Read The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) for Free Online Page B

done.
    Rhys clasped the hilt of the sword in both hands. “I don’t give a damn what you do to her.”
    “Yes, you do.” Dafydd headed back to his horse. “You just don’t want to hope.”
     
    ***
    “By all the blessed saints, look at that hair!”
    As the door swung open, Aileen startled where she sat in the wide barrel, sending a spray of water over the wooden edge. A tiny woman stopped in the doorway.
    “They warned me in the kitchens that you had hair like a pelt of a fox,” the woman said, “but I wasn’t after believing them. Those girls talk and talk until it’s nothing but nonsense coming out of their mouths.” The woman slammed the door shut. “I’ll be sending someone else to see to your needs when the sun rises, my lady. It’s bad luck to meet a woman with red hair first thing in the morning. No offense meant, of course.”
    Aileen lay in the tub with a bar of lye squeezed in her hand, blinking at the blur of woman as she tossed bright bolts of silk and linen over the jumble of casks. All morning a parade of servants had passed through her room, dragging in the wooden tub, then lugging pails of steaming hot water, then serving her a tray of some flat bread and watered–down ale. But this was the first one who babbled in a language she could understand.
    “Course, that’s only on the days I’m off on a journey, I suppose. It’s no matter on any other day. It’d be worse luck to meet a cat or a dog first thing in the morning, though a hard thing that is to avoid in this place, with all the hounds wandering about the yard because of that lazy dog–keeper the master took in—”
    “You speak the Irish.”
    “Aye, that I do, and a fine thing it is to be speaking it in the full again. It’s like I’ve finally spit the rocks out of my mouth.” Wayward edges of the woman’s turban flapped as she darted about. “It’s true my lords use it now and again, when they’re of a mind to tell me something they don’t want to tell the world. But most times I’m forced to twist my tongue around the Welsh. A fine hard thing that is, don’t you know, though I’ve lived here over thirty years now. My name is Marged, my lady.” She smiled as she approached. “Let me see to that hair of yours.”
    “There’s no need for you—”
    Aileen sputtered as Marged hefted a pail of water over her head.
    “Thick, it is, blessed be, but it could be using a lavender rinse, if you don’t mind me saying so.” Marged plunged another stick of lye deep into Aileen’s hair and tugged and pulled it into lather while Aileen gripped the edge of the tub to keep from being yanked about. “I was thinking, looking at your hair, that it’d be as hard and springy as the wire the armorer uses to make his chain mail—no offense meant to you, my lady, it’s just the look of it, all curled up so tight and wild. Mayhap the trials of your long journey did not leave it at its best—but despite its looks it has softness in it.”
    “You’re pulling it straight out of my head.” Aileen seized the lathered length of her hair and twisted to look up. “And I’m no lady, I’ll have you know. I have two hands strong enough to wash my own hair.”
    “Will you be denying me the pleasure? It’s been near twenty years since I’ve set my hands into a lady’s hair. I came over from Ulster as a lady’s maid, with my master’s sainted mother—may she rest in peace. She was Irish, too, like myself, and when the time came for her to go to God I stayed on, by the grace of the late master. He made me the keeper of this house in a lady’s absence. But I’ll have you know, it’s no easy task seeing to a llys —that’s what the Welsh call this homestead—with all the servants and the master’s men to be fed and their clothes woven and sewn and mended and laundered and the livestock to be seen to. Lass, don’t be getting out, the water’s still warm.”
    “My mother didn’t raise me to loll about in a bath until the