Nay, there would never be anything between him and Callie except wishful dreams. The thought stung him much more deeply than it should have.
Ignoring her uncle’s comment, Callie took his hand and led him into the castle.
They were going up the stairs as Simon was headed down them.
Simon nodded a greeting, walked past, then backed up the stairs to stop them. “Are you bleeding?” Simon indicated the tear in Sin’s surcoat.
“It would appear so,” Sin answered sarcastically.
“Good Lord, what happened?”
Sin shrugged. “Apparently, someone doesn’t want me here. No doubt you either, so guard your back, little brother. The last thing I want to do is tell Draven you’re dead.”
“Have no fear. The last thing I want you to do is tell him I’m dead.” Simon paused and looked back toward his room. “Thinking perhaps I should return to my room and don my armor before I go eat.”
“Not a bad thought.”
Callie interrupted them. “Gentlemen, please, I need to see to this wound lest he bleed to death from it.”
Sin dismissed her worry. “It missed the artery. I assure you, I won’t bleed to death from this.”
Callie frowned at her husband and his calm acceptance of everything. It was as if he expected nothing more than to be insulted and wounded. “Then humor me, please.”
Without further voiced complaints he followed her to their room, though the look in his eyes told her that many an unspoken complaint was circling his mind.
Callie helped him pull his surcoat off. She frowned as she studied the hole where the arrow had pierced him. “Strange. You can barely see the blood on the cloth and yet I feel it.” There was a lot of blood on the cloth actually.
Sin looked up from his inspection of his wound. “The black is tinted with red dye to mask any injuries I might have. In battle, it confuses and scares my enemies who know they have injured me and yet can’t see the blood.”
“Hence the invincible devil epitaph they have applied to you?”
He nodded as he took a seat on the edge of her bed and held a clean cloth to his shoulder.
Callie prepared her needle and thread and did her best not to notice just how delectable her husband’s body was when bared. The dim light in the room caught against the rich, tawny flesh, making it even more mouth-watering. Och, but the man was handsome.
“‘Tis an interesting trick. Where did you learn it?” she asked, trying to distract herself.
She didn’t really expect an answer, so when she got one, it surprised her.
“While I lived with the Saracens. It was one of the tricks they taught me.”
Now she understood the strange tactics he’d used to defeat her clansmen. “The fighting you used below, they taught you that as well?”
“Aye.”
How strange for him to be so talkative. Callie took the cloth from his hand and inspected the ravaged skin. Her stomach clenched at the new wound that lanced across skin already scarred from previous injuries. She ran her fingers over him, aching at the thought of what he had already lived through. His hard skin was so warm and his hair brushed against her hand as she prepared his shoulder by cleansing it with a wine-drenched cloth.
Her poor husband.
“How long did you live there?” she asked, trying to distract herself from his lush, toned skin and the desire she had to kiss it and him.
“Almost five years.”
Callie paused. Five years. It was a long time to live among one’s enemies. She tried to imagine what it would have been like to live in London all that time while yearning to be home. No wonder he had told her he understood her need to return to her family.
Of all men, he knew it on a level she couldn’t even begin to fathom.
“Why did you live with them for so long?” She drew the first stitch.
