“Well, Monsieur, I see you’re awake.” The physician stood beside the bed, smiling cheerfully. “I’m Gaston St. Leure and I’ll soon have that dagger out of your shoulder.” He stepped closer. “Now, brace yourself while I—”
“No, don’t listen to him,” Juliette said fiercely. “Look at me.”
Jean Marc’s gaze was drawn by the sheer intensity of her manner. Her brown eyes were brilliant, sparkling with vitality in her thin face. The high color in her cheeks glowed rose against cream skin, and he could see the tracery of blue veins at her temple pounding with agitation.
“Something beautiful,” she said urgently. “What’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”
“The sea.”
“Then think of the sea.” She shifted her grasp so that his hands encircled her wrists. “Hold on to me and tell me about the sea. Tell me how you remember it.”
“Storm…power…The waves dashing against the ship. Gray-blue water shimmering in th—”
Searing, white-hot pain!
“The sea,” Juliette whispered, her gaze holding his own. “Remember the sea.”
“One more pull,” the physician said cheerfully as his grasp tightened on the hilt of the dagger.
“Hush.” Juliette’s gaze never left Jean Marc’s. “Tell me more about the sea.”
“In the sunlight on a calm day it’s…as if we were floating on a giant sapphire.”
Sparkling brown eyes holding the pain at bay.
He moistened his dry lips with his tongue. “And when the ship draws near the shore…”
Her skin, a rose resting in a bowl of cream, glowing like candlelight.
“The water turns to…emerald. You’re never certain—”
Pain!
Jean Marc’s back arched off the bed as the dagger came free of his flesh.
“That does it.” The physician turned away from the bed, the bloody dagger in his hand. “Now I’ll get rid of this thing and clean and bandage you.”
Jean Marc lay panting, the room whirling about him. He could feel the blood well from the wound and run down his shoulder.
“You’ll have to let me go,” Juliette said.
Jean Marc stared at her uncomprehendingly.
She tugged, wriggling her wrists to escape his grasp. “I can’t help the physician if you don’t release me.”
He hadn’t realized he was still holding her arms. He slowly opened his hands and let her go.
She sat back on her heels. Sighing with relief, she briskly massaged her left wrist. “That’s better. The worst is over now.”
“Is it?” He felt terribly alone without the girl’s touch and wanted to take her hands again and hold on to her. Strange. He couldn’t remember when he had ever accepted solace from a woman. “That’s comforting to know. I should certainly hate to think the worst was yet to come. I told you I wasn’t fashioned of the stuff of heroes.”
“Not many men would have borne such pain without crying out.”
A faint smile touched his lips as his eyes closed. “Why should I bellow? I was thinking of…something beautiful.”
Juliette straightened in the chair, arching her spine to rid it of stiffness. The movement did little to ease her discomfort after the hours of sitting immobile. She really should get up and walk about the chamber, but to do so might wake the man lying on the bed. Andreas’s sleep had been restless and fitful since the physician had left some hours before. Her glance wandered about the large chamber, seeking something to distract her. The furnishings of the room were quite luxurious for a country inn, and the chamber probably the best Monsieur Guilleme had to offer, but it held little of interest to her.
Her gaze drifted back to Andreas’s face, studying it with the same fascination that had caught and held her even in that first moment of panic and danger in the carriage.Mon Dieu, how she would love to paint him.
