Page 102 of The Duchess Curse

He was in pain. She tried not to hurry the salve. It wouldn’t help him if she ruined the recipe, but every tear of the sheets, every guttural groan, twisted her panic higher.

“Guin.” It sounded like he’d ripped his throat open to say her name.

She ran to him, bowl in hand, stopping only to pick up a fresh cloth and wet it in a nearby washbasin. She mopped his sweat-beaded forehead and set the bowl on the mattress. “Shh. Bran, shh. I know it hurts. I’m here.”

After the first night, she’d not tried to put him back into a shirt. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness and leaned on Ned when necessary to use the chamber pot.

Her name, now, was the first coherent word he’d said. She’d take that as a sign of his improvement.

Despite the fever, despite the thrashing.

She unwound his bandages carefully. The wound was looking better. For the past two days, they’d squeezed yellow puss from it on both sides, a brutal job that had made Bran scream once. Otherwise, he was a babe, malleable to her will.

She just wanted him not dead.

Conscious would be nice, too.

She dipped her hands in the turmeric and ice water and spread it on his wound. No puss now, and the skin had calmed from angry red to irritated pink.

“Can you roll for me?” she asked.

Beneath his eyelids, his eyes rolled. His lashes fluttered. Would they open?

No. But he did manage to heft his left shoulder up off the bed so she could tend to the backside of it.

Fingers in the bowl, into the turmeric paste, then sweeping across his shoulder, careful of the wound, wincing every time she touched it. A hole right through this man. So much of him had seeped out, but surely he was too big, there was too much more of him for it all to have drained away. She painted his skin slowly, reverently, methodically.

“I know you can hear me.” She rolled her lips between her teeth, swallowing a sob and continued tending his wound.

He was still as a moonless night, his skin moon-pale beneath the turmeric.

And her voice trembled when words broke through her lips once more. “I know you know I do not hate you. But I will if you leave me. Do you understand? Not only will the queen be most displeased to lose her knight, I shall be bloody furious. Do you understand?” She swiped a tear off her cheek with the back of her hand.

His body was a fire, too hot, too hot.

And now the tears came too quickly. No swiping them away, no pretending they didn’t exist. She bound his wound and eased him back to the mattress. Dark tendrils of hair clung to his wet forehead. His cheeks blossomed heat.

She stroked the hair away, traced the silvery line of his scar “Be well, Bran. Heal, so I can tell you I forgive you. So I can tell you that my favorite place in the entire world is the conservatory right here in this house where I can hear you moving about. I want you to know that I am… overwhelmed with your gift of the shop. And that when I sat behind the desk in my office, it felt… beautiful to have it back. And… odd, too. I don’t know why.” She pressed her fingertips into the skin beneath her eyes that was swollen and sensitive of late. She wasn’t done saying what he needed to hear from her. But she wouldn’t finish until she could say it to his open eyes. So instead, she said what didn’t hurt, focused as she always did, on the business of surviving. “Hesperus has brought me a list of Madame Poppy’s clients. No one of interest.”

She kissed his forehead and threw open the window, letting a burst of winter wind roll inside and over Bran’s burning body. Then she returned to her writing desk, scattered with bowls and leaves and broken blooms and a thin powder of colorful spices. On one corner was the list of names Hesperus had brought, and she picked it up and returned to the bed and laid by her husband and read through the names again, trying to discover who wanted her dead this time. Trying to forget Bran might still die, and this time, it would stick.

24

KILL THE DUKE

“Fucking Jupiter, woman, you’re cold as an ice block.”

The words woke Guin with a start, as did the jolting sensation of being dragged across the bed and into the hot embrace of a man she’d thought would die last night.

She looked over her shoulder as her back settled against his belly with a groan (him) and a gasp (her). Still groggy, she had to blink sleepiness away to convince herself she was not dreaming.

No, his eyes were open and sharp and green, and she turned gently and buried her face in his bare chest with the utmost care, letting the tears fall because she could not stop them. No longer violent tears, though. They came steady and sweet like a spring rain as he kissed the top of her head.

“You really don’t hate me, lass?” he whispered, voice raw.

She shook her head.

“Why are you so fucking cold?”