Oh. “I don’t…” But she did. She did understand. Not the specifics, no, and she couldn’t even say that they were the same. But when she looked at him, she swore she felt an echo. There was something there, an unspoken connection. One he’d just put into very bold words.
“Rosie,” he said again. Then his eyes closed, and his face went slack, and his hand fell slowly back to the mattress.
Rose hovered over him a moment, breathing through her mouth.
Rosie.
Every king needs a queen.
He wouldn’t remember any of this later, she was sure.
But the words felt tattooed inside her ribs, burning like a brand.
~*~
Kay had returned by the time the morphine wore off. She’d done her hair, and put on clothes, looking downright refreshed. Rose was still in her blood-stained pajamas and robe, sitting on the raised brick hearth and reading a book when Beck groaned and tried to sit up.
“No!” she and Kay exclaimed together, converging on the bed from either side.
“Lay your ass back down,” Kay admonished.
But he pushed himself up on one hand and wiped the other down his face. “Christ.” He massaged the corners of his eyes with another groan. “What did you give me, Kay, you old sawbones?”
“More than you deserve, you brat.” She clenched her cigarette between her teeth and reached for the bandages at his waist: visible now that the covers had pooled down into his lap.
Rose swore he already looked like he’d dropped a pound or two, his ribs throwing shadows on sunken skin.
“How’s the pain?” Kay asked, peeling back a bandage corner, nodding, and pressing it back.
Beck dropped his hand into his lap. The skin around his eyes and mouth twitched, like he was trying to contain a grimace. “Tolerable.”
“Liar.”
He managed a thin smile. “That’s what you both seem to think of me.” His gaze flicked to Rose, then. All the dreamy openness of before was gone – but not the intensity. What should have been a casual glance lanced straight through her, before he looked away.
He remembered stumbling in the back door, then. Remembered her calling him a liar. Probably remembered her pushing his jacket off his shoulders.
Did he remember her begging him not to go?
“The wound looks good,” Kay said, either ignoring or oblivious to the fast exchange of eye contact – Rose suspected the first. “Right now it’s the fever we’ve gotta worry about. It could get rough.”
He sighed. “I know. What are you giving me?”
“Morphine for pain, and Cefotan for the infection, ‘cause that’s all I got. If we use that up, it’ll be down to the weak shit.”
He nodded. “I’d rather not have the morphine.”
“Yeah, tell me that again after you climb the stairs.”
“Is it smart to move him?” Rose asked, stomach tight with nerves.
He sent her another grin, this one wry. “Ill-advised, definitely, but it wouldn’t be the first time. I don’t want to convalesce in the kitchen.”
“And it’ll be easier now while his head’s clear. Come on. I’ll get under one arm, and you get under the other, honey, and we’ll go real slow.”
Kay pulled the covers clear – Rose had forgotten about the boxer-briefs, but again didn’t have time to linger, too worried about Beck as he slowly shifted on the mattress and swung his legs down over the side. He didn’t complain once, but he bit his lip so hard she thought he might draw blood, biting back the groan of pain that doubtless built in his throat.
He exhaled long and hard afterward, shaking his head a fraction. “Twisting’s the hard part,” he said, breathless. “Walking won’t be so bad.”
“Uh-huh,” Kay muttered. “Come here, Rose.”
When he draped his arm across her shoulders, she was shocked by the heat of it, his skin hot where it touched the exposed skin at the back of her neck.
On his other side, Kay grunted. “Shit, yeah, you’re burning up. You’ll be delirious in a few hours.”
“Such faith you have in me. Ready, ladies?”
“Readier than you.”
He made a game effort to support his own weight when he got his feet under him, but Rose felt the muscles over his ribs spasm as the wound pulled and grabbed, and he curled in on himself, leaning on them heavily.
Rose braced her feet, tightened her core, and refused to buckle, no matter how heavy he was.
Kay grunted again. “You sure do weight a lot for such a scarecrow. Can you walk?”
“Yeah.” Still breathless, all his energy put toward staying upright.
“Maybe this is a bad idea,” Rose said; she could feel him shivering against her.
“It’s okay.” His hair brushed her face as he turned his head toward her. “I can manage.” Breath warm in her ear; his nose skimming along her cheek.
She swallowed, and adjusted her grip on his wrist. Her other hand lay against his spine, the strong muscles that framed it. “Okay. We’ll go slow.”
“Easy does it,” Kay agreed.
Rose’s world narrowed down to her view of his feet and long, bare legs. She counted each step; measured progress in his inhales and exhales, and in the change from tile to hardwood underfoot.
Beck was winded by the time they reached the foot of the stairs, breathing loudly through his mouth.
“Rest a minute,” Rose suggested; she could hear the pleading note to her voice, and didn’t care. He was heavy, and she had serious doubts about him making it all the way to the second floor without his knees buckling.
“No. I’m fine.” But he stood breathing a moment, and then gathered himself with a little hiss before they started up.
Kay didn’t comment – Rose could hear that her breathing was labored, too. She hoped Beck was leaning most of his weight in her own direction, that he wasn’t overtaxing Kay.
Step, step, step, step…
Finally the landing.
Beck exhaled on a ragged groan that he audibly bit back with a grunt.
Rose wanted to protest again, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. She slipped her hand around so she gripped his ribs, well above his wound. “Lean on me,” she whispered, though her knees were shaking. “I can take it.”
She thought he tried to laugh, but it was mostly a wheeze.
Step, step, step…
The hallway.
The bedroom door.
She could feel his pulse in both her hands, on his side, and in his wrist; swore she felt it where their sides were pressed together.
“Jesus Christ,” Kay gasped when they reached the bed, at last. “Holy shit, you big ox. I’m not lifting you up into that giant-ass bed. You’re on your own.”
A glance proved that he was smiling – well, grimacing, actually. He was wracked with fine tremors. Rose could feel them where they touched, and see them in the way his hair danced across his forehead – save where sweat had glued it to his temples and neck. “I think I’ve embarrassed myself – quite enough – for one afternoon. Bed I can manage.”
“Let’s see it, then,” Kay muttered. She stepped out from under his arm and leaned heavily against a bedpost, catching her breath.
Rose stayed beneath his arm. Squeezed his wrist. “I’ll help you.”
“That’s very kind–” he started to protest, even as he sweated, and shook, and curled up tighter and tighter on himself.
“Beck.” Soft but firm.
He turned to her, and she was grateful for the regular, leonine glow of his eyes – a thought she dashed, because she could see the pain there, too, far more than he was letting on.
“Come on,” she urged. “I’ve got you.”
One corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes, you do, don’t you?” he murmured. Then faced forward and took a steadying breath. “Alright, then. It’s only a bed. Babies climb into them all the time.”
It was a clumsy business. When Beck landed on his back, finally, with a grimace and a hiss
, Rose was kneeling on the mattress beside him saying sorry, sorry over and over.
“Its…fine.” He opened his eyes and stared up at the canopy a moment, letting out a slow breath through pursed lips. His muscles twitched all over, veins standing visible from the strain. “Kay, I think I’ll take that morphine, now.”
“That’s what I thought.” She left to retrieve it, muttering under her breath.
Rose started to climb off the bed…
And his hand closed around her wrist. Loosely, weakly, but it held her as fast as a manacle. She froze, watching as he turned his head on the pillow and faced her.
“I’m sorry I frightened you,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was in such bad shape until I got here. And then…” When he paused for breath, pain tweaked her features, pressed a furrow between his brows.
“I was scared,” she admitted, “but only for you.”
A frown tugged at his mouth. “I imagine it was a shock, me stumbling in the back door in the dark like that.”
“It was a shock because you were hurt, and I was worried.”
She didn’t realize how firm her voice had been until his frown morphed into a faint smile. “Listen to you. Fierce little thing.”
She felt her face heat. The words were condescending – but his tone was anything but. His tone was…something shiver-inducing she didn’t want to examine too closely for fear she had it wrong.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, even softer, sliding his hand up and then down her arm, a gentle caress. “And thank you. Rosie.”
Rosie.
It hit her like a slap. She froze.
With their eyes locked, there was no mistaking that he remembered; that he’d meant to call her that then, even in delirium, and that he meant to call her that now. He was conveying something, strangely heated and vulnerable all at once.
She wet her lips, and started to respond, but the floor creaked, and then Kay was slipper-slapping back into the room with an injection ready.
Rose climbed off the bed, though his gaze stayed fixed on her: all through Kay’s administration of the shot, and her fussing – at him and with the covers. He stared at her until the drug finally claimed him, and his eyes fluttered shut.
Rosie.
TEN
Despite the regular administration of antibiotics, Beck’s fever worsened over the next forty-eight hours. “You see this with gut wounds,” Kay said, shaking her head; she sounded more resigned than grim, and definitely not worried. Rose supposed she worried enough for the both of them.
His face was hot and dry to the touch; he fidgeted under the blankets, murmuring and groaning in his sleep, nonsense words they couldn’t make out. He managed to swallow when Kay spooned a little broth into his mouth, but didn’t accept much before he turned his head away.
“Stubborn idiot,” Kay grumbled.
Rose sat up with him for two nights. Two rough nights.
The first, she was installed in a chair by his bed as the light faded, and rain came on in a steady tide that began at one end of the house and shifted across to cover the other, like someone drawing a blanket of clouds across the sky. She’d left the curtains open, and the last silver light limned Beck’s uneasy profile so that he seemed to glow.
“Why don’t you go on to bed, honey?” Kay suggested with true kindness. When Rose glanced toward her, she found her standing with one hand on the doorknob, looking like that was all that held her up. “I’ll set an alarm for the middle of the night and come check on him.”
Rose shook her head. “No, you go on. I’ll stay.”
Kay sighed, but she seemed to accept that Rose wasn’t going to be budged on this. No more gentle prodding or suggestion. She nodded. “Come get me if you need me.” And shuffled off down the hall, pulling the door to behind her.
The silence afterward was filled with the gentle drumming of the rain, and the unsteady rasp of Beck’s breathing.
Rose’s body was tired, and still sore from helping to wrestle Beck up the stairs and into bed, but her mind was unquiet, and she knew sleep wouldn’t come soon, if at all.
The silver light kissed his closed eyelids until they gleamed; highlighted the way his eyes moved beneath, restless dreams plaguing him.
His hand lay on the sheets in front of her, fingers curling every so often, little spasms that lifted his chest and arched his throat when he pressed his head back in the pillow. When the next one came, she reached to cover the back of his hand with hers.
He stilled. Coincidence? His spasm ending?
Or could he sense her there? Did she bring him real comfort?
Rosie.
Every king needs a queen.
She glanced toward the portraits on the wall, Beck and his brother. The last rays of slanted light fell upon the portrait of Arthur Augustus, leaving Simon in shadow. She knew that smirk, that tilt of the head, that gleam in the eyes.
She turned back to Beck, thumb stroking along the vein that ran blue just beneath his skin, threading between strong, scuffed knuckles. “You’re not Simon, are you?” she whispered. “You’re Arthur.”
He stirred; feet kicking under the blankets, mumbling something hoarse and indistinct.
Rose leaned in closer, and tightened her hand around his. “Beck? I’m here.”
His eyes cracked open, bright as polished brass from the fever. Kay was weaning him off the morphine, relying on Ibuprofen and Tylenol to battle the fever – but the meds could only contain it, and not kill it. He stared at her, bleary and exhausted and pained, but himself – a version of himself. Wounded, and vulnerable, and full of a pleading he never showed when he was well.
“Rosie?”
“Yeah, it’s me.” She lifted his hand and put her other beneath it, cradled his big palm and long fingers between her own. “I’m right here.”
His gaze shifted wildly side to side, tongue coming out to wet his lips. His breathing went quick and shallow. He was panicking.
“Beck.” She reached to brush a stray curl of hair off his forehead, and his other hand shot up; he latched onto her wrist, a bruising-tight grip that shocked a gasp from her.
When she met his gaze, she had the feeling that, yes, he was seeing her, but that he was seeing something else, too. Something in his mind that horrified him, and caused him to bare his teeth.
“Beck.” She could feel the bones shifting in her wrist where he held her, but she wasn’t afraid. Her pulse thumped, but she didn’t try to get away. “Beck, it’s okay. It’s me.”
“Rose. Rosie.”
“Yes, Rosie.”
“They have one,” he hissed, and all the fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted.
“Who has what?” she asked, aiming for calm. He was out of his head with fever, and one of them had to be in charge, here.
He was panting. He was crushing her wrist.
“Beck, it’s okay. Just calm down–”
“A conduit,” he said, and she stopped breathing. “Castor’s people – they have a conduit.”
Then he passed out.
~*~
He woke long enough the next morning to sit up against a stack of pillows and eat some of the oatmeal Kay brought, bleary-eyed, quiet, withdrawn, eating with slow, methodical bites that Rose thought had more to do with Kay’s stern orders to eat rather than actual hunger.
“You, too,” Kay said, and shoved a bowl at Rose.
It was buttered, and topped with brown sugar, and delicious, but each bite was an effort to get down. Still, she was shaking, and sleep-deprived, and she knew she needed the fuel.
Kay bustled about straightening the covers and clearing old glasses off the nightstand. She brought a fresh glass of water and shook out two Tylenol. “How’s the pain today?”
“Seven.” Beck swallowed with obvious effort.
“Better, then.”
When he’d eaten all he could, Rose took his bowl, and then helped Kay change his dressing; she’d grown used to the sight of his bared torso, all its fascinating
contours. Had grown used to the ugliness of the black stitches crawling like a centipede along his side; the edges were a faint pink, now, less angry.
“It’s healing,” Kay said with approval.
When Beck had taken his meds, and drifted back to sleep, Kay caught Rose’s eyes and said, “Come with me.” An order this time, and one that expected to be obeyed.
Rose heaved herself up from the chair, all her muscles protesting, and followed.
“Go take a shower,” Kay said, when they were in the hall, the door closed behind them. “And then meet me downstairs. No arguing.”
“I’m not arguing.”
“Hmph. That’d be a first. Go on.”
The hot water felt so wonderful, when she stepped under the spray, that her eyes burned, and she thought she might cry. The heat soothed her aching muscles, loosened the tension she’d been carrying across every inch of her back, and it hit her all at once: a backlog of fear, and doubt, and anticipated grief held at bay by drugs, and vigils, and Kay’s deft hands on the surgical instruments.
Beck could have died, and it wasn’t the idea of being out on the street that left her throat clogged with tears, but the thought of Beck being gone. Of never seeing one of his strange little smiles again; never leaning over a book together and smelling the scent of cedar on his clothes, and smoke on his breath.
She’d never had anyone to miss before, and she would miss him terribly, awfully, devastatingly if she lost him.
She stood for long moments, hands shielding her face, letting the hot water wash her tears away. Then she finally cleaned up, shut off the taps, and went to dress.
She hesitated out in the hall, shooting a glance down at Beck’s closed door, listening. But there was no cry of distress, and she had no doubt Kay would come looking for her if she didn’t show, lecturing and muttering and calling her an idiot, too. With a sigh, she headed downstairs.
She found Kay in the butler’s pantry, where the washer and dryer were kept, folding fresh sheets at the long, butcher block counter.
“You can fold those towels,” she said, nodding toward a basket piled with hot, fresh-smelling towels right out of the dryer.
King Among the Dead (Hell Theory Book 1) Page 9
