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“Yourdressmaker?” Kel said. “How in gray hell—”
“You shouldn’t swear,” Antonetta said reprovingly. “My dressmaker Mariam—”
“Is a friend of mine. She is Ashkar,” said Lin. “I told her I had healed the Prince’s cousin, Kel Anjuman, after he’d had a bad fall from a horse. I hope that was acceptable.”
Her gaze was steady. So she hadn’t said anything to her friend about Crawlers; that was a relief.
Antonetta rose to her feet and came over to Kel, her satin slippers making a whispering sound against the marble floor. “Where were you injured?”
Kel made a vague gesture at his torso. “Here. Landed on a fencepost.”
To Kel’s surprise, Antonetta reached out to brush the front of his shirt with her fingertips. For all her artifice, the warmth of her touch, even through his shirt, was almost too real.
She looked up into his face. Her blue eyes were wide, her cheeks pink, her lips parted. She was achingly pretty. But it was all artifice, Kel thought.She’s practicing a look of fond concern, for whenever it might be useful. For Conor.It annoyed him, and he did not want to be annoyed at Antonetta. Still, he felt it like a hot irritability under his skin.
“Demoselle Alleyne,” said Lin. She had picked up her satchel, which had been concealed behind Antonetta’s spreading skirts. “I must ask you to leave, that I may examine my patient.”
“Oh, I don’t mind staying,” said Antonetta cheerfully.
“I’m going to have to ask him to strip down, you see,” said Lin.
“Ihavebeen practicing my life drawing,” said Antonetta, “and a knowledge of anatomy is useful to anyone—” She broke off as Kel shot her a dark look. “Oh, allright.But it will be very boring in the hallway.”
Kel relented a bit. “Perhaps you can act as lookout. Let us know if anyone’s coming.”
Kel’s eyes met Antonetta’s, and for that brief moment he knew she was recalling, just as he was, the many times she had been lookout in their long-ago games. He could not have said why he wassure he knew her thoughts, only that he was, and then she was out into the hall, the door closing behind her.
Once she was gone, Lin indicated that Kel should sit down on his bed and remove his jacket and shirt. So she hadn’t just been trying to get rid of Antonetta, he thought with wry amusement, doing as he was told.
He shrugged away his coat and unbuttoned the silk tunic underneath. As he slipped it off, Lin looked at him with something close to surprise.
“Sieur Anjuman,” she said. “You really do look much better than you did the last time I saw you.”
“I should hope so,” Kel said. “I believe I was drooling blood at the time, and no doubt groaning incoherently.”
“It was not as bad as all that,” she said. “Would you have any objection to my examining the wounds to make sure they’re healing properly?”
“None, I suppose.”
She came close to him and carefully peeled away the light bandages still remaining. Kel felt oddly exposed for a moment, but it was clear Lin was utterly unaffected by the sight of a bare male chest. In fact, she regarded him with a cool impassivity that made him think of Lilibet inspecting a new set of drapes.
“You’ve healed well,” she said, running her fingers over the scar on his side before touching the puckered wound just below his heart. “Very well. Most people would still be in bed. Have you had much pain?”
He told her that it had only been recently that he had stopped the morphea. She was horrified to hear Gasquet had kept him on the dose for so long—“I never allow my patients to take it for more than three days!”—and she unscrewed a jar of salve she had taken from her bag. The room filled with a faint, peppery scent like vetiver.
She bit her lip as she began to smear the salve liberally over notjust his new wounds, but the older ones as well. “So many injuries,” she said, half to herself.
“I’m very clumsy,” said Kel. The salve tingled, flooding his skin with goosebumps.
“No,” she said. “You’re a Sword Catcher.”
His hand shot out; he caught at her wrist. She looked at him in surprise, still holding the jar of salve, but arrested mid-motion.
“What did you say?” he hissed.
She drew in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry. I thought Mayesh might have told you that I knew.”
He exhaled slowly. “No.”
