“I suppose I am vain and conceited,” he said. “I hate having you witness my weakness.”
“I think,” she said, “you are probably the least weak person I know, Sydnam Butler.”
He smiled at her.
“Did Andrew have the story right?” she asked him. “Was it an army surgeon who amputated your arm?”
“A British surgeon, yes,” he said, “after Kit and a group of Spanish partisans had rescued me. It was impossible to save it.”
“Sydnam,” she said, “I want to see you.”
It was impossible to misunderstand her meaning.
He had worn his shirt and breeches to bed even though she had been asleep by the time he came upstairs.
He shook his head.
“Ineedto,” she said.
It was, he supposed, inevitable unless they were to live a separate, celibate existence for the rest of their lives, something he would find immeasurably less tolerable than remaining single. Sooner or later she would have to see him.
He just wished it could be later rather than sooner. He was so very tired…
But she was not waiting for his permission. She had got to her feet and lit a single candle on the small table on the near side of the bed. And then she came to kneel in front of him again and drew his shirt free of the waistband of his breeches after taking the blanket away. It would have been churlish of him not to raise his arm when she drew the shirt upward so that she could lift it off over his head.
He did not close his eye. He watched her.
The surgeon had amputated his arm a few inches below the shoulder. Because there had been no recent battle and consequently the surgeon had not been pressed for time while other wounded soldiers awaited their turn to go under his knife, he had done a good, neat job. The stump of the arm was not unsightly—as amputations went.
“I still have my arm, you know,” he said with a somewhat twisted smile, “and my hand. In my mind they are still there and very real. I canfeelthem. Sometimes they itch. I can almostusemy hand. But they are both gone, as you can see.”
It was not just the stump of his arm she could see, though. The whole right side of his body was purple from the burns, the crisscrossing scars of the old cuts livid in contrast. They extended all the way down his side and leg to the knee.
She set her hand against the naked flesh of his side, just above the band of his breeches.
“Is there still pain?” she asked.
He hesitated.
“Yes,” he admitted. “Particularly about my eye, about the stump of my arm, and in my knee, which was not actually destroyed. But not always and not unbearable. It is worst in damp weather. It is something I am accustomed to, something that is quite within my control. One can learn to live with a great deal of discomfort and even pain, Anne. For about six months of my life, I wished fervently to die, but I am glad I did not. Life is very sweet despite all the losses I have sustained. I am not generally, I think, a complainer.”
“You are not,” she agreed.
She reached up her hand then and cupped it about the right side of his face. He closed his eye and leaned into her hand. So few people except physicians had touched his right side since he came home from the Peninsula. It was as if his torturers had laid everlasting claim to it. He had not even realized just how much he had craved someone’s touch—a gentle touch after all the violence. It felt almost as if healing flowed through her hand, as if after she had lifted it away his flesh would be whole again.
He swallowed against a gurgle in his throat.
And then he felt her thumb move beneath the black ribbon of his eye patch and realized her intent. He grabbed for her wrist and opened his left eye, but it was too late. She set the eye patch down on the floor beside his chair.
He gazed at her in horror and misery.
“It is all right,” she told him softly. “Sydnam, you are my husband. It is all right.”
But it wasnotall right. His right eye was gone. His closed eyelid lay flat against where it had been and there was some heavy scarring. To say it was not a pretty sight would be a gross understatement.
He would not close his eye. He clamped his teeth hard together and watched her as she gazed at him. And then she got to her feet, leaned over him, her hands on his shoulders, and set her lips softly against the outer corner of his eyelid.
He fought the tears that ached in his throat.
