In the year and a half since she left this place, Sophia had all but forgotten the bathing rooms in the lowest level of Castello Lucera. She had not used them as much as she had wished to, when she lived here before. In her strange position as a foreigner and one of Manfred's loves, she had not felt comfortable bathing with the other women who lived in the castle.
But tonight, as she and Daoud undressed in the green-tiled anteroom, they had it all to themselves. Daoud must stand high indeed with Manfred to have arranged that, she thought.
In the light of the oil lamp hanging overhead, his naked body was a golden color, and free, as far as she could tell, from the marks of insult the podesta's torturer had inflicted upon it last summer.
She was not naked. She wore a linen gown that opened down the front. Her continued worrying over whether or not to tell him about Simon made her want to stay covered as long as she could.
But with a smile he pulled her gown apart and slipped it off her shoulders and down her back to the floor.
A glance down his body told her that he wanted her now. The sight thrilled her, but she still felt uneasy and not able to give herself wholeheartedly to him and to the act of love.
"Let us attend to the grime," she said with a small smile.
In the next room, its walls tiled in white, she lay in a round sunken tub filled with hot water piped in from the castle kitchen. It was large enough for Daoud to stand over her in it. He took over the task of washing her with scented soap imported from Spain.
At first she simply lay back and enjoyed her renewed acquaintance with the amenities of Manfred's kingdom, so much more like Constantinople than life in the Papal States had been. But as the hot water relaxed her and as Daoud's hands, slippery with soap, slid over her skin, she felt the rising warmth of desire. Nothing mattered but this moment. She wriggled her legs and hips against him in small, almost unwilled movements.