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the unyielding door.
    Holly gritted her teeth. When he had applied for the position as priest of Tewksbury, Brother Nathanael had sworn to her father that he had left the abbey on a pilgrimage to seek sustenance for his starving soul. Holly suspected the abbot had booted out the arrogant young monk after he’d exhibited the poor judgment of pointing out that if he were God, he would have designed both women and kittens to function with far more efficiency.
    “Go away, Nathanael.” She was the only one who dared to strip him of his title, knowing it pricked his boundless vanity beyond bearing. “
Ill
sing for no man tonight. Not even you.”
    A distinctly impious mutter penetrated the thick oak of the door before his footsteps receded.
    “Men!” Holly sprang to a standing position, streaming water over the sides of the round tub. “The rogues care for nothing but sweetness of voice, fairness of face, and bounteous breasts. Why do they praise such trifles? Why does no one ever compliment me on the sharpness of my wit? Or my gentle demeanor?” She hurled the sponge at the far wall. It struck with a satisfying splat and dropped to the floor.
    Bounding from the tub, she stormed across the chamber, leaving Elspeth to trot behind her, wringing a linen towel in her chapped hands. “Come now, my lady. Yell take a chill.”
    Holly paused before a full-length looking glass, turning this way and that to give her naked form a critical perusal. There was simply no help for it, she thought grimly. She was stunning from any angle. As Elspeth timidly patted the droplets of moisture from her back, she wondered if there was any way for her to outwit both her tutor and her papa. If their plan was successful, tonight would be the last night she would slip between her sheets naked and alone.
    She reached up to uncoil her hair, briefly touching the spot from where the knight had cut his trophy. He had taken such care that she could barely tell a curl was missing. She remembered the wisp of ebony lying across his callused palm, the tantalizing brush of his fingertip against her jaw. Who would have thought his graceless paws were capable of such subtlety?
    Sighing wistfully, she inquired of her reflection, “Why are men such vexsome creatures?”
    “I can’t say, my lady,” Elspeth replied, lifting one of Holly’s arms to dry beneath it. “Not a moment’s trouble have they given me.”
    Holly’s gaze slowly shifted to Elspeth’s reflection. Her nurse was but a few inches shorter than she, but her simian bearing made Holly’s slim form tower over her. Holly had never given Elspeth’s looks, or lack of them, much regard. She saw only the twinkle of affection in the woman’s crossed eyes, heard only the note of concern in her hoarse croak, felt only the tenderness in the touch of her gnarled hands.
    Compared to those gifts, bestowed so generously upon a little girl still pining for her mother, Elspeth’s sparse mustache and the pronounced wart beside her nose had all faded to insignificance. Until that moment.
    Still fingering a strand of her hair, Holly glanced once more between their reflections, a calculating smile burgeoning on her lips.
    Elspeth grinned, revealing a row of blackened stumps. “ Ye’d best earn a position in the castle, girl,’ my papa always said, ‘for only a blind man would take ye to wife.’” She giggled, a girlish sound, devoid of self-pity. “Called me his little gargoyle, he did. Threatened to make me sit on the thatch o’ the cottage and frighten off wicked spirits.”
    Elspeth dropped the towel with a startled shriek as Holly enveloped her in a damp embrace, nearly lifting her off the floor. “Then your papa was a fool, for I think you’re the most beautiful woman in all the world!”
    As Holly pressed her smooth cheek to her nurse’s mottled one, Elspeth squinted at their reflections, recognizing with dawning alarm the spark of mischief in her mistress’s eyes.

CHAPTER 4
     
    A crisp