Court set Annalía aside, then stood. “Gunshot wounds get sewn.”
The doctor craned his neck to look up at Court, steadfastly meeting him in the eyes, though he swallowed hard. “Aside from this, your wife is the picture of health. It would be injudicious of me to put thread in her skin. Thread that can swell and break, and get dirty.”
“My wife,” he said without the slightest hesitation, “may be the picture of health, but she’s small and of a delicate constitution. I’ll no’ have her walking around with an open gash in her arm.”
“How long have you known her?”
“A while,” he answered evasively.
“I don’t know how well you know her, but your wife is not of a delicate constitution, I assure you. I’ll bet she’s told you she rarely gets ill.”
“She might have mentioned it,” he answered, though they’d never had more than one civil conversation.
“We’ll keep the wound together with linen bandages. I’ll show you how to put this tincture on and how to wrap it. Just make sure she doesn’t reinjure it. And of course,” he added with a disapproving look, “that she isn’t shot again.”
Court was shaking his head. “She’ll get fever.”
“Yes.”
“And then what should I do?”
“Let it burn.” That was his maddening answer. “Just don’t let it spike. You can run a cool cloth over her if it rises too high, which I doubt it will, and summon me again, but otherwise let her handle this. She’s strong.” And then with a last fond look at Annalía that almost got young Molyneux killed, he left Court alone with her.
Fifteen
A pparently, Annalía finally believed her brother was dead. And blamed Court for it.
“How can you want to be near me knowing how much I despise you?” That had been her deadened response when he’d told her he was taking her on to Toulouse. After she’d called him a brute, a filthy barbarian, and a lowly Scot, and told him with a steady gaze that she hated him as she’d never known she was capable of hating anything.
She hadn’t wanted to leave with him and would’ve told everyone that she was a prisoner had he not convinced her that if she stayed she’d be getting the people there killed as well as herself.
Now Court glanced back to see her lagging behind again, her expression lost. The horse he’d been able to find for her was not what she was used to, and though he’d dropped her saddlebags at the house matron’s feet and said, “Fix these dresses so she can ride more comfortably in them,” Annalía hadn’t seemed to notice the changes. It seemed she noticed nothing.
The journey to Toulouse normally would have taken Court only a full day of fast riding. The land grew flatter as they followed the Ariège River away from the Pyrenees until it became a table plain dotted only with small hills. An easy jaunt, but he’d been keeping a much slower pace for her, and one day had turned into three.
For those last three days, she hadn’t spoken, had hardly eaten, and had not uttered a word but for her only response to Court’s every question, “Fot el camp.” Go to hell.
She obviously couldn’t wait to be rid of Court, and he would oblige her. When he met up with his crew, he’d ride and never look back, but until then he’d taken his responsibility seriously. Each night he had found them a place to stay, some room where he could rebandage her arm as Molyneux had shown him.
The first night when he’d removed her blouse—not her shift, just the blouse—she’d fought him as if he were stripping her, risking a reinjury. “I can do you the way I threatened with the dress,” he’d told her. “Or you can let me tend to your arm.” Though she was stiff and stared straight ahead, she cooperated. Each night it looked better.
Afterward, while she took the bed, he’d sink into a chair in the room, thinking about their situation, wondering why it pained him more than anything ever had to see her balled up under the covers, shuddering when she silently cried.
Simply taking care of her was so far beyond his realm of experience, it was staggering. Much less that he was caring for a woman who blamed him for her brother’s death.
In less than three days under his protection, she’d been marked for death by a fanatical order of assassins and shot. He’d known he was shadowed in life, could bring ruin to those he cared for, but this was ridiculous. Still, a selfish part of him thought, Better than married to Pascal.
Today as they rode, closing in on the posting house, he reasoned that this was not the curse raining down on him. He’d made a decision that affected her badly. Nothing metaphysical or mystical about it. Besides, he didn’t care for her—he took care of her, and only temporarily. Just to get her to safety.