“Two navies and we’ll have a battle.”
“Luciella? There’s no such name.”
“It’s my story and I can name her whatever I like.”
“The Battle of the Nile! Bags, I be Nelson!”
“No, I’m the oldest, I should be Nelson. You can be Napoleon.”
“It’s not fair! Why do I always have to be Napoleon?”
“Because you’re shorter.” The boys hurried off, wrangling about who was to command the as-yet-unbuilt fleet.
“Keep some shells for babies’ cradles,” Susan shrieked after them.
“Hussshhh!” the others all hissed.
There was instant, guilty silence. And then a small voice, “Did we wake him, Maddy?”
“No.” She wrung out another cloth and spread it over his firm chest.
“I told you,” Lucy said in a loud whisper. “He won’t wake up until he’s got a kiss from a princess!”
Maddy couldn’t help but smile at the little girl’s persistence. She wouldn’t give up on the stranger, either.
Fever could enter a body through a wound. If it had, there would be putrefaction. She unwrapped the bandages and carefully inspected his head injury. It looked all right—red but not inflamed looking or puffy. And she couldn’t see any putrefaction.
She sprinkled more basilicum powder on it, just to be sure and put a clean bandage over it. She lifted his head with one hand to pass the bandage beneath it with the other, and felt something wet and oozy beneath her fingers.
Another injury, one both she and the doctor had missed. Festering untreated since the accident. Swiftly she cut the hair away. A tiny, insignificant-looking wound, but red and puffy and oozing. And beneath the darkness of the hair, she could see the telltale red striations, like tentacles emanating from the cut. Blood poisoning.
She sponged the injury clean with hot, salty water, then laid a hot compress on it to draw out the foulness, as hot as she could bear. She mixed the contents of the doctor’s paper in a teapot and fed him the medicine through the spout. She boiled willow-bark shavings to make a decoction.
Outside, the wind whipped at the trees. Rain spattered the windows in gusts. The boys sat on the rug by the hearth, sorting through the bag of walnuts, tossing broken shells into the fire, keeping the perfect halves, and eating any nut meat they found as they fashioned sails and masts for their navies of tiny walnut boats.
The girls were intent on their literary creations.
Maddy sponged the stranger’s skin with vinegar and water, replaced the hot compress on the infected head wound, and fed him small quantities of willow-bark tea sweetened with honey and ginger. And prayed.
The day wore on. Maddy fed the children quick, simple meals, just soup, cheese on toast, and scrambled eggs, and in between tended to the sick man in her bed. Night fell. She put the children to bed and came slowly downstairs. She was exhausted.
She checked on her stranger. He’d tossed off all his bedclothes again and sprawled naked and unaware, taking up almost the entire bed. She put her palm on his chest. His heart beat rapidly under her fingertips, and if anything, his skin felt hotter. Had none of her efforts helped?
She sponged him down again. She was inured to his nakedness now; she knew every inch of his body. She fed him some more of the willow-bark decoction and put a fresh poultice on the wound. He calmed under her treatment and she was able to cover him again.
In a weary daze, she went about preparing her bed on the floor. She’d made up her mind that morning that she would not risk waking again with a strange, naked man curled around her, his bare legs intimately entangled with hers, and his hand on her breast. It was too . . . unsettling.
She spread the bedding in front of the fire.
He could come to his senses at any time, the doctor had said. There was no telling how long or how short it would be. Of course, that was before he’d come down with fever . . .
The bed curtains were closed, there wasn’t a sound from behind them. She changed into her nightgown and sat warming her toes at the fire.
What if the fever worsened? If she were on the floor, how would she know he needed her?
What if he threw off the bedclothes again and the fever broke and he was naked and sweating and helpless in the chill of the night? He could catch his death.
There was no choice.
