Rynn dropped to her knees before Padraig. “Your boots, please, Master Boyd.”
Lucan looked around briefly from his papers. “Don’t forget his head. I think he should perhaps be fitted for a helm.”
Padraig’s brow lowered into a momentary frown, but it only increased the pounding in his head.
Marta held up a finger with a nod. “Bless you, Sir Lucan.” She came at him again while Padraig was still struggling out of his right boot.
Rynn pushed the fabric square toward his toes. “Step on, please.”
As Padraig did, trying to ignore the rags that were the stockings on his feet—more hole than cloth—a screech on the wood floor directly behind him prompted him to turn his head.
“Master Boyd! Hold still, please,” Rynn chastised from the floor.
Marta frowned into his face from her new vantage point of standing on a stool, then took hold of his skull with gentle fingers and swiveled his head forward once more. Padraig stood obediently as Rynn’s chalk tickled along the edges of his feet onto the burlap. Marta’s ribbon swooped about his forehead and tightened. He heard the chamber door open and close.
“Master Boyd wants a trim if he is to have any hope of fitting into a helm, and to avoid being referred to as ‘mistress,’” Marta announced, before the ribbon whispered away from his head and she popped down off the stool.
Lucan nodded but didn’t raise his head. “Very good. Right away.”
“Step away, please.” Rynn whisked the tracing from beneath his feet and rose.
The brisk drafts caused by the women’s coming and going left Padraig standing on the floor in his pathetic stocking feet feeling very unsure. His arms were still slightly akimbo and he wasn’t certain that he should move or not, lest he be politely chastised—or worse, tethered by his aching head—again. He turned slowly, testing his freedom.
She was standing not six paces from him, her arms laden with cloth draped over her elbow, a tray in her hands. Her rich, brown hair—like a paste of oil and costly spices—was glossy smooth over her ears, her light complexion composed as she regarded him.
Beryl. She’d come at last.
Should he bow? Clasp her hand? Before he could decide, his breath left him in a rush as he was pulled backward through the air and his teeth clacked together as his rear connected with a hard stool. An instant later, a cloth was whisked around his chest and tied tightly against his Adam’s apple.
Beryl’s pink lips crept up, but then she dropped her eyes and rolled her lips inward as she strode forward toward the bed.
Padraig was trying to force his lips to form something, but his voice seemed stuck in his throat just below the strangling cloth. His hair was yanked from behind with the sharp teeth of a comb, and then the crisp sounds of a chunk of hair being severed sizzled in his ear. Beryl set down the tray on his bed, ignoring him still.
“Where’ve you been?” he blurted out.
All sound and movement in the chamber seemed to still. From the corner of his eye, Padraig saw even Montague turn his head from his papers to regard him.
Fool!
Beryl straightened slowly and then turned to face him, her expression serene, her hands folded together before her.
“Good day, Beryl,” she said pointedly, inclining her head just so.
Padraig glanced around the chamber, his breathing shallow. Marta yanked on a lock of his hair just then, causing him to yelp. He cleared his throat. “Good day, Beryl,” he repeated at last.
“Good day, Master Boyd,” she replied. “Forgive my tardiness. I had prior obligations to attend to before my facilities were secured to your service.”
Padraig hesitated. “Nae harm,” he ventured.
Her mouth quirked, her expression that of one who was not entirely satisfied but willing to accept his offering. The chamber fell back into its pattern of busyness at once, and Padraig released his breath.
“Good day, Marta, Rynn,” she said to the maids, who seemed to be taking turns cutting at both the length of cloth Rynn had marked with chalk and Padraig’s hair.
“Beryl.”
“Mistress.”
Beryl looked at Padraig pointedly, and he thought he understood—everything at Darlyrede revolved around one’s station.
Beryl cleared her throat as she turned her gaze toward the seated knight.
Lucan turned around. “Ah, yes—forgive me. I see the lessons have started. Good day…Beryl, is it?”
“How kind of you to remember. A good day to you, Sir.”
“Lessons?” Padraig repeated.
“Yes, lessons, Master Boyd,” she answered briskly, and then her gray eyes grew round. “What on earth has happened to your head?”
“’Tis naught,” Padraig scoffed, his ears heating.
Lucan muttered from the table without raising his head. “Someone dropped a bucket of stones on him. Don’t worry, he’s being fitted for a helm.”
“I see.” Beryl’s expression was solemn as she held his gaze for a long moment. He saw her chest rise and fall in a sigh before she resumed her practical interrogation. “Marta, have you much longer at the master’s hair?”
“Just finishing up now, mistress.”
“Excellent.” She strode across the table and spoke quietly to two young men stacking wood near the hearth. When she returned across the floor, the men followed her, bearing a small table and the other chair.
They positioned the furniture before Padraig just as Marta whisked the cloth from around his shoulders.
Beryl transferred the tray to the tabletop and then shook out a snowy linen. “I’ve brought your midday meal,” she announced.
“Good.” Padraig was starving. He reached for the domed cover.
“Ah,” she said sharply, with a sideways look.
Padraig froze, his hand hovering over the filigreed handle. “Thank you?”
“This,” she said, ignoring his thanks and draping the linen over her palm with the delicate, pinched fingers of her other hand, “is a napkin.”
Padraig didn’t wish to frown at the lass, but…“I ken what a napkin is.”
She stepped around the table toward him, and in a moment Padraig was enveloped by her
