Page 15 of A Night of Secret Surrender
‘I thought you had gone because of me.’
His reply made her throat thicken and she swallowed. Now was not the time for confessions with a trail of assassins moments away from pouncing on them. If he was to live, he would have to go on without her.
‘Hardly,monsieur. There was a whole world of lovers I was yet to meet.’
The double-edged words made her feel sick. She took a deep breath and counted. One, two, three... At twenty she felt better.
He was paler than he had been before and there were bruises on his face from Guy’s interrogation. Such wounds should not bring the sweat to his brow, though, and after years of jeopardy she was adept at recognising greater injury. Coming up on her haunches, she shifted across towards him.
‘Where are you hurt?’
When he pointed to his thigh, she saw the same dark ooze that she had noticed in the dungeon. Back then she had thought the stain had come from his bleeding nose or broken mouth.
‘A blade?’
‘No. A bullet.’
‘Is it still in there?’
His long fingers felt around his leg and she saw him flinch.
‘Probably.’
‘Come inside, then, so I can look.’
He hesitated momentarily and then pushed himself up, following her in and unbelting his trousers. The long shirt be wore was patched and patched again. By his own hand, she thought, since the stitching was poorly executed. One thing at least that he was not an expert in. That uncharitable thought had her frowning.
‘Here.’ He raised his leg, bending it at the knee, and a dark and angry hole on the top of his thigh could be easily seen. Slipping her blade from its leather, she spat on it.
‘For luck,’ she explained as she saw him looking. ‘A gypsy in Calais once told Papa and me that saliva is a way of reducing inflammation and we believed him.’ The bullet was an inch under the skin. The metal of it scraped against the steel in her knife and she knew it must pain him greatly.
‘It hit your bone and not the pathways of blood. You were lucky in such a deflection, for another inch to the side and you would not still be here.’
She twisted the blade slightly and the bullet came out, a small flattened shell of darkness, and when she observed it she could see it was still whole. Standing, she went back to the basket of clothes and ripped a good length of clean muslin from a petticoat she had stored there.
Her father had always insisted on cleanliness around an injury and the old teachings had never left her. ‘Singe your knife in boiling water or naked flame and find a fresh bandage. Do not touch the compromised flesh if you can help it either, for any dirt that gets in increases the risk of death.’
August had got such teachings from books as well as from experience, an academic who was well read and curious. A man who had married the wrong woman and lived to regret it.
Mary Elizabeth Faulkner. Celeste could barely even remember her as being any sort of mother.
She ripped at the fabric with more ferocity than she intended to and rolled the long lengths into one tidy ball. She had not the means to heat the blade. Saliva would have to do.
* * *
Shay leaned back against a leather chair as she ministered to him, her hands warm and adept. When she was finished, she knotted the fabric and stood. ‘It should have salve to calm the hurt, but I have none here.’
‘Thank you.’
His heart tripped over the pain and he bit down on fear. If it festered, he would be dead, for he could not run far on a leg that would fail him. But he said nothing of this to her as he tried to distract himself.
‘What manner of a lad are you now?’ His gesture encompassed her boy’s clothes.
He was pleased when she rose to play his game, the awkward intimacy of tending to his hurts replaced by charade.
‘My name is Laurent Roux. I am from the south. My father is ill on our smallholding outside St Etienne du Gres where we grow vegetables for the Wednesday markets at St Remy.’
‘And why are you here? In Paris? What brings you to such a bustling city, Monsieur Roux?’
