Free Roselynde by Roberta Gellis Page A

success of her plans.
Her people had done their part; now it only remained for her to do hers.
    It was as well that Simon had eyes only for Alinor. One glance at
Sir Andre's grim and disapproving face would have forewarned him. But he saw
only Alinor, who held out a cool, white hand to him and asked with sweet
thoughtfulness whether, since he had been much in the saddle these three hot
days past, he would like to bathe before sitting down to meat.
    She was like a lily, he thought, slender and graceful and all
green and white, and sweet scented, too. His courtier's ways nearly deserted
him, but he managed to bow and raise her hand to his lips. "If it can be
done without trouble, I should like nothing better." The deep rumble of
his own voice, easy and natural, gave him confidence, and he laughed.
"Doubtless you could smell me across the bailey and thus knew I was
coming."
    There was nothing wrong with Alinor's nose, and she could smell
him—not, perhaps as far away as he implied, but quite distinctly from where he
stood. However, Alinor's nose was inured to the stenches that rose from the
garderobe of the castle, from the huts of the serfs and the serfs themselves,
from rotting fish in the coast villages, from the sewage that drained into the
moat and, when the weather was dry, permeated the whole castle. There was
nothing to offend her nose in the clean sweat of a healthy man.
    "I look to your comfort, not mine, my lord," she
replied, laughing. "You smell as you should, of hard-working man and
horse—an honest smell, and more welcome to me than the scents of the
merchants."
    Alinor had no intention of dallying in talk just now. She promptly
signaled a maid with a raised hand and snapping fingers. Simon would sit next
to her at dinner and she would have plenty of time to talk to him. Right now it
was more necessary to talk to Sir Andre, who was glowering at her from behind
Simon's back.
    That need had also answered the question of whether she should
herself go to bathe Sir Simon. Although highborn ladies were getting higher and
higher in their manners, Lord Rannulf had clung to the old ways. When men of
sufficient rank, like his foster brother, the Earl of Leicester or Hugh Bigod,
Earl of Norfolk, had come to visit, Alinor herself had poured water for them,
scrubbed their backs, and washed their hair. It was not modesty that had raised
doubts of her duty in Alinor's mind. She merely wondered whether her attendance
would shock Simon, since it was plain from his clothes and manners that he was
old-fashioned in nothing but the style of his helmet.
    Alinor's decision to talk to Sir Andre was best for everyone. She
would not have shocked Simon, who had been bathed by the chief ladies of many
keeps—and had sometimes been offered other favors, too, which did not shock him
either and which he was quick enough to accept. However, Alinor had completely
overset his normal patterns of thinking. The few casual words they had
exchanged had done much to restore his balance, but that might not have
survived the strain of too intimate an interlude.
    "What are you about, Alinor?" Sir Andre growled the
moment Simon disappeared into the wall chamber that had been Lord Rannulf's and
now was Simon's. "If you intend to cheat the King, he will find you out.
He is skilled in detecting far cleverer cheaters than you will ever be."
    "I intend to cheat no one," Alinor rejoined roundly,
drawing herself up. She suppressed a qualm about the altered entries. She would
have to find some explanation for those if Sir Simon noticed, but right now it
was more important to put Sir Andre at ease or he would make a little thing
seem like a major conspiracy by his guilty looks.
    "Then why did your bailiffs, your headmen, and your herdsmen,
suddenly lose their tally sticks and, on top of that, lose their minds,
too?"
    Alinor giggled. "Did they? Oh, I love them! I love them all
dearly! I did, indeed, send messages that they were to act stupid. See how
quick they are