“Are you saying, sir, that you are in love with her?”
Chapter Eight
Jamie was throwing dice with the guards in the gatehouse to relieve his boredom—and to avoid running into Linnet. Through the arrow-slit window, he could hear the splash of drops hitting the puddles on the ground below. The rain was finally easing up after a week of downpour.
He should have kept his cock in his braies. Each time he saw Linnet, he remembered the smell of her skin, the feel of her hair sliding through his fingers…
The man next to him elbowed him in the ribs. “Take your turn.”
Jamie threw the dice and lost again.
Windsor Castle was enormous. All the same, he crossed paths with Linnet at every turn—at dinner in the hall, walking across the upper ward, passing on the stairs. He was always edgy from seeing her—or anticipating that he might. This near-constant state of arousal could not be good for a man’s health.
The guards shouted over someone’s lucky roll. Without looking to see who it was, Jamie tossed another penny on the table.
He liked the way she rode her horse, fearless at a full gallop. He enjoyed the clever things she said at dinner—and that flash in her eyes when she teased him.
“Are you playing, Rayburn?”
He took the dice thrust in his face. As he rubbed the worn dice bones between his thumb and fingers, he thought of the smoothness of Linnet’s skin.
How he was going to survive weeks in the same castle without falling into bed with her again, he did not know. He could only pray Bedford would take a fast ship from France and relieve him of his duties here.
His squire appeared behind him and tapped him on the shoulder. Speaking in a low voice so as not to interrupt the game, Martin said, “Sir James, a man has come to the castle asking for you.”
“Keep my money,” Jamie told the guards as he got up. “You’d win it anyway.”
Martin trailed behind him down the circular stone stairs.
“He says he is a friend of yours,” Martin said.
The lad sounded skeptical. As soon as Jamie stepped out onto the muddy ground outside the gate, he understood why.
He roared with laughter. “Owen Tudor, is that you beneath all that mud?”
“You know damned well it is,” Owen said, his even white teeth making a bright line in his dirt-streaked face.
Jamie’s hand made a wet smacking sound when he slapped his friend on the back. As he shook the mud off it, he said, “Did you have a good night’s sleep with the pigs?”
“My horse stepped into a hole in the downpour. Next thing I knew, I was sitting on my arse in a puddle a foot deep.” Owen wiped his face with his sleeve, which relieved his sleeve of more mud than his face. “ ’Tis lucky I didn’t break my neck.”
“You’ve come to see the queen?”
“Aye,” Owen said. “Your father gave me a letter recommending me to her service.”
“Well, you can’t see her like that,” Jamie said, grinning. “I fear the maids will murder me if I bring you inside.”
He turned to his squire. “Martin, go fetch soap and towels. I am taking him to the river to get cleaned up.”
“But sir, the water is freezing.”
“This man survived the winter siege at Mieux,” Jamie said, slapping his friend on the back again, despite the mud. “He can survive a dunking in the Thames in November.”
“I’ve not been this filthy since the siege,” Owen said with a laugh.
“Praise God you don’t smell as bad as you did then.”
“ ’Tis because I bathed in your family tub just last week,” Owen said. “With your pretty sisters washing my back.”