Read Online An English Bride In Scotland by Lynsay Sands - Free Book Online Page B

bed . . . and stripped her, she realized with dismay as she noted that she was completely and utterly naked under the linens and furs.
    “Now ye just break yer fast while I prepare yer bath fer ye.” The words were accompanied by the tray of food being plunked on her lap in bed.
    The tray held bread, cheese, two fluffy-looking pastries and some sort of beverage. Judging by the scent of the steam wafting from it, warmed cider. Annabel simply stared at the fare, the woman’s words winding through her thoughts: “Now ye just break yer fast while I prepare yer bath fer ye.”
    The bath was for her? And the food? Annabel was not used to being waited on. At the abbey, there had been one standard bath time for everyone at the abbess’s discretion. She announced it was bath day, a large tub was readied in the kitchens and the women took turns using it. As one of the younger residents of the abbey, Annabel had always been one of the last to bathe and the water had always been tepid and dirty by the time she got to it.
    Annabel had suffered through it because she had to, but she had never felt clean afterward and had often slipped away to bathe in the stream as soon as she could. Actually, she had often slipped away to the stream between bath times too. Annabel had spent half her time at the abbey working with the animals in the stables and half her time illuminating texts. Her work with the texts was no problem, but working in the stables was a dirty job, and the abbess didn’t order baths as often as Annabel would have liked, so Annabel had regularly slipped away to the stream.
    Unfortunately, the abbess had discovered her little trips and had not been pleased. To her mind, it was vanity that made Annabel want to be clean. The welts Annabel presently bore on her back were her punishment. The abbess never struck the women under her care, but she did make them do it themselves, and if you didn’t bring on marks, she threatened a worse punishment. There were many worse punishments at the abbey. The abbess could be very creative when it came to punishing those under her charge.
    “Do ye no’ like pastries?”
    Annabel glanced up from the tray to see that the older woman had paused in emptying a bucket into the tub to eye her with concern.
    “Oh, aye,” she said quickly, picking up one of the flaky pastries. Annabel had no idea if she liked pastries. She’d never had one before. The cook at the abbey wasn’t a very good one. The best she could manage was stews or other easy and plain fare. Not that the abbess would have encouraged cook to make such things anyway. She did have issues around gluttony and the women daring to enjoy their food. Annabel personally felt there was something a bit unnatural about the abbess’s obsession with the matter, but had just accepted it as a part of her life.
    Now, she took a tentative bite and then simply held it in her mouth, her eyes slowly growing wide. She had never in her life tasted anything as lovely as that flaky pastry with the burst of sweet fruit in the center. While the cook at Waverly may have presented something as good at her wedding feast, Annabel had been too nervous to eat and had simply sat sipping at the honeyed mead that had been placed before her. But this . . . this was nirvana.
    A clanging sound drew her gaze to the maid dumping water into the tub, and Annabel popped the rest of the pastry into her mouth, and chewed on it as she looked around for her gown. She spotted it lying across the foot of the bed. Swallowing the pastry, she set the tray aside and leaned forward to grab the gown. Annabel quickly tugged it on over her head and then crawled out of bed, letting the gown drop down past her waist as she hurried over to help with the water.
    “What are ye doing lass?” the old woman asked with amazement when Annabel picked up a bucket and dumped it in.
    “Helping?” Annabel said uncertainly, a little set aback by the woman’s shocked