“My wife is road sore and too stubborn to admit it,” I said.
Irma gave a knowing cluck of her tongue. “Women do nae care to show pain before men.”
“Then men should learn to see it sooner.” The words came out before I could stop them.
Irma studied me for a moment, then nodded and fetched what I had asked for without another foolish flutter of her lashes. When she returned, she added a small packet to the linen. “Crushed willow and a bit of poppy,” she said. “Nae too much, mind ye, unless ye want her senseless.”
I took it. “My thanks.”
“And tell her to stay abed tomorrow.”
I nearly laughed at that. “I’ll tell her.” It would do about as much good as telling the sun not to rise.
When I returned, Katreine’s eyes looked glassier than before, but she was awake, tense, and watching me as if I were both a threat and a salvation.
“I have what ye asked for.”
She pointed to the table by the bed. “Set it there.”
I did, then mixed the powder into wine and handed it to her.
She sniffed it suspiciously. “How much did ye put in?”
“Enough.”
“That is nae an answer.”
“It is the one ye’re getting.”
Her mouth tightened, but she drank.
I prepared the herbs as she instructed, and as I worked, she corrected me in a tone that suggested she did not trust me to crush leaves without starting a war. I found myself amused by her skepticism about my abilities, rather than annoyed, which was unusual for me. I’d spent my life striving to prove myself, yet for some reason I felt more at ease with this woman I had only just met than with the warriors I had lived among all my life.
When everything was ready, I sat beside her, and she immediately went rigid. “I’ll be careful,” I assured her, understanding that fear coursing through her was causing her to react as she was.
“I know,” she said, then seemed annoyed she had admitted it.
I first took the damp cloth and cleaned the dried blood from her skin. She flinched at the first touch, and the sound she made through clenched teeth nearly made me stop.
“Keep going,” she whispered.
I did, but only because I feared infection, and I’d seen many a man die of it. It was a horrid way to go, and I could not stand the thought of Katreine meeting that end. As I cleaned slowly and carefully, I considered it. My concern for her was deeper than simply gaining the stronghold and title, but I wasn’t exactly sure why I was feeling this way, beyond my guilt over deceiving the lass. Given that I needed to concentrate on caring for her, I turned my mind to the task and away from questions I had no answers for.
Every inch of damaged skin tightened the knot in my gut. I had seen wounds that should have killed men. I had stitched gashes in my own flesh and laughed afterward. But this raw, private hurt, hidden beneath stubbornness and skirts, made me want to take my own body back through time and place it between her and every mile we had ridden.
“I should have stopped,” I said.
Her head turned slightly on the pillow. “I told ye I was fine.”
“I should have known ye were lying.”
“Aye, well, I’m verra good at it.”
The admission was quiet. Too quiet. I paused, my hand hovering. “That does nae comfort me.”
“It was nae meant to.”
I wanted to ask how many lies she had told me. I wanted to ask which name, which fear, which story was true. But her lashes fluttered, and the pain powder had begun to soften her hard edges, so I tended her instead. When the wounds were clean, I applied the honey and herbs as she directed, then laid clean linen over the worst wounds. Her hand gripped the coverletso tightly that her knuckles whitened, but she did not cry out. Not once. That, too, angered me. Not because she was strong. Because she had clearly learned to be silent about her pain long before this.
