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The skin over it is stretched tight and fever-hot, but beneath that there’s something thick and solid, a deep, angry knot that doesn’t give beneath my fingertips so much as push back against them. I can feel the rounded edge of it buried beneath the flesh, swollen wider than two of my fingers and throbbing faintly in time with my pulse. Even the lightest pressure sends a sharp ache radiating through my thigh and up into my belly.

I know what that is. I’ve felt it beneath too many other people’s skin.

“… The mask was secured. She did not remove it. The air in the houses is foul, yes, but the herbs are always lit. The shop. Someone in the shop. A customer breathing across the counter. The cloth. Unwashed linens…”

I dig my elbows into the sodden mattress and force myself higher, only to falter as a sharp ache catches beneath my arms. Something horribly tender lives in both hollows, and the harder I press against the bed, the worse it gets.

I nearly collapse back onto the mattress. But no. No chance I’m letting this finish me lying down. So I grit my teeth and keep pushing until I’m propped against the wall, panting hard.

Iscairn is pacing the narrow strip of floor between the door and the foot of my bed, ducking beneath the low oak beam each time he passes it before turning again. Three strides one way, three strides back, his head bowed beneath the rafters and one hand pressed against the beak of his mask.

“…the Fletcher house is unlikely at this point. Boris Penhaligon, perhaps, though she never went near the bed. Her skirts. The baskets⁠—”

“What on earth are you fretting about?” I rasp, barely recognising my own voice.

He stops mid-step, the pale beak turning towards me before he crosses the little room and ducks beneath the low beam beside my bed. “You are awake.”

“And you are in my bedchamber,” I point out

He ignores me, his bare hand closing around the edge of the blankets to pull them back.

I swat at his arm weakly and snatch the blankets back, knotting both hands into the wool and dragging it firmly across my hips. “No.”

His mask drops to my fingers, white where they twist into the bedding, and stays there long enough for a slow breath to pass through the bone. “Ophelia, now is hardly the time for this.”

“It’s always the time for this when you’re trying to uncover me without asking.”

“I am not interested in uncovering you. I am interested in the swellings. I need to examine you.”

I know he’s right. In my state, modesty ought to have fallen near the bottom of my list of concerns.

It has not. My fingers stay twisted in the blankets.

It shouldn’t matter after the other night—after his hands on me and the way I let him touch me without hiding. But this is different. No one’s seen my leg in years. Not stripped bare like this, with nothing left to hide the way the flesh twists above the knee or the scars climbing into my hip.

Apparently, even the pestilence isn’t enough to burn away shame.

“Please,” he says softly. “Let me see the swelling.”

I stare at him, my fingers still knotted in the blankets, though for the life of me I can’t seem to loosen them. My breath catches as my heart hammers against my ribs, and I have to swallow hard against the awful tightness in my throat.

You can do this. You can.

“All right,” I whisper, unable to look at him as I force my fingers open one by one.

His hand slips behind my shoulders, taking my weight as he eases me back towards the pillows. The moment his other hand reaches for the blankets, I turn my face towards the wall and squeeze my eyes shut.

Cool air moves over my sweat-soaked skin as he draws the blankets aside and pushes the hem of my shift high onto my thigh.

The muscle never healed properly after the injury. It bunches strangely along the outside of my thigh and hollows away on the other side, pulling everything slightly crooked where the flesh should run smooth towards my hip. Thick seams of scar tissue cross it in uneven ridges, some pale and flat with age, others puckered and rope-like where the wound split deepest, twisting over one another until they disappear into the crease of my hip. Near my knee, the skin is dragged tight enough to shine, while higher up it folds and dents around the worst of the damage as though somebody took the whole leg apart and put it back together without much concern for where anything belonged.

It is ugly.

There’s no kinder word for it.

I set my jaw and wait for the hesitation I know is coming. The little pause while he takes it in. The flinch he’ll try to hide when disgust gives way to pity.

It never comes.