The Dragon's Price (Transference #1)(50)
“Something else noteworthy,” Melisande says, and my eyes pop open, “is the way you stood there and let me, a perfect stranger, undress you. Most women would balk at having someone strip them down to their bare skin.” She kneels beside the tub and dunks me under the water. When I come up, she starts talking again. “It is said that Faodarian royalty are waited on hand and foot, even when dressing and undressing.” She wrinkles her nose and runs a cake of soap over my head. I blink at her. “I know you had a sponge bath before your wedding, yet still you stink like you’ve been rolling in coals and old blood,” she explains. “But you don’t stink quite as badly as the young horse lord Golmarr, son of King Marrkul of Anthar. He smells like melted hair, burned leather, and fire. That should be some consolation, Princess Sorrowlynn.”
My eyes grow guarded, and she smiles and nods her satisfaction. “How is his head?” I ask.
“He’s been tended to, and he is soaking in a bath, just like you, only we call the place where the men bathe a cold stream. Tell me.” She holds up the filthy lace bloomers. “Did he get to see you in these?” I shake my head and she dunks them in the bathwater and rubs them with soap. “In that case, I will wash them for you. You can still use them for your honeymoon.”
I shake my head and sink down into the water until it is lapping against my earlobes. “I don’t think he truly wants to marry me. Last night, that was just our way of trying not to get killed by…your people.” I cringe.
“That kiss was fake?” she asks with a laugh. Her hands pause in their washing, and she looks at me. A smile softens her face. “Would you marry him? Do you love him?”
My heart starts to pound, and my stomach turns. “He has a woman waiting for him at home,” I whisper. The words physically hurt.
“She might be waiting for him, but I don’t think he is waiting for her. Maybe he was before he went to Faodara, but not anymore.” She vigorously scrubs the bloomers and then rinses them and wrings them out. Without a thought for modesty, she hangs them up on top of one of the blankets forming the walls to my outdoor room, where the whole camp can see them. When she sees my stricken face, she laughs. “What, Princess? Every woman dreams of wearing lace bloomers on her honeymoon, and every man dreams of seeing his wife in a pair. Only, lace costs a fortune, so we don’t have that pleasure. Let’s give my people something to fantasize about!”
“Since you know who we are, are you going to try to kill us?” I say try because I won’t go down without a fight, and neither will Golmarr.
She studies me for a moment. “Not today,” she says, and then she dunks me under the water again and rinses the soap from my hair.
When my hair is clean, I run the bar of soap over my body and cringe as I scrub my ribs. They stick out like I am a half-starved peasant.
When I am done bathing, Melisande wraps me in a scratchy wool blanket and hurries me, dripping and embarrassed, through the bustling camp. Everyone stops what they are doing to stare wide-eyed at me. “I know you’ve never seen a princess before—especially a naked one,” Melisande howls, “but for the sake of all that is virtuous in this world, will you at least wait until she is dressed to gawk at her?” No one stops staring, and Melisande throws her arms up. “Ignore me, then.”
We enter the big wagon I was carried to earlier, and Melisande rifles through the drawers of a wooden chest until she finds a long purple skirt, a yellow shirt, a red camisole, and a pair of soft red leather shoes. Without asking, she dresses me, and I do not protest. I wouldn’t know how to lace the skirt up the back without her help. She pulls the camisole over my head before the yellow shirt and then shows me how to weave the leather laces up the front to close it enough that the red camisole still shows.
When I am dressed, she holds a wide, worn leather belt out to me. I wrinkle my nose at it and do not take it from her. Aside from shoes, leather clothing is for peasants, barbarians, and warriors. “This is for your knife,” she explains. “So you don’t have to tuck it in your waistband.” I still don’t take it from her. Melisande rolls her eyes and wraps it around my waist, cinching it tight just below my ribs. She thrusts the sheathed hunting knife into a loop on the side and glares at me.
With no gentleness whatsoever, she yanks a comb through my hair until it is smooth, and then braids it at the nape of my neck and ties the end with a red ribbon, like a commoner. She hands me a gold-framed mirror. “What do you think of yourself?”
I peer at my face and turn it from side to side. It is thinner than it was on my sixteenth birthday. My eyes are solemn and guarded, and through them I can see the weight of the dragon’s treasure. Nothing about me looks like a princess, except for my long neck. I nod and force a smile to my lips. “Thank you.”
Someone knocks at the wagon door, and I spin around, hoping to see Golmarr. “Enter,” Melisande calls. The door swings wide, and Edemond strides in. My heart sinks. A moment later Golmarr steps inside. His hair is cut even shorter than before and is still wet from his bath. His face is clean-shaven, and he is wearing the brown garb of the Satari men—a loose light brown tunic that laces only halfway up his chest, leaving a bold V of naked skin exposed beneath his neck, with a pair of plain brown trousers. He stops in the doorway, and his gaze moves over every inch of my body, pausing on the leather belt. “You look more at home in Satari clothing than you did in Faodarian gowns,” he says with a smile.