Free The Rose at Twilight by Amanda Scott Page A

…” But she lost the thread of what she had been going to say, and her voice faded away.
    When she awoke the next time, she felt stronger, and when Jonet asked if she might fancy more broth and a bit of bread, she agreed instantly. Jonet signed to someone behind her, and Alys saw Ian MacDougal standing in the entry.
    “Wait,” she said when he took the horn mug from Jonet and turned with it toward the entrance, to fetch her broth.
    He turned. “Aye, m’lady?”
    His soft brogue reminded her of his antecedents, but they no longer mattered. “I do thank you, Ian, from my heart,” she said. “Sir Nicholas told me you rode to fetch bread for me. I know your back cannot be healed yet. ’Twas most kind of you.”
    He flushed rosily in the lamplight. “’Twere nobbut a pleasure, m’lady,” he muttered, ducking out on the words.
    “That lad has kept close about the tent these two days past,” Jonet said softly, “fair begging to fetch and carry.”
    “Two days! Have I been ill so long as that?”
    “Aye.”
    Alys shifted her position. Her strength was returning, but she still felt as weak as a newborn lamb. And when the covers moved, she instantly became conscious of a noisome odor, and gasped when she recognized its source.
    “Jonet, I stink like a summer jakes!” She raised a hand to feel her head, grimacing with distaste. “My hair feels like damp bracken, and it’s as tangled as a bryony hedge. I want a bath.”
    “Well, you’ll not be having one yet a while,” Jonet said sourly. “You nearly died, as I’ll thank you to remember, so you must eat up the bread when Ian brings it, and drink your broth, and mayhap we can begin thinking of baths in a day or two.”
    “But I want a bath now!” Alys knew it was unreasonable, but the desire to be clean was suddenly overwhelming. Her body was sticky, the bedclothes damp and clinging. She wanted fresh ones, and though she knew the chance of getting them was small, that only made her want them more. When Jonet calmly moved to the entrance of the tent to take the refilled mug and the bread from Ian, then dismissed him and turned back, Alys said sullenly, “I will neither eat nor drink again until I have had a bath, Jonet.”
    “Do not be difficult, Miss Alys,” Jonet said with a weary sigh. “Tha’ must eat, and tha’ hast not got enough strength to fling those pillows at me, so do not be thinking tha’ wilt.”
    “I will do as I please! Stop treating me like a child!”
    “What goes on here?” Sir Nicholas entered, followed by the largest man Alys had ever seen. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, wearing leather breeches and boots, he was a good bit older than Sir Nicholas, and larger. The pair of them filled the tent.
    Paying the large man no heed at all, Jonet turned in relief to Sir Nicholas. “She insists she will have a bath, sir. I have told her that she is not to have one, but she has been like this from a child, I fear, and when she sets her mind—”
    Alys cut her off with a snap. “Do not babble at him, Jonet! Men never notice how things smell, so he cannot understand how I feel. In faith, he does not care a whit about me, and he cannot want to hear your foolish, whining prattle. Just order up a tub and have it filled the way we did before, and—”
    “Just when,” Sir Nicholas inquired mildly, “did you decide that I do not care how you smell? I can assure you that I prefer attar of lilacs to attar of sweating sickness, if you do indeed need to hear such an obvious fact spoken aloud.”
    She glared at him, and he turned to Jonet. “Go with Hugh now and have your dinner. I will attend to her ladyship.”
    “No!” Alys cried. “Jonet, I command you to stay!”
    Jonet hesitated, but though she ignored the large soldier when he gently touched her arm and held the tent flap open, when Sir Nicholas frowned at her, she went without another word.
    Alys gritted her teeth when the flap fell into place again, leaving her alone with Sir Nicholas. He