“But yelling at me in private would have been fine?” I retorted, still furious with my betrothed. “I did nothing wrong, Bryn. Nothing. You had no right to yell at me at all, nor did you have any right to accuse me of being inappropriate.” My eyes narrowed as I glared at him.
Brynmor bit back a retort, which would not have helped in the slightest with his apology. “Iolyn and Madox were joking about Rhian’s reaction to seeing him naked and I realized that you and he had been alone all week, and he was naked. You….bathed him. Touched his body and….” He gritted his teeth hard. “I know that he was hurt and you were doing it as a healer, but I’m a jealous man, and I don’t want you anywhere near him anymore.”
Madox came over with my wine and his coffee, taking a seat next to me. “Come on, Bryn. The guy is literally being held together with his own burned skin and he almost died. Carys saved his life and any healer will tell you there is a professional dissociation when it comes to naked patients.” He came to my defense with a knowing frown.
My head turned towards him, surprised that he had worded it so succinctly. He glanced at me, then shrugged casually. “When I was in the army, I got hurt pretty bad in an ambush.” He started, surprisingly sharing personal details which was not something he was generally inclined to do.
He continued, though broke from my gaze to look into his mug. “I was lying in the healing ward, and I can say from personal experience, I didn’t care that I was naked. The healer didn’t care that I was naked. I was in a lot of pain, and since I couldn’t do anything for myself, she tended to me. Baths, checking my wounds for infection...the part that mattered was that I was healing and needed the help. This is the same thing.” He said, taking a sip of his coffee.
Brynmor looked unimpressed. “Did you have a thing for your nurse, Madox?” He asked flatly, his implication not lost on me and I broke in before Madox could answer.
“After Ben humiliated me just to taunt you, do you really think he has feelings for me? Don’t be idiotic.” I responded acidly before taking a drink...a very long drink.
Bryn’s hands came up defensively and he shook his head. “OK, OK,...fine. I’ll let it go. Just stay away from him. Please? For me and the sake of our marriage?” He asked gruffly, still eying me doubtfully.
I stared at him, dumbfounded. “No.” I said evenly, giving Brynmor a direct and authoritative look. “I am the only one in the household who knows what to do and what to look for. Until he is healed, I cannot stay away from him. Once he is back on his feet, I will interact with him like I would any other guard or member of the household. But you have nothing to worry about. Truly…nothing.” After what Ben had done, I certainly wouldn’t be found in his presence any more than would be necessary.
Brynmor’s expression shifted, reflecting his surprise, annoyance, and he gave me a condescending nod. “Well...uh, fine. Get the man fixed up, and once he is in one piece, I want you to fire him.” He took a long slurp of his ale as though he had just given the final word on the matter, but I would not be so easily commanded.
My brows shot up and I gave a sharp laugh. “I’m not planning to fire him. We need guards, so as long as he does his job, I’m not letting anyone go. And as far as apologies go, this one needs a lot of work, Bryn.” I rose, picking up my goblet. “I’m going to sit somewhere else.”
He was up out of his seat and rounding the table before I could get far, standing right in front of me to block my path. “You will not sit somewhere else.” He said lowly. “I apologized, and explained my reasons for my anger. You are to be my wife, and that means that healer or not, you can’t be alone with him while he’s naked anymore. Not without people thinking you are a harlot, and I am hardly about to let that happen. So I am asking nicely.” I nearly pointed out that it didn’t sound nice while he asked through a clenched jaw while looming over me and trying to intimidate me.
Rhian came rushing into the pub at that moment, saving Brynmor from my quickly rising temper. “Carys!” She said, a fearful look on her face. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! You need to come home. Ben’s wound split and he needs help!” She latched on to my arm, paying no attention to Brynmor as she began to drag me towards the door.
I cursed under my breath and halted, pulling my arm from her grasp to step around Brynmor, setting my wine down. “I thought you were watching him, Rhi. I told you, don’t let him try to get up, he is too wobbly.”
She frowned defensively at me, following after as I headed towards the door, Brynmor and Madox following after her with indecipherable looks. “I was taking very good care of him, thank you very much.” She snapped at me angrily. “I was telling him all about our trip, trying to look at his injury to his chest to make sure it was healing.”
She blushed faintly as she continued. “He wouldn’t let me, and then asked for something to eat. My back was to him and so I didn’t see what happened, but he called out and was in pain, and then his wound had split and he was bleeding! He was probably trying to get up, but I don’t know. He told me to get you.”
I muttered something about stubborn males under my breath, and a few minutes later, we were on our way home.
CHAPTER 54
Ben was sitting up on his bed as we walked in the front door, now shirtless as he pressed the heel of his palm to the incision with a grimace. A few rivulets of blood had trickled down his front, now dried and crusting as he seemed to have stopped the majority of the bleeding. His head turned, a subtle shift in his expression as we walked in. Relief?
Rhian knelt right next to him and reached for his hand, though he turned slightly away and gave her a firm look. “You are not Carys.” Rhian shrank back a little at his frown, then rose to move out of my way as a pout formed on her lips. She shot me an envious glare before flopping on the couch nearby to watch me work, determined to be a part of his recuperation in any way possible.
I grabbed the medical kit and knelt next to him, seeing him visibly relax with my arrival though I couldn’t bring myself to speak as his dreadfully timed comments from the day before had not been forgiven.
I motioned for him to pull his hand away as I leaned in to see what damage had been done. Sure enough, the cauterized wound had split, blood still seeping from the newly opened gash. The muscle beneath still held fast as it seemed to be healing well, thankfully, but my eyes fixed on the split. Strange...this should have held.
With a growing suspicion, I leaned over to inspect more closely, seeing the clean slice into the skin, just deep enough to draw a bit of blood. I sighed faintly, looking around to see his daggers at arms reach and I looked up to him with a hardened look, one that told him I knew exactly what he had done.
“It seems you have overdone it, Ben.” I said evenly, playing along with his ruse. “I will have to put stitches in now, seeing as how you haven’t healed yet and the burned skin doesn’t seem to be holding together.” I pulled some tweezers from the pack, scooting closer so that I could methodically and not-so-gently pull away any rough scabbing that would prevent me from putting in the stitches.
Rhian, quickly getting bored of the arduous and silent process of my work, headed into the kitchen to talk to Derryth. With my sister further away, I hissed so that she wouldn’t hear. “Why did you cut yourself?” Pluck. Pluck. Pluck.
He snorted softly, a grunt and a wince from my less than gentle pulling following shortly after. “Because you left me to suffer at the hands and talkative ministrations of your sister. She does not have your gentle touch.” He muttered in return. “It would not have been much longer before I would not need to pretend to be dying.” He growled softly, and I couldn’t argue much. Rhian hovered when she was worried, and talked. A lot.
Pluck. Pluck. “Are you going to keep doing this every time I leave the house?” I frowned, muttering sarcastically though didn’t look up from my task.
I could hear his frown in his voice and he murmured without humor. “Only when you are gone too long.”
A defeated sigh escap
ed me and I scowled at him. “The only reason I left today is because of what you did yesterday. I am angry with you. I don’t want to see you and I don’t want to talk to you.” I pulled the needle and thread from the medical bag, and setting to stitching together the splitting flesh. I wasn’t being all that gentle, and he grunted as the needle pierced his flesh. “You made both Brynmor and I look like fools and you provoked him, making our argument even worse, and you did it on purpose. If you are trying to punish me, then its working. Consider me suitably punished.”
His jaw clenched, bracing himself against the bite of the needle into his skin which kept him from forming any response, if he even had one at all. I tied off the ends of the thread before reaching for the salve, dabbing it over the freshly stitched cut.
I rose to my feet when I was done, returning all the supplies back to the bag and returning it to its place. “Do you need anything else before I go outside to sit in the yard and not be too far away?” I asked irritably. His lips twitched with whatever amount of amusement (or its opposite) that he felt, finally shaking his head.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Rhian sat on her bed reading some old book as I got ready for bed that night, a frown forming as she flipped a page, then another. “I found an old journal of Mother’s…” She began, looking over to me as I sat on the edge of my bed.
My brow lifted, surprised both by the fact that Mother had kept a journal, and that she had let Rhian read it. I peered over to glance at the open book in her lap, Rhian’s eyes returned to the pages as she flipped through it. It was filled with the familiar script of Mother’s penmanship, some pages having sketches drawn, or small objects fastened to the page. It looked interesting, and I scooted over to sit on my sister’s bed to get a better look. “Did she give her permission for you to read her personal journal?” I queried, knowing I would never let Rhian within a thousand miles of mine.
She blushed and shook her head. “Well, no...she doesn’t know I found it. It’s from when she was young so there isn’t anything...um, inappropriate.” Her blush deepened and she flipped it open to a page. “There was one entry that I wanted to ask you about because I am not sure what to think about it.”
She set the journal on my lap, an old silver coin glued to the page above the writing. I lifted the book to study the coin, frowning a little with recognition as she asked. “Isn’t that a Yehketi coin?”
I nodded, leaning over to study it. “Yes, this looks like a silver kyet. They have gold and bronze kyets, too, similar to our Taurovan crowns.” I recited absently, my studies over the years including foreign currencies, though I had never seen Yehketim coins with my own eyes.
Rhian pointed to the writing. “Read what she wrote, Carys.” I gave her a curious look, then did as she asked.
“Papa told me the truth today. Papa and Mama aren’t my parents. Papa said he found me as a baby when he was a soldier, left in the woods all by myself. I was wrapped in a blanket with only that coin for belongings. He said I was so beautiful, and I had nobody to take care of me, so they kept me. I wonder what happened to my real mama and papa?”
“Mother was adopted?” I was shocked, though on further reflection, thought Mother had never looked much like either Grandfather or Grandmother, nor shared their mannerisms. However, this revelation now created several other questions in my mind.
Rhian pointed to the coin with wide eyes. “What if Mother is Yehketim?” She whispered, though I wasn’t sure if she was terrified or excited at the prospect.
I snorted, quickly dismissing the idea. “That’s just ludicrous, Rhi. Think about it. Would grandfather really bring home a baby that belonged to Taurova’s sworn enemy? Just because Mother was supposedly found with this coin doesn’t make her Yehketim...” My voice trailed off as a betraying thought hollered at me. But why would she have this, then?
Once the idea was in my head, however, I couldn’t shake it. It was as if all the layers of my mind were being peeled back, slowly and painfully, revealing to me what I felt I should have known all along. The moment it was out of Rhian’s mouth, I knew it was the truth.
Memories tumbled one over the other...off-hand comments from my grandparents and Mother....the colorful blanket with exotic designs that Mother had kept hidden in a chest in her room...She would never tell me where she got it, and now that, and the coin, her dark complexion, where Grandfather had found her...the truth of my mother’s bloodline was an icy tidal wave slamming into me and my breath finally caught as my face turned white.
Rhian was staring at me, perplexed, though I barely noticed her, I was so wrapped up in the very difficult truths now staring me in the face. “Oh, gods…” I whispered, both my mind and stomach reeling.
Rhian’s brow furrowed, and she looked almost as sick as I did. “She is, isn’t she?” She whispered to me. One look at my sister had me wishing I could magically unburden her from this knowledge. Father could not have known the bloodline of mother when they wed, his hatred for Yehket and its people known to everyone. She grew up in Taurova with Taurovan parents and culture. Where she was born doesn’t matter.
I shook my head. “I don’t know, Rhi, but the important thing is, she is our mother, and regardless what side of the border she was born on, she is Taurovan. That was how she was raised.”
Rhian nodded to me, glancing back down to the journal as she took it, closing it to tuck it into her nightstand. “I hope you are right, Carys. She is our mother and a good person. I think...maybe I should get some sleep.” She mumbled with a frown, sliding her legs under her blankets.
I went back to my own bed, pulling my blankets up and tried to distract my little sister from her worries. “Why don’t you go into Lund with Brynmor or Madox tomorrow? Maybe there will be interesting people around. That pub had entertainment every evening and might be fun.”
She perked up a little at the idea, then nodded. “I haven’t gotten to go out for an evening since we got back from our trip. I wonder if there are new people around? And that pub seems nice. Good idea, Carys.” She smiled down to me, all concerns from the last few minutes forgotten.
If only I could forget so easily.
CHAPTER 55
Nearly the entire family went to Lund the next day; only Darius, Ben, and myself were left at the house, though Darius was busy with his duties. I could see him working out in the shed but it was another figure approaching the yard that caught my attention. His limping gait told me who it was before I could see his face, and I smiled faintly.
“Ben, the healer I told you about is here.” I murmured, hearing the shifting of his blankets as well as his grinding teeth, a soft grunting coming from behind me as he slowly pushed himself to standing.
I rolled my eyes a little at his stubbornness, but headed towards the door, stepping out onto the front step and letting the door shut behind me before I greeted him. “Taliesin, welcome here. I wasn’t entirely sure you would come.” My smile grew a little as I dipped my head.
He responded to my chuckle with soft laughter of his own and a contrite smile. “I apologize, Lady Carys. I fully intended to come the next day, but I was called to some other business. But I am here now, so I am relieved to see you look better rested. And how is your patient faring? Ben, was it?”
He pushed his hood back, revealing the handsome features that I remembered, hair tied back neatly in a ponytail. It was difficult to guess his age, much like it was with Ben, who had surprised me when he told me his years. It stood to reason that this Velynesian would be the same way. Assuming he was another of their kind.
This smile was a little more forced, my emotions still raw where Ben was concerned. “He seems to be healing well enough. He is starting to get up and move around a little more now, likely because he loathes the idea of looking weak, I’m sure.”
Taliesin tilted his head back and laughed, amused. “Most men dislike appearing weak. Even more so in front of a pretty lady.” He flashed a charming grin, and I tried fiercely to keep the pink from reaching m
y cheeks.
I cleared my throat as if somehow that would magically change the subject. “Well, he is just inside. Come in.” I turned and entered the cottage, Taliesin followed on my heels; Ben was taking slow, shuffling steps along the floor, using the backs of the couches to provide some steadiness. His back was to us and I was certain it was more for the sake of ignoring us than to prove he didn’t need a healer.
Taliesin remained just inside the doorway, his eyes fixed on the traversing Ben. He said nothing, nor did he step further into the house, simply watched Ben intently and waited with an expression that I couldn’t decipher. I finally cleared my throat, murmuring his name. “Ben…”
Ben turned around once he got to the far end of the couch, his eyes landing on Taliesin where he stopped short and paled considerably. That was far from the reaction I expected from Ben, fully anticipating vast amounts of scowling. Ben gaped, unable to take his eyes from Taliesin, though a split second later, lowered his eyes quickly as though acceding to whatever the healer wished.
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