Tiphaine sighed inwardly as the girl set the heap of fluffy white fabric on a stone bench and knotted her fingers together.

I don’t know what’s more irritating, the usual goggling horror, or the occasional come-on.

“That will be all,” she said patiently. “You may go. My body-squire and pages will attend me.”

Hmmm. Bit of a pout along with the curtsy and swift withdrawal. Irritation Number Two, I think. Higamous hogamous, I am very monogamous.

Since she was alone, she allowed herself a very slight grin as she toweled down. Delia was fond of playing a game involving a lot of running and giggling she called “The Lustful Knight and the Innocent Country Maid” in honor of their first meeting at the feast when Tiphaine had taken seisin of Barony Ath during the Protector’s War. It was always fun, especially when Tiphaine returned from a long absence.

“Now granted, I was a newly made knight, and I was both lustful and fairly thoroughly drunk by that point, but it was definitely Delia who murmured an invitation to inspect the fine embroidery on her underwear into my ear. Not that I needed to be asked twice in that state,” she added to herself.

She tucked one of the towels around herself under the armpits as she walked out into the bedroom. Lioncel discreetly turned and looked out the window as she tossed it aside and pulled on the briefs, bias-cut linen sports bra and silver-gray silk shirt with a high mandarin collar and loose sleeves tied at the wrist. Then he whistled sharply for the pages over whom he now had authority—the general rule was that pages helped you put on clothes, and squires helped you don armor—and oversaw the younger boys as they helped her into semiformal dress. Assistance in dressing was something she’d finally gotten used to; it helped that this style really required it.

That started with the hose, also skintight and bias-cut; Sandra had told her once that it was amusing beyond words that the macho toughs of the warrior aristocracy had all ended up shaving their legs and wearing something quite close to pre-Change panty hose.

It is funny, if you think of it that way. I’d forgotten what panty hose were . . . and she didn’t say, but I think part of the gleam in her eye was that it means I shave my legs and wear panty hose too, of course, which also wouldn’t have happened without the end of the world.

Her hose were onyxine black, as was the sleeveless neck-to-thigh jerkin of butter-soft doeskin that went on next, fastened up the front with ties of braided black silk. Her shoes were black chamois as well, except for the gold buckles that secured them at each ankle, and the toes turned up—moderately, not the exaggerated length that high Court fashion decreed. The loose black knee-length houppelande overrobe had obsidian buttons and a collar open at the front and ear-high behind; the lower hem was dagged, and so were the turned-back sleeves that hung almost as low, showing the rich dark forest-green jacquard lining.