Page 23 of Historical Hotties
“Why not?”
That brought the conversation to an immediate halt. Dacia looked as if she were going to respond but, suddenly, she lowered her head and ran on ahead of him towards the kitchens.
“I am sorry, my lord,” she said. “We should not be wasting time with idle conversation. I have… duties to attend to and I am sure your time is better spent elsewhere. Good eve to you.”
But Cassius wouldn’t let her get away. “Wait,” he said, taking long strides after her. “It was quite forward of me to ask such a question. Forgive me. It is truly none of my affair. I would be happy to tell you about some of the more fanciful feasts I have attended if you would care to hear about them. I have attended some truly festive ones.”
She still wouldn’t look at him, but at least she had come to a tense halt. It appeared as if she weren’t quite sure what to do– keep running or stop and speak to him.
She was coming to like speaking to him.
“I… I would like to, but I really do have duties to attend to,” she said. “Mayhap another time, if you are still so inclined.”
He shook his head. “Alas, I wish I could, but we are departing tomorrow morning,” he said. “I have no way of knowing when I shall return to Edenthorpe.”
She looked at him, then. “You are going away so soon?”
“I have only come to deliver a message to your grandfather from the king.”
She nodded in understanding. Then she glanced over her shoulder, back to the open kitchen door, before hesitantly returning her attention to him.
“I suppose I could spare a few more moments,” she said. “I would like to hear of the feasts you have attended. Briefly, of course.”
“Of course,” he said quickly, pleased that she was willing to continue the conversation after his misstep. Those bright eyes had him hypnotized. “You are correct about lords baking jewels into bread for their guests to find. I attended a feast once where there was an entire treasure hunt, all of it buried in food.”
“Is this so?” she said, immediately interested. “Where was this feast?”
There was a bench over near the buttery, used by servants when they churned butter. It was simple but suited his purposes. He began to casually move in that direction.
“It was at a great manse along the Thames called Hollyhock House,” he said. “It is a property belonging to the Earls of Surrey. The king was in attendance, of course, and I was simply there as his protection, but it seemed to be great fun. Everyone was searching for golden coins and they had baked them into bread, buried them in egg dishes, put them in fruit– everywhere. People were breaking teeth on a regular basis biting into dishes in their search for coins.”
Beneath her apron, Dacia chuckled. “Sounds charming,” she said with some sarcasm. “How can it be so much fun when people were breaking teeth?”
He shrugged. “It was the spirit of the event, I suppose,” he said, sauntering close to the bench and noticing that Dacia, as hoped, was following him. “It was hilarious to watch drunkards make fools of themselves in their quest for gold.”
“Sounds terrible.”
He shook his head. “Sometimes, one must surrender one’s dignity in order to have a bit of fun,” he said. “I attended another feast where riddles were written on little pieces of vellum that were shoved into women’s garments. Sometimes down the neck, sometimes in the sleeve, and men went from one woman to the next, guessing who the next woman would be and what her clues were. That one grew rather wild because the treasure they sought was a bag of coins and jewels that were tied to a woman’s leg.”
Dacia’s eyes were wide. “Tied to herleg?”
He gestured as if pulling up skirts. “Aye,” he said as if it were terribly scandalous. “Right above her knee.”
Dacia gasped at the shocking nature but, in the very same breath, she started to giggle. “How naughty!”
“Indeed.”
He had reached the bench. Dacia had followed him, closely enough that he indicated for her to sit on the bench, hoping she would take his direction. Truth be told, she wasn’t holding the apron up to her face as tightly as she had been, and he could see the edges of it drooping. She was losing herself in their conversation, hardly paying attention to the apron across her face.
In the bright moonlight, Cassius really couldn’t see anything terrible underneath that apron. Certainly nothing she should be hiding. In fact, the very fact that she was warming to him emboldened him a little. He had to admit that he was greatly curious about the features beneath the apron.
“Sit, please,” he said. “I shall tell you of more naughty and scandalous feasts I have attended. There was one that had an entire parade of white ponies, each one of them with a different dish upon its back. The servants led the ponies among the diners and they selected their food right off the backs of the animals.”
Dacia sat down without any hesitation, entranced with the tale. “And the ponies behaved themselves?”
He nodded. But then, he shrugged. “Well, for the most part,” he said. “I remember one tried to bite Baron Lulworth when he shoved it by the head because it came too close. The little beast was not to blame for that.”
Dacia frowned. “It is a man of sin who would be so cruel to a little animal,” she said. “But what an enchanting feast that would have been. I should like to be served by ponies.”
