As she turned, the stranger’s eyes closed. An involuntary movement or had he been watching her? It was impossible to tell. Her own fault if he had. She could have changed upstairs.
Besides, she’d watched him, hadn’t she? Sauce for the gander, she told herself. Still, her cheeks burned and she hoped she’d been mistaken.
Now for the head wound. “This isn’t going to be easy,” she told him. “It’s in an awkward position.”
She collected everything she thought she might need and arranged it on the bed. Then she climbed into the bed, dragged him into a sitting position, and slid in behind him. Supporting him between her knees, she let him sag sideways against her, until his cheek rested against her breasts.
“Immodest, I know,” she murmured as she reached for the pot of honey, “but you don’t know and I won’t tell, and besides, it’s the only way to tend to this nasty wound of yours.”
His hair was clogged with mud and blood. She washed the worst of it off, then carefully cut away all the hair around the wound. It looked nasty and jagged and blood still oozed from it but she didn’t think it needed stitches. Thank God, she hated seeing flesh pierced with a needle, let alone doing it herself.
She washed the wound well with hot salt water—as hot as she dared—doing her best to make sure nothing remained in the wound to cause it to fester.
If the doctor were here, he’d dust it with basilicum powder, but she had nothing like that. She’d heard cobwebs were good for stopping bleeding, but spiders made her flesh creep and there was not a cobweb in the house. All she had was honey. Honey was good for burns and small cuts, and it was the one thing she had plenty of. Gently she began to smear honey over the wound.
It felt like a bosom.
His body was like ice. And like fire. He throbbed unbearably from his head to his heels. He tried to move.
“Don’t move.” Soft voice. Bossy. Female.
He tried to open his eyes. Pain splintered through him. Nausea.
“Hush now.” Cool fingers pressed him against something warm and soft.
It was definitely a bosom. Whose?
A cool hand cupped his cheek, held him still against the bosom. “I need to tend to your head wound.” Her voice was soft, gentle. Low.
An excellent thing in a woman,he finished the quote in his head. A spurt of ironic laughter racked him. He bit back on the pain. Fool. He tried again to move. Agony.
Head wound?Was he going to die?
If he was, this was the way to go, his face buried in the fragrant depths of a bosom, gentle fingers soothing him, a soft voice murmuring.
This bosom, these fingers, this voice.
Whoever they belonged to.
He felt her shifting. Pain speared through him, nausea, then . . . blackness . . .
Two
Maddy, Maddy, we found a horse!” The cottage door flew open and her eight-year-old half brother Henry rushed in, followed by his brother, John, three years older.
“It’s a magnificent thoroughbred, Maddy, a stallion,” John told her. “A bay with the most powerful shoulders and hocks. I’ll wager he can jump anything—”
“We caught him!” Henry interrupted excitedly.
“Icaught him,” John corrected.
“Yes, but I helped. You couldn’t have done it without me, you know you couldn’t!”
John turned back to Maddy. “I had an apple core in my pocket and he took it like a lamb.”
“I fed him, too; I gave him some grass,” Henry told her.
“And then I took him back to the vicar’s—well, where could we keep a horse? And the vicar said he didn’t mind. I’m sorry we’re late, but the horse was wet and so I had to unsaddle him and dry him off—”
