarted him. She wasn’t sure what his true goal had been, probably no more than a further demonstration of his power over her. But she had defeated his purpose.
He laughed softly, which unnerved her, told her he didn’t really care about her temporarytriumph, that he had other avenues to reach the same goal available to him. She braced herself, expecting the hatchet to fall immediately. It did.
“Turn around, wench. You have a nice ass, but I want to see what else my new slave possesses.”
“I am not a slave,” Erika whispered fiercely to herself.
“What was that?”
“I am not a slave!”
“As I said, your opinion is irrelevant. You will still do as you are told. Protests on your part will be dealt with, and not to your liking.”
