It surprised him that she hadn't complained of it during the day.
"All of me hurts," she said with a failed effort to smile. "I couldn't notice anything as minor as a flesh wound."
"Wounds can become infected. Roll up your sleeve. I'll take a look at it."
He didn't like what he saw. The wound itself didn't look bad, but the flesh surrounding it had turned an angry red. "Are you sure this doesn't hurt?"
"Of course it hurts, but it's not unbearable."
"I didn't ask you that."
"It hurts. There, are you satisfied?" "No. I don't like the way it looks." "What's wrong?" "It looks red and raw."
"I got shot. How's it supposed to look?"
Red and raw. He didn't want to tell himself he wouldn't have been so worried if the wound had be longed to someone else. Still, while it didn't look bad, it didn't look good.
"I'll clean it again," he said. "With whiskey?" "It's all I've got."
"It's going to burn, isn't it?" "Probably."
He didn't ask if she'd faint. She hadn't yet, and he was positive she'd endured more this last week than in her whole life. She looked at him, her gaze open and curious.
Trusting.
"Have you ever been hurt before?" "Bruises and scrapes."
"Gunshot wounds sometimes take a while to heal. It varies from person to person."
"How about you?"
"I heal very quickly." "I thought you would." "Why?„
"You like it out here. You wouldn't if you were for ever trying to recover from some kind of hurt."
"I don't get hurt."
"I guess that would help."
Maybe discomfort made her sharp-tongued. Maybe she would develop enough backbone to survive. Now if he could just convince her not to marry Rudolf.
He took the top off the whiskey bottle and poured a generous amount over the wound. Valeria's sharp intake of breath told him it still hurt.
"You don't have to hold back," he said. "You can scream if you want. There's nobody out here to hear
you.
"I don't want to scream."
He could see it took a lot of self-control to speak calmly. The whiskey must have burned badly.
"I'd rather not announce my presence to every mountain lion within five miles. If they're going to have me for dinner, I intend to make them work for it."
He felt proud of her determination to keep things from getting too serious. "Don't worry. They're more afraid of you than you are of them."
"I don't see how that's possible. They have claws and teeth. I don't even have a riding crop."
"I'll protect you."
"You'll be asleep."
"The horses will let us know if any lions are around." "I'd prefer not to rely on a horse for my safety." "He'll be thinking more about his safety than yours." "That may be a comfort to you, but it doesn't do much for me."
He finished bandaging her arm. She hadn't cringed, whimpered, or jerked away when he rubbed salve into the wound. If this trip lasted long enough, she'd be more than a match for Rudolf.
"Do you sleep outside often?" Valeria looked around her as she asked the question.
The sun had dropped below the canyon walls long ago. The shadows had assumed a deep blue hue. Orange and purple streaked the sky above the canyon.
"Before this trip," Valeria continued, "I'd never slept anywhere without guards outside the gates, footmen in
the hall, a maid in the adjacent room. My bed was piled high with down mattresses and sheets of perfumed silk."
Again she looked around at the canyon. Shadows of the darkest night lurked under the branches of the willows and cottonwoods that lined the creek. Not a breath of air stirred. The scratching sounds of many tiny animals reached their ears. The rocks radiated heat absorbed during the day.
"Now you expect me to sleep on rocks under an open sky with nothing to protect me from wild animals." She shivered. "I probably won't get a wink of sleep."
"I can take care of that," Luke said.
"What are you doing to do?" she asked- when he got up and came toward her.
"I'm going to rub some of the kinks out of your muscles."
She looked nervous.
"All my muscles are fine," she said.
"I'll be the judge of that. Hand me your bedroll."
"What does it look like?"
"Like a blanket rolled up. You're leaning against it."
"Is this all I'll have between me and the rocks?"
"It's plenty." He spread the bedroll out and opened it up. "Crawl inside."
"I can't get up."
He'd suspected as much. "Give me your hand." He helped her to her feet. Her grimace told him all her muscles had gone stiff again. "Now lie down on your stomach." She knelt on the bedroll and gradually extended her limbs. She turned her head to one side, trying to look up at him. "What are you going to do?"
"Work the kinks out of your muscles. I'll start with your calves." Her muscles were hard as rock. He rubbed them gently until he felt them begin to relax. "Don't look so nervous. I'm not going to hurt you."
"I'm nervous because I can't see you." "Don't you trust me?"
"I don't know."
After what he'd done to her on 'the mountain, he deserved that. "I gave Hans my promise I'd get you safely to your ranch. There isn't much I haven't done at one time or another, but I've never gone back on a promise."
"Everybody breaks a promise at one time or another," she said.
"My word is all I have," he said. "If I break it, I have nothing."
"I don't understand."
He couldn't explain. Even his brother didn't understand.
"I'll massage your thighs now," he said, knowing it was likely to make her extremely uneasy._ "Try to stay relaxed. The looser you are, the sooner I'll be done."
Luke tried to tell himself he was performing an ordinary task of no particular significance. It worked for a short while, but touching Valeria's thighs shattered the illusion. He might fool himself into thinking her calves were no different from anybody else's, but her thighs were a whole different proposition. They were soft, rounded, and uncomfortably close to her buttocks. There was no way Luke could pretend there was anything ordinary about Valeria's bottom. He could pretend she was a useless ornament, but she was a beautifully crafted ornament, every detail of her body having been fashioned with meticulous care.
Luke tried to concentrate on the stiff muscles, to focus his attention on the gradual release of tension in her body, but his gaze kept straying to the rise of her bottom. His body began to swell. The tightness of his jeans, especially in the kneeling position, made that extremely uncomfortable.
"Are your shoulders tight?" he asked. He had to think of something else, or his hands were liable to wander a little too far north.
"I think so."
He shifted position. It was more difficult to loosen the muscles in her shoulders, but it was safer. "You're tight as a water barrel."
"I'm not used to riding so much."
She sounded sleepy. Apparently exhaustion had overcome her fear of sleeping in the open. He gradually reduced the pressure on her muscles until he was , barely touching her. In a few moments he was rewarded with the sound of her soft, regular breathing. He leaned back on his heels.
She was asleep.
He moved away quickly. He poured himself a cup of coffee and faced reality. He was interested in this woman, and it wasn't his usual kind of interest. He felt protective. Not because he'd been paid a very large sum of money to protect her. Not because he'd made a promise. Not because she was a woman and he was a man and men were supposed to protect women. Certainly not because she was a princess in search of a safe place to lay her royal head.
He was interested in her the way every other man was interested in that special woman when-and if-she came into his life. She touched something in him, brought a part of him alive he'd thought dead. She made him care, something he'd thought impossible.
But he didn't wa
nt to care, certainly not enough so he could be hurt. His parents hadn't been able to love him. No one else could.
Valeria awoke to the sound of a man speaking her name from a distance. She couldn't figure out why it should be
a man's voice. No man was allowed to enter her suite until she had breakfasted and dressed. She knew that hadn't happened because she was still in bed, though it was the most uncomfortable bed she'd ever slept in. Maybe that accounted for the feeling of stiffness in her body. She felt like she'd been made out of papier-mache.
"Valeria, wake up. Breakfast is ready."
She jerked awake. She remembered. That was Luke's voice. They had left the wagons and gone off by themselves. She tried to move and found her body was so stiff she couldn't sit up.
And she'd slept in her clothes! Nothing like this had ever happened. She changed her clothes from the skin out at least once every day. Everything she wore was washed or cleaned after a single use, even if she'd only worn it for a few hours. The thought of wearing clothes for a second day made her skin crawl.
"Are you awake?" Luke asked.
"Yes."
"You can't get up, can you?"
"No."
"Can you move anything?"
Her fingers and toes worked just fine. So did her feet. She could turn her head to one side, but the muscles in her shoulders, back, thighs, and calves were immobile. "Not enough to get up."
"It won't take me more than a few minutes to work out the stiffness," Luke said.
She remembered how he'd massaged her muscles last night. She'd fallen asleep in the middle of it! She didn't understand how she could have gone to sleep with a man's hands touching her body. Surely there wasn't enough fatigue in the world to justify that, but it must have been fatigue. It certainly wasn't indifference.
She nearly groaned aloud when he began to knead the muscles in her shoulders and neck. She awakened with a cramp one morning as a little girl, but she didn't remember it hurting as much as this.
"This will hurt," Luke said.
His warning came late. She cringed.
"You shouldn't let yourself get so out of shape," Luke said. Her shoulders didn't hurt quite as much now. "You'll have plenty of opportunity to ride at the ranch."
At the moment, she found the notion of never getting on a horse again appealing.
"Why didn't you tell me you were so miserable? I would have stopped to give you a chance to get down and work out the cramps."
"No, you wouldn't have," she managed to say through the pain. He'd moved to her back. She'd never known she had so many muscles there. "You'd have said I was a useless parasite and I should have been ready to ride fourteen hours over impossible country at the drop of hat."
She thought he laughed. She couldn't be sure through the haze of pain.
"I probably would have, but I won't today."
She doubted he'd be happy about breaking his trip once he got under way. "I think I'll walk the rest of the way," she muttered.
"It's not that bad. You'll be feeling fine in a few minutes."
He'd reached her thighs. The muscles ached, her nerves tingled like needles, and her skin had been chafed until it was sore. There was no way in this world she was going of be fine anytime soon. If ever.
He didn't spend very long on her calves before he said, "Now you can stand up."
She didn't have to fall on her face to know she wasn't
ready. "You'll have to give me a hand," she said. "Sure."
"Go slowly," she said, but he had already brought her to her feet in one swift movement. Every muscle in her body screamed in protest.
So did she.
It seemed all the wildlife in the canyon had gathered near their camp. A flock of birds flew up from the trees, squawking in protest. A doe and two fawns scampered up the far bank of the creek and disappeared. Dozens of little animals scurried around in the underbrush, probably snatching their young into dens for fear she would trample them in her desperate efforts to get her feet under her. She hoped any snakes or mountain lions were off doing other things. They'd know at a glance she was helpless to defend herself.
"Did that hurt?" Luke asked.
"No. I just screamed to clear the underbrush. I don't like being watched while I'm suffering the agonies of the damned."
Luke's lips twitched. "That bad?"
"I've never been damned before," Valeria said, "but I don't think it can get any worse."
"Remind me to tell you about a few Apache tortures." She intended to forget that reminder. If Luke thought what the Apaches did was bad, it must be truly inhuman. "I hope breakfast isn't overcooked," he said.
She found herself a boulder, hoped nothing disgusting was hiding under or behind it, and leaned against it. "You go ahead and eat," she said. "I'll stay here." "I'll bring your breakfast to you."
"I don't want anything."
"We won't stop to eat again until nightfall."
She wasn't sure she could force herself to eat anything, but she was sensible enough to know she had to eat to keep up her strength. "I'll be all right in a few minutes. Maybe I'll have some coffee."
"You'll have a full breakfast if I have to force it down you. I won't have you so weak from hunger, you fall out of the saddle before noon."
The old Luke was back. In all probability he'd never left. She'd just interpreted acts of necessity as acts of kindness. She'd be careful not to do that again. She pushed off from the boulder and took a tentative step. Her muscles burned, but she didn't collapse. If she could just keep putting one foot in front of the other, maybe she could learn to walk again.
"Be careful or you'll stumble over a rock."
He probably didn't want to have to haul her to her feet.
"I'll manage. Give me some coffee."
Despite being stronger than she liked, the coffee tasted good. The morning was mercifully cool. Her muscles gradually grew more pliant, the burning lessened, and she could walk without limping about. She ate her breakfast standing up. It tasted a lot better than she'd expected, but it still looked awful. She would ask her chef to teach these Americans something about food presentation. She could see no reason why her meals had to look like something that should have been thrown out.
She watched disbelievingly when Luke cleaned the dishes with sand. "Wouldn't water work better?"
"It won't get rid of the grease," Luke said. "Now I have to look at your wound before we leave."
He'd doused the fire, and it was still dark. He struck a match after he removed the bandage. Then he struck a second match.
"I don't like the way it's healing," he said.
"It's probably doing fine." It had started to hurt so much it had awakened her twice during the night. That hadn't frightened her. She expected a gunshot wound to hurt, but Luke's worry robbed her of that comfort. He didn't have to tell her they were beyond the reach of medical attention, and she knew enough about wounds to realize people could die of them.
"I see signs of infection."
He poured whiskey over it again. The burning pain convinced her maybe it wasn't doing as well as she'd thought.
"I'll check again tonight," he said.
"What if it's worse?" She didn't know what he could do. She couldn't imagine why a competent doctor would want to live west of San Antonio.
He began saddling the horses. "I'll have to do something about it."
Probably amputate her arm. It was just the kind of pragmatic solution a man like Luke Attmore would think of. He hadn't an ounce of sentiment in him. If something went wrong, he'd fix it in the quickest, most efficient way and move on. She supposed that was the smart thing to do. Her uncle would have done the same thing.
Her parents had been killed in a freak accident while she was still an infant. She had no idea what either of them had been like. It was odd that she should miss them now for the first time in years. She never thought of herself as an orphan. She'd been surrounded all her life by people anxious to take care of her, to cater to her
every whim, but no one said much about love, not even her uncle's wife. It was all duty and responsibility. Personal emotion had to be set aside for the sake of the family or the state.
But Luke's ruthless attitude didn't come from a sense of duty. It probably came from a totally utilitarian approach to problems. Drain the situation of all emotion, all prejudice, all preference, then do what works the best.
Valeria conceded that she ought to admire such an attitude, but she didn't. She'd been denied emotions her whole life. Now that she discovered she actually had likes and dislikes, could admit the presence of emotion, she'd decided she liked it.
She had no intention of letting Luke amputate her arm. It would certainly be scarred, but she wanted to keep it.
"Time to mount up," Luke said.
Valeria couldn't recall when she'd ever heard more ominous words. Her body ached at the mere thought of what was in store. But she was determined not to let Luke know how much she dreaded what lay ahead. She supposed she'd developed a cynical attitude, but she still had her pride. She might be a deposed princess, but she was still a princess. She was going to act like one if it killed her.
Faced with the prospect of getting into that saddle, she figured it probably would. "How about another cup of coffee?" she asked.
"You hate my coffee." "I never said that."
"When you acted like you'd swallowed alum water, I figured it out."
"It's just that it's so strong."
"You could have put some water in it."
She would have if she had been able to get used to the idea that she and the horses drank from the same stream. That shouldn't have bothered her. Luke's coffee was strong enough to kill and dissolve the bodies of any critters that might be in the water.
"I'll learn to drink it your way. It's probably the only way anybody in Arizona knows how to make it."
"It's time to stop stalling and mount up. It'll soon be daylight."
Maybe he considered that barely perceptible lightening in the deep blue velvet overhead a sign dawn was on its way, but as far as she was concerned a single candle could have been responsible for it.
Luke put his hands around her waist. "Wait!" she cried, but it was too late. She was in the air and settled on the saddle before the sound of her plea finished echoing down the canyon. Every muscle from the bottom of her feet to the back of her neck screamed its objection, but Luke had handed her the reins and walked over to his horse. He had already packed up the food and cooking pots.
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