“He tripped in a hole,” Bolton said.
“It came down on his hand,” Galway added.
Her gaze went to Bolton’s gloved hands, and she saw that he was deliberately not using the right one.
“Galway, I ordered you out to the tiltyard.” Bolton downed half the tankard of ale.
She narrowed her eyes as she studied him. She thought his face looked pale. “Remove the glove, Bolton. Do not be an ass.”
“An ass, am I?” he said, with a grin. “I don’t think you thought so this morning.”
“Then I’m thinking so now.” He was behaving in his usual cocky manner, but she sensed an underlying tension.
James tried his best to be nonchalant, to pretend everything was all right, but he knew it wasn’t. His hand throbbed with a sharp pain, and he felt the sticky warmth of blood. His sword hand. But he didn’t want her pity—or her smug superiority. He would be fine.
“I’m going to change for supper,” he said, heading for the stairs.
Galway trailed him, “Milady, might ye have a healer here? Or I could fetch Riley.”
James whirled to face him, trying to keep his fury at bay. “I have not asked for a healer.”
“I think one of the cooks is a healer,” Isabel answered, as if James wasn’t even there.
He escaped alone up to his bedchamber. Though he didn’t want to, he stared at the glove covering his hand. The leather had darkened in streaks. Blood. He tried to inch it down, but it clung tenaciously to his skin. The pain grew so intense he felt light-headed. Finally he plunged his whole hand into a basin of cold water. It stung, but the throbbing began to lessen.
He heard a knock on the door.
“I’ll be down soon!” he called.
“ ’Tis Galway, milord. Might I come in?”
James hesitated, then called for him to enter. He tried to smile light-heartedly. “Could you give me a hand? This glove won’t seem to?—”
“Why didn’t ye admit ye were hurt, milord?” Galway asked, frowning.
“I don’t want Isabel to worry,” James said, knowing that wasn’t quite the truth. “Could you help me with this?”
Together they managed to remove the glove with only minimal pain. His hand was mottled with blue and purple bruises. His smallest finger was badly twisted, oozing blood, and the finger beside it was swollen.
“Just one little broken bone,” James said. “Give it a pull, why don’t you?”
Galway shook his head, his mouth grim. “I sent for the healer.”
“This is hardly worth?—”
“Milord, I can see the bone through the skin of your finger.”
The cook, her gait slow and rolling with age, arrived with her bag of potions. James was relieved his wife had not come, and grudgingly allowed the muttering old woman to bathe his hand.
With no warning at all, she wrenched the bone back into place. James managed to keep all but a grimace from showing on his face, but he knew he must have blanched.
“Perhaps, dear lady, you should have warned me.”
From beneath her drooping wimple, she eyed him knowingly. “Ye men make too big a fuss when I warns ye.”
He frowned, but she ignored him. As she rubbed in some foul-smelling concoction, his whole arm seemed to burn with pain. He finally met Galway’s gaze.
“Milord, ye should rest. I’ll have supper sent to ye.”
