“Did your mom, umm, pass away recently?” Sarah couldn’t help asking. Talking seemed to be the only thing keeping his mind off his raw wound.
Damien stared at the ceiling, looking like he was counting back in time. “I was twelve,” he said slowly, “so it has been nearly fourteen years since her death. We left a few months later.”
Sarah snapped her mouth closed but couldn’t keep her brows from rising in shock. It seemed impossible to image herself and Lilly out on their own five or six years ago; she wasn’t sure they would have made it in the world alone. Their parents weren’t perfect, but suddenly Sarah ached for them and Lilly, to be home away from the responsibility and expectations resting on her shoulders.
It felt strange to long after two completely different worlds—one where her family waited, along with the sameness that had driven her away, and this other world that didn’t exist but gave her all the excitement and adventure that she had craved back in her small town. She felt like she was playing house, living her life at home and then coming here to experience life.
She suddenly remembered what the professor had told her in his lab about there being repercussions to traveling through time, and Sarah knew that someday she would have to decide. Her heart could never belong to two different worlds.
It dawned on her that Damien had done what she had yet to do: Choose.
Dropping the damp towel in her lap, she asked quietly, “Weren’t you scared when you ran away? I mean, how did you ever decide that you couldn’t stay in one place any longer?”
Damien’s face suddenly became drawn. “Yes, we were both terrified to leave the only home we had ever known at so young an age—Isabella was only eight at the time—but I knew it would have been a worse fate for us to remain with that man.”
His chest swelled as he inhaled a large breath, holding it for a moment before exhaling, and Sarah realized that she had been holding her own breath. He shrugged, trying to appear cavalier about the whole affair, though his eyes were far away. “We moved around quite a bit, going wherever we could find work. I performed whatever jobs I could obtain, and Isabella apprenticed seamstresses in every town; she showed great promise, too. It was difficult, but we had each other, and that was all we needed. Eventually, we saved enough to barter passage out of España to Ridlan.”
“What happened after that?” Sarah asked softly, completely engrossed in the story. It couldn’t end there, because that would mean his sister would be here in the castle, and no one had mentioned that Damien had any relations staying there.
He pressed his lips together, and a muscle in his jaw shuddered. “Isabella died.”
Sarah’s shoulders sank, saddened that their story had not ended happily. “You had a rough life,” she observed quietly.
The sigh that came from him was one of resignation, and she could tell that he had given up any unfeeling pretense. His eyes found hers, and the saddest smile she had ever seen touched his lips. “Sometimes it seems that I cannot see the sun’s light for the shadows that chase me.” Expression becoming suddenly earnest, Damien leaned toward her. She was so caught up in his intense espresso gaze that she didn’t pull back when he moved into her personal space. “But I know the light is there, waiting for me to lay hold of it. Does that make sense?”
Sarah saw within him an aching vulnerability that she wasn’t sure he’d meant to reveal. Several heartbeats passed before she cleared her throat and broke eye contact with him to reach for the pouch. For a moment, she’d imagined that the air between them had crackled with electricity, but she quickly shook off the ridiculous notion and focused her attention on his words.
Dipping two fingers into the small leather satchel, she gingerly smeared the thick paste onto his skin, her brow drawn thoughtfully. “Whenever my sister, Lilly, and I are down, my dad has this saying that always perks us up.” She took a deep breath, calling upon the memory of her father’s voice and smiling when she heard it crystal-clear. “’When you’re facing the sunshine, you can’t see the shadows.’ It’s just a reminder to focus on the bright things in our lives and not the dark bits.”
She glanced up at him through the veil of her hair. Damien had been watching her, and he smiled warmly when she met his gaze. “Your father sounds very wise.”
“He is.” She went back to massaging the poultice into the wound, and his body relaxed a little under her gentle touch. Closing his eyes, he groaned softly as the cool substance soothed his scorched flesh.
“Your friend was a little heavy-handed with her tools, I’m afraid.”
Sarah shot him a saccharine smile, and her voice turned teasing. “I guess it’s a good thing she didn’t find her sewing needle, then.” He chuckled, and his grin stayed in place while she carefully wrapped his bicep with the gauze.
They lapsed into silence again, and Sarah worried her lower lip as she questioned how thoroughly she needed to wrap the wound. She was busy counting the number of times she had gone around his arm when he spoke up, startling her.
“I should have thought to give you a flagon for that.”
Her head shot up. “A what?”
“An urn or jug of water to preserve it.” She followed Damien’s gaze to the blood red rose on her mattress.
“Oh,” she said, suddenly feeling awkward. “Don’t worry about it.” She did not add that she had contemplated drying the flower between some paper and saving it—a memento to take home with her. No one had ever given her flowers before, and she couldn’t help but feel flattered. It was silly, she knew, but her first rose was special.
Sarah held the loose ends of the bandage in indecision for a long moment, trying to decide how to tie it off. She hoped that Damien hadn’t noticed her hesitation and said quickly to distract him, “Do you pamper all of your guests like that?”
“Oh, no.” He actually looked self-conscious as he rubbed the palm of his good hand against his thigh. “Forgive me if it was rather untoward, but I meant no disrespect. The rose is a sign of beauty and purity, and in the village that I came from, it was often used in marriage ceremonies to represent such qualities.”
Sarah cocked her head in the direction of her bed, still clutching the useless bandage ends. “Was that a proposal, then?” she asked with a teasing brow. He laughed, causing her to grin. Her smile faded when she remembered that she had said something similar to Will just a few weeks ago. The pendant seemed to cool as her skin heated in shame. Why did she feel guilty innocently talking and joking with Damien when Will had done far more after she’d left?
In that moment, Sarah made the decision that regardless if Will returned her feelings or not—and it was looking more like the latter from where she sat—she would not stop living her life. She would not be the girl who waited around for the wrong guy forever. Though at the core of her being, she knew that there would always be a little piece of Will that followed her around like a piece of deadly shrapnel lodged in her heart, causing it to bleed a little every time it beat.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Sarah ducked her head and gingerly tucked the loose pieces of gauze under the wrapped bandages. “That should stay.” She tried to sound certain.
Damien lifted his bandaged arm to survey the damage, putting in just a little too much effort into scrutinizing her work. Sarah eyed it herself, frowning in displeasure at the bulging dressings and the rivulet of medicine oozing from beneath a loose patch.
“It seems I have the best attendant in the country!” he exclaimed suddenly, his jovial manner returning in full force—to compensate for her lack of good work, she was sure. Sarah laughed anyway, and his own face relaxed into that sly grin of his, a dimple in his right cheek revealing itself.
“I’ll do better next time,” she assured him. It was a welcome reprieve to be around someone that she could be herself with, or as much of herself as this century would allow. It felt good to laugh again, too, without worrying about shadows lurking around the corner. Both literally and figuratively.
Sarah stood as he replaced h
is shirt, for which she was immensely glad. She didn’t want to stoke the rumors by having him leave her room half-clothed. Being careful of her shoddy work, though he didn’t seem to mind that she wasn’t a pro, Damien eased the garment over his head. The upper portion of the shirt was loosely laced, dipping low enough that it was difficult for Sarah not to appreciate his smooth, tan chest.
She quickly averted her gaze.
Holding his wounded arm bent and close to his side, Damien followed her to the door, smiling down at her with an almost sheepish expression. “Thank you for listening, my lady. It is a relief to know that I have a friend in this dreary place.”
Sarah’s lips stretched into a smile as she opened the door. “Anytime.” He turned to leave. “And, Damien?” His eyes met hers, and she knew that her friend Janice would have melted into their depths. “No more of that ‘my lady’ stuff. It’s just Sarah to my friends.”
His face changed. Gone was the swaggering Spaniard she had first met, replaced with a lost boy who had just found a companion. Sarah had a heart for strays, and it twisted in her chest at the way his face lit up with surprise and pleasure at the word “friends.” She decided right there to take him under her wing.
With a simple nod and a quick “I’ll do my utmost,” Damien strode across the hall to his own room, closing the door silently behind him.
Sarah shook her head as she latched her own door, wondering if there wasn’t a whole family left in all of Serimone. Will’s parents had been murdered, the king had been killed by—well, she was supposed to be working on that—Karen’s parents died in a car accident, and she and the professor barely saw each other. From what she gathered, Edith and her husband were estranged and she rarely saw her little boy, and now Sarah discovered that Damien had experienced so much pain and loss in his childhood. It was no wonder Karen longed for a normal life with the Joneses; they seemed to be the only complete family in the country!
“He was rather forward, wasn’t he?”
She whipped around at the sound of Will’s voice and watched him emerge from behind the drapes once more. She gaped at him. Had he been there the whole time? Her neck warmed, again contrasting against the cool metal of her necklace, a constant reminder pressing against her heart.
“What are you doing in here?” she gasped. “I thought I told you to go!”
“There was a guard below, and he might have seen me scaling the wall.” Will raised a brow, his expression sardonic. “I would have jumped down the three stories, risking bodily harm, if I had known you were in such a hurry to be rid of me.”
Sarah stood there, dumbfounded. Had he just made a joke? And a very sarcastic one at that. His buttons were definitely pushed, but she was too exhausted to rise to the challenge and ask him if the guard had been below the window the entire time.
“No, I don’t want you to plunge to your death. But you should have given me a signal or something, and I could have distracted Damien long enough for you to escape.”
Some of his fire seemed to have evaporated, but he still looked upset. That muscle in his jaw feathered out across his cheek. “You were distracting him enough already.” The words came out sounding regretful.
Sarah sighed, knowing his overprotective nature was jumping to conclusions. And despite everything, she still cared what he thought about her. “I don’t know what you think you heard, but Damien and I are just friends. Didn’t you catch that part?”
“Sarah,” he said under his breath, shaking his head. When Will’s eyes met hers, his dark blue gaze appeared troubled. “A man only gives a woman flowers if she means something to him, something more than a simple friend.”
Why did his words always hit her doubts right on the head? Yes, at first she had suspected that Damien might have been interested in her romantically, but her romance-radar had always been a little off, so she wasn’t going to jump to conclusions. But when she saw the look on his face as he left her room, she knew that what he needed most right now was friendship. And that much she could give him.
“A guy and a girl can sometimes be just friends,” Sarah said quietly. “I mean, look at us.” She watched his eyes—the only place where she knew she could find the truth—closely as she spoke, hoping for some sort of denial, a declaration of his feelings.
But Will ducked his head, a few locks of dark hair falling over his eyes as he backed toward the window before she could find whatever answers were there.
“I see.” His voice was guarded. He placed a hand on the ledge of the window, looking ready to vault over the sill. But he hesitated at the last moment, his knuckles paling as he tightened his grip on the stone, knees still bent. The stance made him look like he was fighting against himself and the desire to leave, but something seemed to be keeping him there.
That familiar muscle in his jaw flickered as he slowly straightened and raised his head to meet her eyes. “Is that what you want? For us to be . . . friends?”
This time Sarah was the one to pause beneath his penetrating gaze, trying to read whatever hidden message was there. The truth was that she did want them to be friends, but she also wanted their relationship to be so much more.
And if he doesn’t feel the same way? Sarah’s heart skipped a solid beat at the thought. There would be no turning back, no reversing the words that pressed against her ribs and threatened to choke her if she didn’t say what was on her heart.
But could she really risk baring her heart to him, only to have it crushed when he didn’t feel the same way? It would destroy their fragile friendship, one that already hung by a single fraying thread, and she wasn’t sure how she could cut him out of her life completely if he didn’t reciprocate her feelings.
In her moment of weakness, a darker voice reminded her that honesty hadn’t done them much good lately; she was honest about where she’d been, and it had broken her heart when Will was honest about where he had been. Now their relationship was in limbo because of it, because of the truth.
Swallowing the desire to express her confused feelings, Sarah said, “I want us to be friends,” relieved when she didn’t stammer over the words.
Will’s chest swelled with air, and his lips parted as it escaped his mouth in a shaky breath. His nod was almost imperceptible. “As you wish.” Then he launched himself over the ledge.
Sarah’s eyes widened in alarm, and she ran to the window to peer down at him as he quickly scaled the wall to the ground.
With shaking fingers, she closed the window screen to keep out the cold that seemed to have found its way into her bones. Now she was alone in her new home with her few possessions, the necklace and the single rose, and left to ponder what either one meant. Her breathing was the only sound in the room—that and three words that played themselves loudly in her head:
As you wish.
~Chapter 19~
Sarah still had not changed into one of the beautiful dresses that Damien had supplied for her when he arrived that evening to have his dressings swapped out, though he made no comment about her servant’s uniform. For some strange reason, she was hesitant to let it go.
Taking advantage of his knowledge of the castle and his association with the royals, she asked Damien—as covertly as possible—about his opinion of the royal family while she cleaned his skin, which was already looking less scorched after only a few hours. She knew this was all thanks to the miracle poultice the professor had concocted and had nothing to do with her poor ministrations as nurse.
Even though Sarah could focus her full attention on Damien’s responses now that he had discovered his undershirt, her inquiries got her nowhere: His answers about the family were either too vague to satisfy her or completely unhelpful in cluing her into who might be the phantom assassin, as Sarah had come to fondly call the king’s unidentified killer. After a few attempts to pry some information from him, she let the matter drop before he became suspicious of her intentions.
Sarah lay in her soft bed that night, sinking into the mattress, dressed in a n
ightgown that rested against her body like satin. Every sensation around her seemed off, and yet also wonderful and alluring—the sound of the wind gently brushing against the closed screens, the dying embers in the fireplace, the feel of her feet rubbing against the luxurious bedcovers, the soft scent of the rose on her bedside table.
Her abnormal surroundings and the problems that weighed heavy on her heart should have caused her unrest, but she was too exhausted to fight sleep when it came. She snuggled further into the covers and closed her lids with a contented sigh, thinking that she could get used to the high life.
—
She awoke feeling refreshed, luxuriating in the warmth of the bedcovers as she stretched her arms overhead into the frigid air. Hiking the blankets up to cover her cold nose, she lazed in bed a while longer and watched dust particles float lazily in the shaft of light coming through a gap in one of the window screens. It was so perfectly peaceful that she was surprised when the quiet was shattered by a hushed disagreement just outside her door.
Sarah ignored the argument and resumed her delay of the inevitable moment when she would have to leave the warmth of her bed. She was busy enjoying the first-class accommodations when her ears pricked at the sound of a voice outside. Was that Edith’s voice? The intense whisperings were too quiet for Sarah to make out, but she was almost positive that her friend was on the other side of that door.
The low discussion ended abruptly, and her suspicions were confirmed when Edith bustled into the room without so much as a knock, looking bright-eyed and flushed as she kicked the door closed behind her. Sarah made a mental note to lock her door later, though she knew that it wouldn’t keep some people out.
The covers fell from her shoulders as she sat up in bed, and the cold air immediately clung to her bare arms. Edith’s frown softened when she caught her wide-eyed stare.
“Good, you’re awake. I’ve brought your morning meal.” Edith carried over the heavy-laden wood tray and placed it on the bedside table. Releasing a satisfied breath, she turned her attention to Sarah.
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