CHAPTER 9
Mae’s hands were shaking.
Her handsnevershook. It was one of her defining characteristics. It was the reason her grandfather had always told her as a child that she would be his successor.
Tonight, they were shaking.
She left Roland Reed to strip away the clothing over his wound as she went into the kitchenette to heat water, tossing him a clean rag to stopper the bleeding before she left the room. Usually she would stay and demonstrate the appropriate amount of pressure, but she could not face that particular man at this particular moment.
Especially not whilst he was disrobing.
She took a bottle of clean, pre-boiled water after the kettle was set and snatched a few more clean rags from the cupboard before marching back into the central room.
She reminded herself that she was furious with him. That she wanted to slap him very hard. That he wasimpossible.
And then she rounded the corner and saw him leaned on his side on one of their waiting cots, that freckled torso in full view, dusted lightly with downy hair the color of brass. The muscles of his abdomen were flexing as he winced and dabbed at the bleeding gorge between his ribs. She could see his navel.
He glanced up at her, his shoulder-length curls brushing against the bare planes of his shoulders and falling loosely over his collarbones. His eyes seemed to glow in the low light, an aggressive jewel-like turquoise.
“I need to see it,” she said, pleased that she sounded firm, even if her voice was more brittle than she would have liked.
“It hasn’t stopped bleeding,” he warned her as she came nearer, nodding down toward where he was pressing the rag into himself. “If I pull this off, it’ll start again.”
“Just for a moment,” she said, holding out a clean new rag. “When I say, lift it. I will pour water over to get a look, and then you can replace the pressure with a new cloth.”
He grimaced and nodded. “Fine.”
“Now,” she said, lifting the bottle and tilting it the instant he pulled the rag away.
She exhaled from a corner of her lungs that she hadn’t realized was reserving breath, relief spreading through her shoulders and creeping down toward her elbows as she observed the wound through the rippling lens of the stream of water, moving it side to side to ensure she was not being fooled by refraction or magnification.
“Done,” she said, and pulled away again. “It’s wide but shallow. And clean.”
“Good,” he said, clenching his teeth as he pushed the new rag down. “Stitches again?”
“Again?” she asked, blinking at the wound before her eyes slid up the length of his forearm, falling on the pale white oval where the amputee had bitten him all those years ago. She felt a faint smile float over her lips. “Ah. No, not this time. The gash is too wide. I’m afraid I need the cautery iron.”
He stared at her for a moment, made a face, and then collapsed backward onto the cot, his hair flying out around him with a little huff. “Get on with it, then.”
As though agreeing, the kettle began to scream from the kitchenette.
She retrieved the medium-sized iron from its place in her tool cabinet before moving into the kitchen, swapping it with the kettle, and pouring the boiling water into one of her basins. The water rippled a little from the trembling of her hands as she poured.
She made herself breathe slowly. Deeply in through her nose, slowly out through pursed lips. She watched the iron start to turn red.
She wondered where the bullet had ended up.
Shaking her head, she turned and moved the basin into the room, next to Roland, and moved around, pulling down the various salves and poultices, the expensive linen gauze and a precious tincture of silver nitrate suspended in beeswax.
She put them one by one on the table at the foot of his cot while he watched her through narrow slits between his lashes.
“Aren’t you going to tell me a story?” he said, when she turned to check the iron. “Isn’t that what you do?”
She stopped, her spine going up, and turned only her face to the side, looking at him through the corner of her eye. “Are you making fun of me, Mr. Reed?”
“You told me one last time,” he returned, rather than answering. “The three debutantes from Dover. I want another.”
She turned very slowly to face him, scanning his expression for any sign of mockery. He was difficult to read, she thought. It wasn’t just the beauty, though that, of course, always muddled things up.
