"I can reach," Mary said after a long moment of nothing happening. She demonstrated, feeling small in the face of what appeared to be judgment. "I only cannot – the laces will not un-knot."
She knew her lips were pressed together in a line, corners turned down, jaw set. Cheer, Mary, the nuns would have said. Good cheer and unflappability – the marks of good breeding. But Bash would have been a massive hypocrite to care about good breeding, and he had never minded her at worst.
"Oh," he said, and came closer. "They are swollen from the water."
"Would you," she began, and stopped. She was about to ask him to help her undress. The nuns would have been appalled. Her ladies would have been appalled. Catherine – Catherine probably would not have been appalled, but Francis would have. Mary should have been appalled. She considered it and decided otherwise.
"Would you help me, please?" she asked again.
Bash hesitated. He was already past the door, he had no reason to hesitate, he had her plea for help, but he did anyway, and Mary liked it. She liked more that after that brief moment he came to her anyway, boots almost but not quite silent, because she had asked. She turned her back, pulling her still-damp, stringy hair forward over her shoulder.
The sound of his footsteps stopped. Instead she could hear him breathing – quick, shallow. As if it was difficult.
"Mary," he said on one of those quick breaths, a short, bitten off sound wound so tight she knew something was about to break.
"Yes," she said. Asked? She wasn't sure. Her voice might have cracked in the middle.
He stepped forward again. She felt his breath on the back of her neck: goosebumps rose. She was suddenly and inexplicably aware of every hair on her head, aware of the tug when she twisted the ends of her hair around her fingers. She wanted Bash's hands in her hair. She wanted – she wanted something she didn't have a name for, something dark and warm, something that felt too good to be right, maybe. The nuns would have thought so. It was huge, all encompassing, vague and too-defined both. Her toes tingled, her fingers, her feet –
Touch me, she almost said. Please, anywhere, this is unbearable –
She didn't, and he didn't.
His hands were sure on the laces, firm, but he could have stopped when the knots were undone. She could have told him to stop when the knots were undone – she should have told him to stop when the knots were undone. But he didn't, and she didn't.
Mary stood, her dress loosening in increments, cool air bathing her back but retreating in the face of Bash's warm breaths. By the time he was on the last row, just past the small of her back, her breath matched his. The touches he hadn't given burned on the skin of her bare back so badly she shivered.
"Are you cold?" Bash asked.
"No," Mary said. "No, I am not cold."
"Oh. Good."
The last laces came free, slithering through their openings, and Mary caught at her overdress, holding it to her body.
Silence. Someday, Mary reflected, she would learn how to deal with any given situation, but until then she would probably have to grow used to awkward silences.
"I'll go, then," Bash said finally. Mary turned just in time to see him flee through the door, though he did close it carefully behind him so it didn't slam. Maybe she was terrifying. Maybe the thought of her naked was repulsive. Maybe –
Maybe her bath was getting cold. Sighing to herself, she dropped the overdress, letting it pool on the floor, and pulled her shift over her head. She felt immediately better, if not exactly steadier: the thought of being clean and warm was practically a restorative in and of itself.
The door opened.
"I'm sorry, I left with these-" Bash began, and stopped.
Mary nearly screamed. Bath or Bash, please god, she thought. One. Just one. I don't need both, and Bash seems disinclined to be given, but the warm bath, god, the warm bath, haven't I been good?
She picked up the tattered scraps of her dignity and said, without turning, "Left with what?"
He didn't answer. She glanced over her shoulder to see him studying the wall to his left very determinedly, though he didn't look embarrassed in the least, only… grim.
"You have seen naked women before, Bash," Mary said. "I cannot be so distasteful. What did you leave with?"
He held out her laces wordlessly, and Mary realized that he hadn't closed the door. She sighed. Again.
"Close the door," she ordered.
As if on reflex, he did. Then he seemed to realize he should probably have left beforehand. His hand found the handle again.
Mary, tired of everything, stepped into the bath. The nuns would be aghast. She thought Catherine might approve.
"Mary," Bash said.
"You don't have to stay," she replied, settling against the side of the copper tub. The water was no longer hot, but it was warm enough that sinking into it felt… well. Like a warm bath. She was too tired for this.
The door creaked ever so slightly, and, eyes closed as if not seeing him would somehow make this whole situation better, she said, "You don't have to leave, either. I don't want to be alone."
For long moments, all she could hear were her own small movements in the water, the slight creak of the tub.
"All right," he said finally. She opened her eyes as he sat on the bed, angled so he wasn't staring directly at her.
"One day," she told him, lifting a hand so she could watch the sheen of water on her skin shimmer in the candlelight, "one day I am going to be able to ride around like this without running away."
"Wouldn't that be nice," he said, dry tone a direct contrast to the water on her hands.
She snorted – something the nuns would disapprove of almost as much as a man not her husband watching her bathe. "You hardly ever run away."
"The benefit of a protective father, I suppose."
Mary snorted again, and Bash's quick grin answered her. He leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
"What were you running away from, anyway? Just England? I don't blame you, I suppose, though you do have a right to it."
Mary flicked water at him, wrinkling her nose as he only favored her with an amused look. "Your father wants England for himself. I'm the vehicle to get it."
"Well, obviously," Bash said. "He thinks he can rule through Francis."
Mary leaned back, tilting her head so she stared at the ceiling when she said, "He could."
"I know," he said. "I wasn't sure you did."
She thought that over. "Francis," she said slowly, "is not a bad man."
"No."
"But he isn't…" she trailed off. She didn't know exactly what Francis wasn't. It seemed disloyal to talk about what he wasn't, when at the moment her only concrete answer was wasn't Bash. She loved Francis. She did. She just didn't like France much at the moment.
She didn't like Henry, really, but weren't the two intertwined? Weren't all three of them intertwined? Was she willing to put up with Henry for Francis? Could Scotland afford to put up with France?
Bash waited patiently, eyes on her face. When she shook her head, he said gently, "Francis isn't worthy of you."
"And who is?" she snapped back, immediately defensive.
Bash shrugged, stiff again.
She did not want to let it go. "Who is, Sebastian?"
"That's for you to decide," he said. "You're the queen, not me."
"Then tell me."
He hesitates, but, as always, obeys. In a way. "Someone who knows you're queen. Francis… well, Francis knows. But he's Dauphin, and the only person who has ever truly been able to command him is our father. Catherine hasn't tried. Francis doesn't understand that you are a queen, and he is still only the heir."
"So I should wait until he is king," Mary said, the flatness of her tone sinking into the water around her.
"No," Bash said. "He still wouldn't understand that you are a queen. Francis won't ever understand."
A queen ordained by god, Mary thought but Bash didn't say. Bash might be a part of his father's faith, but like the rest of his father's life – family, crown, wealth even – he had never been at the center of it.
She should stop thinking about the nuns. They would disapprove of her entire life at this point.
"Do you understand?" Mary asked. She lowered her gaze finally, so she could see Bash's reaction.
He grinned at her. "Obviously. I've grown up used to always being second."
She caught his gaze and held it. The grin slid off his face.
"I worship you, Mary," he said. "You know it."
She nodded, and held out a hand to him. Drops of water fell, the candlelight reflecting all sorts of light in them until they hit the floor. There, they looked red.
"Worship me, then," she said.