She withdrew a small glass pot from her utility belt, holding it up so the translucent green paste inside caught the light. “I’ll put this on yer arm and bandage it. For the infection.”
He stared at the pot for a long moment, an endless moment, before those dark eyes strayed back to her. To Senga’s horror, she felt the familiar tightness of desire in her gut when he looked at her.
No, no, no,she thought furiously.Not after all this time. Not after he turned his back on me. Why can I not forget him? It would be better for everybody.
“Very well,” Noah muttered at last.
He stood still, and Senga realized to her chagrin that she would have to go to him. Still, there was no backing out now.
She crossed the room towards him, snatching up a roll of bandages from the bed. The bandages he’d already tried to tiearound his torso were far too loose and came away easily once she’d unpicked the knot.
It helped that Noah was tall, and the top of Senga’s head only came to his shoulder. Of course, she was used to treating men, and sometimes handsome and strong men. It had never bothered her, never distracted her before. It waswork,and they were patients, not really men at all.
Somehow, this particular case seemed to be a little different.
You must be serious,she warned herself.He is only another patient.But he was tall and she was not, so she could concentrate on her task then and not bother to look up. She could focus on rolling the bandages carefully over ripples and swells of muscle, hard-won muscle, the sort of strength that came from years of swinging swords and axes.
And the scars!
When they parted all those years ago, Senga had been able to list every scar on his body in her head. There was a crescent-shaped curve on his knee where a dog had bitten him; a knotted line around one forearm where he’d broken his arm as a child, and a series of short, angry-looking lines on his calf where they’d once been attacked by a particularly vicious chicken.
Now, Noah’s body was littered with more scars than she could count. The knotted line on his forearm was still there, almost hidden by a welt of bubbled and scalded skin, the scar probably inflicted by a burn. There were raised lines of pink and white scattered across his chest, back, and arms, undoubtedly made by blades, and three circular gouges on one shoulder blade, which made Senga think of arrows.
And, of course, there was the curved scar on his cheek, cutting a white line through the dark growth of stubble there. There would undoubtedly be more scars that she could not see.
What has happened to him?
Silence lingered in the room, broken only by the rough slide of gauze over skin and Noah’s tight, pained breathing. He sucked in a breath when she tightened the bandages, and she resisted the urge to glance upwards.
“It has to be tight,” she responded, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “I know it hurts.”
“I did not complain,” came the bitten-off response. “I can handle pain. Don’t worry about me. I have never balked from discomfort before, and this is not the first time I’ve had a healer cut me up and stitch me back together again.”
“Hopefully I won’t do either,” she shot back and felt his eyes land on her heavily. She fought not to look up.
“I’m sure ye won’t,” he remarked dryly.
Senga tightened her jaw, teeth squeaking together. She tied off the knot, casting one last glance over her work to see if she’d made any mistakes. She hadn’t.
Now for the arm. Senga briefly toyed with the idea of asking Noah to sit down so that she didn’t have to reach up to clean it and apply the mixture, which would make her arms ache quickly. But that would put them on eye level, and so far it was easier to avoid his eye and pretend that he was simply just another patient.
Letting out a slow breath, Senga withdrew a clean rag from her pocket, dipping the end in the mixture and smoothing it over the gash. It must have been painful, probably more painful than bandaging the cracked ribs, but Noah did not flinch or react in any way at all.
“I thought ye were dead, ye know,” Senga murmured, her voice catching.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that muscle flex in Noah’s cheek once more.
“So did I,” he responded, voice tight.
With the wound clean, Senga dipped a finger into the glass jar, scooping out a generous fingertip-ful of the mixture. She would spread it around the reddened edges of the wound before the bandage was applied. It should slow the bleeding and help the wound clot, as well as hopefully preventing infection. It was one of Sister Abigail’s concoctions, which included herbs like shadesflax, and had been so successful that every healer carried a little jar of the stuff.
“Ye don’t even have an explanation for me, do ye?” Senga whispered. She’d meant the words to stay inside her mind, but they were louder than she’d hoped.
Noah stiffened again, the muscles in his arm bunching. A fresh trickle of blood seeped out of the wound, and she wiped it away with a sigh.
“Nay,” he responded tightly. “I don’t.”
She dropped her hands, looking him fully in the face for the first time. He was already staring at her, and Senga suspected that he’d been watching her since her work had begun.
