"Where have you been, my girl? I noticed Puffy still back of the stables. Thought you were taking them all out to the meadows."
"I am. Just haven't had time yet."
He jerked his chin in the direction she'd just come from. "And you were...?" he prodded.
"Brendan's," she said quickly.
"Brendan's?" He lifted one bushy silver eyebrow. "And what would you be needing at Brendan's so early this morn?"
She squeezed the sturdy muslin between her palms. Calm, she repeated to herself. "I... forgot a few things the last time I cleaned it. Went back to get them."
"That's what's in the bag, I suppose?"
"Yes," she said in relief.
"And what's so important you had to scurry down there first thing?"
The relief had come too soon. "Dust rags." Well, that was certainly important enough. She tried again. "Ah, I needed some... medicine."
He snorted. "Women's stuff, I suppose."
"Yes."
Narrowing his eyes, he peered at her closely. "That why you're so flushed and out of sorts? Never seemed to be like those weak, fluttery females before."
"I think it's just the heat, Da."
"There is that." He squinted at the sky, a cloudless, burning blue. "It'll be worse today, I think."
"Oh, no!" It would be impossibly warm inside the stables for Jon.
"Maybe you should take the day off, Ben. You've been working too hard."
"I think I will."
"Practice that violin of yours. Haven't had much time for doing that lately."
"I'd like that." Nobody bothered her when she was practicing. It would give her plenty of time to care for Jon undisturbed.
"I'll get Isaac to pasture the horses for you."
"No!"
He peered at her again.
"I-I mean," she stammered, "I... would like to take the horses out. I don't mind. I'll take the rest of the time off after that, I promise."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure." She scurried off before he could ask any more questions.
She dropped the bag just out of sight inside the stable door and ran around back of the house to the well, just barely managing to resist the urge to check on Jon. She would need the water in any case, and stopping to assure herself of his safety would take time she didn't think she could afford to waste.
The bucket banged against her leg as she hurried, and water sloshed over the side and soaked her skirt. She careened around the corner of the stall and stopped.
He was still there, sprawled across the golden-brown hay. Pale, silent, absolutely still.
And she was suddenly, terribly afraid that she was already too late.
CHAPTER 18
Tentatively, afraid of what she might find, she laid her hand on his chest. Through the thin, tattered fabric of his shirt his flesh was still warm, and she could, just barely, detect the subtle rise and fall of his chest.
"Thank God."
"You're back," he whispered without opening his eyes.
"Yes." He was so white, so still, the skin stretched taut over the beautifully molded planes of his face. Who was she trying to fool? She was no healer, knew only the rudiments of dressing and tending wounds. If he never opened those wonderful, sleepy eyes again, she couldn't stand it if she were part of the reason.
"Jon. Are you sure there isn't someone I can summon? Somewhere I can take you? I don't know what to do."
"Trust... you." He tried to reach for her, winced, and let his hand drop back to the straw. "Trust... no one else."
She took a deep breath. "All right. What do I do?"
"Just... take out ball."
"Where is it?"
"Back."
His back. Oh, Lord. Not his arm or thigh, nothing simple. His back.
She could do it. She had to. Taking her bucket and supplies, she moved around to his other side, careful not to jar him in any way, and knelt behind him.
Her hand flew to her mouth to cover her gasp; she didn't want him to hear her distress. A fist-size hole had been torn in the back of the odd, fancy coat he was wearing. The hole was perhaps three quarters of the way up his left side. If the ball had gone deep, it was far too close to his heart for comfort.
But if it had hit his heart, he never would have gotten this far, so the ball had to have stayed fairly close to the surface. Beneath the hole, his coat was soaked with old, black blood. So much blood, hut it looked as if the flow, if it hadn't stopped entirely, had at least slowed considerably.
First things first. She had to get that jacket off and she reached for her scissors.
"First I'm going to cut away your clothes so I can see what I'm dealing with, all right?"
She snipped the thick, heavily embroidered fabric and peeled the cloth away, letting out the breath she'd been holding. Step one done. Jon hadn't moved so much as a twitch the entire time.
"Jon?"
"Yes?"
"Just checking to see if you're still with me."
There was bulky padding wrapped around his waist. She wondered for a moment if he'd somehow already injured his lower back. But it wasn't a bandage, just a thick wrapping of batting and linen.
Time to worry about it later. She snipped through the strips of cloth and pushed them away.
Now his shirt. The linen yielded more easily to her scissors, but stripping it away was something else entirely. The blood had dried, causing the fabric to stick to his flesh. If she simply jerked it away, the pain would be awful; worse yet, he'd probably start bleeding again, and she wasn't sure how much more blood he could afford to lose.
She sat back on her heels for a moment, pondering her problem. Then she dug a clean rag out of her bag and dipped it into the bucket of water. When she'd drawn it from the well, the water had been blessedly, numbingly cold, but in the heat of the day, it had already warmed to nearly skin temperature.
"Now, I'm just going to put a damp cloth on your back. It shouldn't hurt."
As if her hands could ever cause him pain. He knew he was treading close to the edge of reality. His world was indistinct, shifting, and most of his surroundings escaped him. He'd vaguely recognized the stables when he'd gotten there last night. He hadn't even had enough strength left to go and call for Beth; he'd simply pitched over on the nearest pile of hay and let the blackness take him.
The blackness was still there, but he could focus clearly on one thing: Beth. On the gentle, soothing stroke of her fingers, on the soft, concerned music of her voice. Now she was doing something to his back that cooled the burning pain that had been there since... had it only been last night?
"There. Now I'm going to try and get the rest of this out of the way."
She peeled the shirt away slowly, tugging it away from his damaged shoulder. "Come on, come on," she repeated, as if she could urge it to come away with her voice.
"There," she said again. She swallowed heavily at the sight of his torn flesh. It wasn't that she had a weak stomach; her brothers had cured her of that at an early age. But she couldn't forget that this was Jon's back. Her gentle giant was incapable of hurting anyone, and he didn't deserve this pain.
She dampened the cloth again and dabbed at his wound, sponging away the gore and dried blood and hoping that the hole would be so shallow she would soon see the ball.
No such luck. His back was as clean as she could manage, and there was no sign of the ball that had torn him up. There was nothing left to do but hunt for it.
"I have some laudanum. Will you take it?"
He barely managed to shake his head.
"You can't move, or I might cut you deeper. And I'm not strong enough to hold you."
"No," he croaked. He really didn't think he'd feel anything. He hadn't felt much of what she'd been doing. His back was numb, the nerves apparently having had as much as they could take.
"All right," she agreed finally.
Catching her lower lip firmly in her teeth, she reached for a blunt knife. She hadn't been able to fin
d a proper probe; she would have to manage with this. She lifted it, and her hand shook.
That wouldn't do. She wished, desperately, that there was someone, anyone to help her.
"Beth."
That was all he said, but it was all he needed to say. With that one word, she remembered all the times he'd believed in her, all the times he'd looked at her with absolute approval in his eyes.
She poked at his flesh. He jerked once, then stilled.
"Jon?"
No response. But she could see his pulse, beating in the smooth patch of skin behind his ear. He must have blacked out.
Perhaps it was better this way. She bent to her task.
"Come on, come on. Where are you?"
There. The knife hit something hard. She leaned closer, blinking her eyes to clear them. The ball was black, misshapen, smooth. It hadn't gone in far—perhaps two inches. Either he'd been shot from some distance, or Jon's own heavy muscles had slowed its entrance. And she felt a new, vivid slash of anger at whoever had been so unscrupulous as to shoot him from behind.
Now to get it out.
Five minutes later she was still probing away with little success. "Damn, damn, damn," she swore. Giving up for the moment, she sat back and wiped at her eyes with her forearm, trying to rub away the stinging there.
This wasn't working. Her gaze fell on the pile of things she'd brought with her and dumped out on a square of ivory linen. What to do?
The scissors. Grabbing them, she bent over Jon's back once more. She found the ball again with the scissors. Amazing that such a tiny piece of metal could arouse such hatred in her. Opening the scissors just a bit, she closed them around the ball and prayed the grip would hold. Taking a deep breath, she tugged.
She was almost surprised when the scissors came out with the ball firmly between the blades. She violently swung the scissors in a wide arc, sending the ball flying against the wall, where it hit with a loud thunk.
Tossing the scissors back on the linen, she grabbed a large strip of cotton toweling and quickly folded it into a square pad. She laid it over Jon's wound and held it there. Then she tore a yellowed linen sheet into long, narrow strips, silently vowing to Brendan she'd replace the sheet she'd taken from a chest in his rooms over the printshop. When she had a sufficient pile of strips, she wrapped the padding securely in place.
Bennie's arms were trembling with fatigue by the time she finished. She slumped wearily against the side of the stall and looked with satisfaction at the neat bandage that covered Jon's upper back and chest. It would do.
She allowed herself only a moment of rest. She had to get the horses out to the pasture before her father came around to see why they were still stabled. After quickly slipping a harness over Patience's head—finding him cooperative for once—she let the other three horses out, too. They would follow Patience.
She mounted Puffy, leading Patience behind her, and set out for the meadow, the other three horses following behind. To her surprise, the sun still wasn't all that high in the sky. Although it seemed as if she'd been at it for days, it probably hadn't been more than a couple of hours since she'd found Jon in the stables.
She couldn't help wondering what had happened to him. Such odd clothes, and the padding around his middle. If he'd been wounded in battle, wouldn't he have had his uniform on? Except for the night he'd rescued her in the woods, she'd never seen him out of uniform. And if he'd been in a battle, where was the rest of his company? Why hadn't they taken care of him?
Bennie turned the horses, their hides gleaming in the hot, brilliant sun, free in the meadow. Lifting her skirts, she took off back to the stables at a dead run. Though she'd removed the ball, Jon hadn't stirred again before she'd left. There was still no guarantee that he was going to live.
She stumbled into the stable and knelt at his side.
So far, so good. He was still breathing. Spreading a blanket next to his prostrate body, she settled into watching over him. His breathing was a little shallow, but it was steady; she could see the expansion and contraction of his massive chest.
Cautiously, not wanting to wake him, she laid a palm on his forehead. Warm. Too warm? Hard to tell if the cause was from fever or the oppressive, sweltering air.
It had been months since she'd seen him. He was injured, pale, dirty, and sweaty, and still she marveled at the perfection of his features. Flawlessly balanced, finely sculpted, nearly too handsome to be real. It almost seemed as if perhaps the accident that had damaged his mental faculties had been meant to balance things a bit; nature needed to offset his exceptional features with a flaw or two.
But she had never really considered his slowness a flaw. It had given him that gentleness and acceptance that was so rare, had left him quick to offer the friendship she gratefully accepted. For although she had family in abundance, she had never really had a friend.
The last few months mustn't have been easy for him. He looked thinner. She let her gaze trace his length. Corded muscles still bulged from his arms and chest which tapered abruptly to his stomach. But along his side was a vicious, shiny pink scar.
He'd been injured. She thought back; it had been dark in the woods when he'd carried her through it, and she hadn't gotten a close look at his side. Had he had the scar then?
She reached out and skimmed her hand over the scar. It was smooth, almost waxy, beneath her fingers. If she hadn't seen him that time above the stables, she had touched him, had slid her hands over his body, again and again. She would have felt this.
Then he'd been hurt since he'd left. So much pain, another flaw put into that beautiful body. And she wished she'd been there to care for him that time, too.
She couldn't have said how long she sat there, watching him. Sweat trickled down her back, the straw scratched her legs, and the hot air was heavy in her lungs. Still, there was an odd contentment being there with him, knowing, at least for this brief time, that he was safe. Hearing him breathe, and being able to reach out and occasionally touch his damp skin.
"Bennie!"
The bellow from outside the stable brought her up sharply. Da! What was he doing here?
"What?" Jon mumbled groggily and opened his eyes a crack.
"Shh. Quiet. Don't move," she said frantically.
"Bennie!"
"Just a minute, Da, I'm coming!" she called back. She leaned over and spoke into Jon's ear. "Don't move. Don't make a noise. I'll be right back."
She scrambled to her feet and hurried out of the stables, meeting her father just as he was coming in the door.
"There you are, my girl. What was keeping you?"
"I was... in the loft. Practicing."
"Ben, it's far too hot in there to be practicin' in the stables. Why don't you go out by the creek?"
"It's fine. Quiet. I like it there."
"Look at you! You'll be keeling over from the heat in no time."
"I'm fine," she said, a bit too sharply.
"Well, then." He frowned at her. "Make sure you clean up a bit before your mother sees you."
"Yes, sir. Why were you looking for me?"
"Oh, that." He brightened. "We have customers."
"Customers?"
"Passing through on their way to Cambridge," he said happily.
"Oh. You need me to help serve?"
"No, Ben. I promised you the day off. But their horses have to be stabled."
"Their horses? Here?" She shoved the damp curls off her forehead. "But you can't!"
"Why not? That's why we have the bloody stables."
"But... I—I haven't mucked them out yet. Can't put customers' horses in dirty stalls."
"Well, I guess not."
"Of course not." She turned him around and headed him back toward the tavern. "You go give them a drink. I'll get the stables mucked out and then I'll get their horses."
"Fine. But make sure you get them clean, mind. They'll be in and out, checking on their horses. Right fond of their mounts, these fellows."
"They'll b
e spotless."
"I know." Whistling over the prospect of paying customers—ones who might have news, at that—he strolled back to the Dancing Eel.
Bennie put one hand over her rapidly beating heart, willing her pulse to return to normal. They hadn't been found out—yet.
She hurried back to the stall and stood over Jon. Where to put him? There was always Brendan's. But she wasn't sure no one would comment on her going there as frequently as she would need to to tend Jon. Nor could she figure out a way to get him over there, through the middle of town, in broad daylight.
Well, there was no hope for it. It would have to be the loft. He'd be both close at hand and out of sight. But how on earth could she get him up there?
She dropped to her knees. "Come on now, Jon. Time to get up."
Eyes still closed, he smiled crookedly. "Don't want to."
She shook his shoulder. "You have to get out of here, Jon, or they're going to find you. Jon? Come on, Jon."
He blinked his eyes open. His irises were dilated and unfocused. "Find me?"
"Yes. We've got to get you up to the loft, do you understand me? They won't find you there."
"Go to loft," he repeated, slurring the words.
She grabbed his right arm and tried to tug him to his feet. "Come on, I'll help you."
"Always help me, Beth."
"Yes." Lord, he was big. He managed to get to his feet, but he had to lean heavily on her shoulder. His movements were slow and uncoordinated, and if she hadn't known he'd had nothing, she would have thought that perhaps he'd been drugged after all.
"Come on. Let's get you to the ladder."
Pushing, pulling, Bennie half dragged him across the stable, where she propped him against the wall. She stood trying to muster her strength, and looked up at the hole in the ceiling. She'd never realized how high it was.
There was no way she was going to get him up that ladder by herself. The morning had already sapped her strength, but even if it hadn't, he was simply too large. He was going to have to help her.
"Jon," she said urgently. "Jon!"
His head rolled on his neck, but he managed to look down at her. "Beth?"
"Jon, we have to get you up the ladder. I can't do it for you. You're going to have to climb up yourself."
Law, Susan Kay Page 20