Page 75 of The Secret of the Three Fates
No. I needed to be useful. Todosomething. I reached for the jar sitting on the table beside him, my hand knocking into it clumsily. “Let me help you.”
He pushed my hands away, taking the jar from me. “You can help me by sleeping. By not haring off and trying to get yourself killed every time I turn my back.”
I smiled despite the ache in my chest. “You’re a mother hen.”
“Someone needs to have a care for you…” He grumbled beneath his breath, uncorking the lid and placing two fingers into the substance, slowly pulling them out before carefully working the salve into the muscles around his wound.
I swallowed hard, unable to look away.Good God, Ruby, how can you think such things not five seconds from tears?He turned toward the fire, revealing that deep scar that went along his spine. I wiped at the wetness of my face, trying not to laugh at the inappropriateness of this bone-deep need I had for him. Just being near him was enough to make me… content. Easy.
The room was unbearably hot from the roaring fire and I slipped out of Mr. Owen’s dressing gown and adjusted my chemise. Soaked as it was it left little to the imagination. But this wasn’t the first time he’d seen me in my underthings. I’d been wearing little more than this when we first met on the shores of Tintagel.
“What do we do now that they have the ring?” I asked, watching as he set about dressing his wound.
He mumbled over the bit of bandage he held in his teeth. “We worry about it in the morning. At dawn, I’ll go see to the body.” He finished fastening it, and looked at me squarely. “But you need to sleep.”
My pulse sped up at the thought. “I… I don’t think I can go back there tonight. Not after…”
He turned back to me with the strangest expression. “Why the devil would you go back there? You’re staying with me. Here. Where I can be reasonably certain you won’t get yourself killed before I wake up.”
The narrow bed was scarcely wide enough for him. “And you think you can give me orders… Honestly, Ruan Kivell, you should know me better than that by now.” But I was grateful for his offer, such that it was. I would make myself a pallet by the fire and be perfectly happy being near him. It would be enough.
It’ll never be enough, you little fool.
I brushed the thought away as I went to his wardrobe, grabbing a spare blanket. Ruan took me by the hand, turning me to face him. “You’re shaking.”
I glanced down at my hands.
So I was.
I tugged my hand away, laying a thick woolen blanket on the wooden floor.
He swore again. “Get in the bed. Now.” He jerked his chin toward the narrow bed in the corner.
“I’ll be fine right here.”
Ruan sighed heavily and took a step closer to me. Then a second. I swallowed hard, looking up into his green eyes—bright in the firelight. He placed his hand on my arm, his thumb rubbing the bare skin there. “Ruby…”
Oh God, this would never do.
He walked me backward in this strange hypnotic dance until my knees hit the mattress and I sank down onto the soft bed. Ruan’s eyes never left mine, nor did I want them to. I swallowed hard as he stooped down, lifting my legs with his warm hand and tucked them neatly under the heavy bedding and sat down on the mattress beside me, gathering me to his side.
“I should have never left you tonight,” he whispered half to himself, reaching up and rubbing my temple with his thumb.
I closed my eyes against his uninjured side. “You did exactly as I asked. What happened tonight is no more your fault than my own. I do not want to talk about what happened. We will deal with it in the morning. I want—”
Ruan pulled me closer against him, cautious of his wound, and I allowed myself this small indulgence. “What do you want?”
You.“Peace.”
“I know that feeling.” His mouth moved against the skin at my brow as he spoke, sending a shiver down my spine. “When I was at Oxford…” he began, his one hand lazily running a finger up and down my arm, lulling me into complacency. “I hated myself then. Lost. Confused. Taken away from everything I knew and wildly different from all the other lads in ways they had no way of comprehending. Hearing their judgments, their prejudices. Gods, Ruby, I knew I didn’t belong there but they certainly agreed with the notion.”
I closed my eyes and allowed myself to listen to the rumble of his chest. “They were asses.”
He chuckled low. “I appreciate your support in this, Miss Vaughn.”
My mouth dried. I shouldn’t like it so much when he called meMiss Vaughn.“Go on then. I’m fond of stories.”
“At that time in my life there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t have given to be like them. To sound like them, to look like them. Tothinklike them. To play the games and wear the clothes. I would have gladly excised that part of me that made me different and thrown it into the fires of hell. Gods know I tried back then to make it stop. To be ordinary. And yet my difference is what put you in my path. I wonder sometimes… if I would have met you at all if I were an ordinary man?”
