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ful and all green and white, and sweet scented too. His courtier's ways nearly deserted him, but he managed to bow and raise her hand to his lips. "If it can be done without trouble, I should like nothing better." The deep rumble of his own voice, easy and natural, gave him confidence, and he laughed. "Doubtless you could smell me across the bailey and thus knew I was coming." |
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There was nothing wrong with Alinor's nose, and she could smell himnot, perhaps as far away as he implied, but quite distinctly from where he stood. However, Alinor's nose was inured to the stenches that rose from the garderobe of the castle, from the huts of the serfs and the serfs themselves, from rotting fish in the coast villages, from the sewage that drained into the moat and, when the weather was dry, permeated the whole castle. There was nothing to offend her nose in the clean sweat of a healthy man. |
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"I look to your comfort, not mine, my lord," she replied, laughing. "You smell as you should, of hard working man and horsean honest smell, and more welcome to me than the scents of the merchants." |
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Alinor had no intention of dallying in talk just now. She promptly signaled a maid with a raised hand and snapping fingers. Simon would sit next to her at dinner and she would have plenty of time to talk to him. Right now it was more necessary to talk to Sir Andre, who was glowering at her from behind Simon's back. |
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That need had also answered the question of whether she should herself go to bathe Sir Simon. Although high-born ladies were getting higher and higher in their manners, Lord Rannulf had clung to the old ways. When men of sufficient rank, like his foster brother the Earl of Leicester or Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, had come to visit, Alinor herself had poured water for them, scrubbed their backs, and washed their hair. It was not modesty that had raised doubts of her duty in Alinor's mind. She merely wondered |
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