“You mean infections?”
“Yes, you could call them that, I suppose,” Alexander decided. “They are what happen sometimes from wounds that aren’t correctly cleaned. Above all, this must not happen with you. You might survive such a fever, but your babe would not.”
She drew in a sharp breath. “Yes, I thought you had guessed,” she said softly. “That first day I didn’t say anything.”
“I am a doctor first and foremost, even though I cannot practice my craft in this new world I find myself in,” Alexander said gently. “There is a man called Hippocrates, an ancient Greek doctor, who is considered to be the father of medicine. Eastern doctors try to emulate his philosophies. He believed in the sanctity of the doctor and patient relationship. What we talk about I do not repeat to anyone, my lady.”
“I know who Hippocrates is,” Taylor assured him.
“You do?” Alexander seemed surprised. “Then I do not need to explain further.” He sat back. “The stitching is finished.” He lifted her undershirt back over her chest. “I will prepare your compress.” He hesitated. “I judge the child you carry to be about forty-two days old. Is that about right?”
“Forty-six,” she said.
Alexander’s gaze shifted past her head. “My lord!”
Taylor lifted herself up onto her elbows and turned her head. Brody sat on his warhorse, staring at them, the horse’s head almost grazing the side of the wagon. He had come up alongside the wagon, probably to check on her. Alexander and she had been too involved in their talk to notice.
Shock was written on Brody’s face. It was white as marble. He pulled his gaze to Taylor. “You’re pregnant?” he asked in English.
“Brody…” But there were no words there. Nothing she could say would undo this.
He closed his eyes and squeezed his temples with the finger and thumb of one gauntlet covered hand. “Forty-six nights ago I was in Vegas with the band. That’s when you went back to Norway with Veris.” He lifted his head to look at her. “Back to when he was human,” he said bitterly and pulled at the reins, turning the horse’s head.
“Brody, don’t leave!” she said quickly.
But he didn’t listen.
When Taylor looked back at Alexander, he was fussing with the herbs in his bag, pretending to be oblivious.
Taylor lay back down on the blanket and put her hand over her eyes to shut out the sun and hold in the tears. Her chest shuddered as she tried to stop them. But that made her shoulder spasm and just made her want to cry harder.
Alexander’s hand touched her arm. “Drink this,” he said. “It will soothe the pain.”
She eased herself up again on her good elbow and took the cup he handed her. Easing the pain sounded really good right now. She took a big swallow and gagged at the bitter taste.
“All of it,” Alexander added.
She nodded and tipped the rest of contents into her mouth and made herself swallow it. “How long does it take to work?” she asked as Alexander settled her back on the blanket.
“Not long. Close your eyes.”
She closed her eyes. It occurred to her that Alexander might leave her alone on top of all these water barrels while she had her eyes closed. She didn’t want to be alone. She opened her eyes again to tell him so and found Brody watching her.
“Brody.” Pure warm happiness washed over her.
He picked up her hand and kissed the knuckles. “Hey.”
There was soft whiteness behind his head and she focused her gaze behind him. “I can feel that we’re still on the wagon, but what is over your head?”
“We rigged up a cloth over the top of you. Alexander said the sun was bothering you.” Brody stroked her cheek. “It was only going to get worse as the sun got stronger.”
“How long have I been sleeping?” she asked, astonished.
“It’s late afternoon,” Brody told her. “We’ll be stopping soon for the night.”
She had slept the day away.
“How long have you been here?” she asked, struggling with the idea that a whole day could disappear just like that.
Brody’s shoulders lifted a fraction. “A while.”
“Watching me just lie here?”
Again, the tiny shrug. “And thinking.”
“You’re wondering why I didn’t tell you,” she guessed.
“I know why you didn’t.” He touched her hip. Hesitantly. Then, when she didn’t flinch or protest, he smoothed his hand across her belly. It was a possessive movement. “Veris doesn’t know yet. You couldn’t tell me until after you told the father.”
“You’re wrong, Brody. So wrong.”
He lifted his gaze to her face. “Then why?”
“I wanted to tell you both together.”
He took a massive breath that lifted his shoulders. His gaze dropped to her hand still held in his. “The day we jumped here, when you were asking about Veris. That’s when you found out, wasn’t it? That’s why you were suddenly anxious to track him down.”
“Yes.”
His thumb brushed over her fingers. “You should have told me when we landed here. Niceties aside. I could have protected you, made better arrangements—”
“Protected me more than you have?” she asked reasonably.
His head snapped up. “Look at where you lie!” he protested.
She reached for him. “Don’t do this to yourself.” She grasped his tunic with her good hand and drew him to her. He allowed her to move him, lowering himself down closer to her and carefully avoiding her injured shoulder.
Taylor brought his face close to hers. “This was not your fault,” she said carefully.
He rested his forehead gently against hers and closed his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he whispered. “Don’t you trust me? Love me enough?”
Taylor stroked his hair. “It’s because I love you that I couldn’t tell you,” she confessed. “I thought… I knew you would be angry that it wasn’t your child, and you were, weren’t you? That was your first reaction, this morning.”
She felt more than heard his sigh. “I’m over it now,” he murmured and lifted his head. He kissed her and sat up. Strangely, he was smiling. “Any child is such a gift we’d all be sheer idiots to question the source.”
“But that’s not why you’re smiling, is it?”
He shook his head. “No.” His thumb stroked her jaw. “I’ve always thought that to you, Veris was the real man and I was just the gentle poet and singer. Most people don’t see me properly when Veris is in the room and I’ve got used to that. But you do, don’t you? You see me perfectly.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Taylor asked. “I mean, look at you. You’re magnificent. Beautiful, even when you are totally pissed.”
He grinned. ‘“Beautiful’ huh? People don’t call Veris beautiful. He’d take their heads off.” His smile faded. “It’s nice to have my male ego stroked occasionally. You just did, by being afraid to tell me I wasn’t the father.” He lifted her hand again and kissed the back of it. “My age is showing, I know. But that felt good.”
Taylor yawned suddenly. Hugely. She frowned as sleep tugged at her. “What did Alexander slip me, anyway? We should ask him for the formula. Patent it…back in…our time.” She yawned again.
Brody gave a soft laugh. “Sleep. It’ll help you heal. I’ll have the camp set up by the time you wake up next.”
“A soft bed…” she murmured.
“Done.” She felt his lips on her palm. The tickle of his canines. “I love you, Maggie Taylor Yates.”
“Mmm…” She wasn’t sure what she meant to say except it was a universal all-encompassing agreement. She accepted his love, she loved him back, love was all that mattered. Love followed her into sleep. This time she felt the sleep slip over her and let it.
She woke to a cool breeze on her skin. Night, she knew instantly. She was not on the wagon anymore. She sniffed carefully, listening to the sounds of a camp of men going about their business. There was a
campfire quite close, crackling and popping quietly. Her shoulder ached. She lay, she thought, on more blankets, but these did not have the unforgiving ridges of water barrels beneath them. Just the ever present sand of the Jordanian desert.
“You are quite safe, my lady,” Veris said, next to her. “You don’t have to pretend to be asleep while you test your surroundings.”
Startled, Taylor opened her eyes. As before, a wagon had been pulled up to make a small private camp site for Brody and Taylor. It appeared to be the wagon she had spent the day upon, for the swathe of linen that had shielded her from the sun was still propped upon four spears thrust up between barrels.
There was a big cooking pot sitting on a rock next to the fire. Veris stood in front of the fire, making him a dark silhouette, his arms crossed as usual. He wore no sword that she could see from her prone position.
She tried to sit up, but pain shot through her.
Veris hurried forward, his hand held out. “Do not exert yourself,” he said. “The elixir Alexander gave you has worn off and now you will be in pain.”
“Yes,” she agreed breathlessly, falling back on the blanket. Her shoulder was pulsing with black waves of agony that radiated through her body. Her head felt like it would split in two. Two small tears squeezed from the corners of her eyes.
She felt more than saw Veris kneel beside her. His hand hovered over her shoulder. “Will you allow me to look at the wound?” he asked. “I once trained with the ancient Greek doctors in Pergamum. I know how to treat war wounds.”
“I know that,” she said, her voice husky.
“Yes, of course you do,” he said, sounding vexed.
“There’s no need to ask my permission.”
“You of all people must say yes,” he replied, his voice low. “Brody has agreed. But you must also.”
“I agree,” she said.
Veris carefully pulled aside her bloodstained tunic. He swore softly when he saw the hauberk. “The mail is too heavy to leave in place over the wound. I will take it off.” He opened the buckles on her right shoulder. Taylor thought he would make her sit up, but he pulled the hauberk down her hips. With the clinical detachment of a nurse, he slid his hand under her waist, lifted her hips and pulled the mail down past her hips, then off over her feet. He dropped it with a hiss of links into a pile in the sand and came back to her side.
She realized then that he was wearing no mail of his own.
He picked up a cup—one she recognized. It was the small cup that Alexander had made her drink from that morning. “This will help with the pain,” Veris said. “It is the same mix as this morning, only weakened to one fifth of the power. You will not sleep. Brody seemed to feel that you would resist being forced to sleep again.”
“I would.” Taylor relaxed. “But pain relief would be welcome.” She tried to sit up again and Veris pushed back against her good shoulder, keeping her on the blanket. “You are a persistent woman.” He slid an arm under her back and lifted her enough to let her drink from the cup. When the cup was half-empty, he let her back down.
“The stuff works almost instantly,” Taylor told him. “This morning I went out like a…a candle.”
Veris folded back the undershirt over the top of the tunic. Like the tunic, the shirt was crusty with her blood. He carefully tucked it down only just enough to give him access to the wound and the bandages Alexander had tied over it, but that still meant that almost all of her breast was exposed.
Alexander’s concoction had already set in. Her pain seemed to lift off like a hot air balloon and drift away from her. It was still attached via a slender thread, threatening to reel in and reinsert itself into her body at any moment, but for now it floated off up in the never-sphere, where she could ignore it.
Taylor focused on Veris’ face as he leaned over her. His blue eyes were so dear to her. So familiar. Yet this man was an awkward stranger who was staring at her breast while he treated her wound.
Her skin was as blood-stained as her clothing and grimy after a day of heat, pain and sweating under the mail, but she barely cared. Taylor could feel the liquid, languorous heat of arousal rising in her. It didn’t matter that Veris couldn’t see all of her breast, either. That made it more exciting. He had only to peel the undershirt a half an inch lower and her nipple would be exposed.
The nipple tightened painfully at the idea.
Veris lifted the bandages away, then the compress that Alexander had applied. He touched the wound. It didn’t hurt.
“Good stitches,” he remarked. “Alexander did well.”
“I threw up when he was doing them,” Taylor confessed. Maybe if she kept the conversation on the disgusting and the normal, her body would cool down.
Veris laughed. “Your first stitches, I’m guessing.”
“Alexander said they were his first stitches on a woman, too.”
Veris abruptly sobered. For a fraction of a second, she saw heat in his eyes. Anger. Then an internal shield dropped down and his expression neutralized.
Taylor grew abruptly aware of Veris’ fingers touching her flesh outside the region of the wound. Accidental brushes. Tiny imprints of the tips of his fingers as he worked. Her skin was hypersensitive to his touch.
“There is no sign of bad blood,” he said. “But I want to clean the wound anyway, just to be sure.”
She nodded.
He rose and moved to the pot sitting next to the fire. There was a smaller cup sitting next to it and he dipped it into the pot and carried it back to Taylor. He soaked a cloth in it, concentrating on the task.
Silence was worse. Taylor cast about for an innocent subject. “How far from Jerusalem are we?”
“They figure we should reach the city by early afternoon tomorrow, if we leave at first light.”
She focused on his use of the neutral word “they”. It would have been Alexander who would have supplied that information, but Veris was not using his name. He had not liked the fact that Alexander, a man, had touched her. Taylor had reminded Veris of that by pointing out that Alexander had never had a female war victim before.
Was this jealousy? From Veris?
“Then good time was made today despite my slowing everyone down.” She was pleased.
“You?” He seemed surprised.
She sighed. “It wasn’t good military thinking, stepping in front of you that way. It slowed everyone down and made a late start. If we had been on campaign, or rations had been short, it could have been a critical blunder. No one said anything, but I know the men thought me foolish. There were other ways to deal with the man. Possibly dozens of them. I just reacted. I didn’t think. Not thinking can be foolish out here. I’ve read about it. I think even you have told me that, too.”
A great weight lifted from her as she finished speaking and she realized that this guilt had been with her all day, hovering in her sleep and the few short minutes she had been awake, making her deeply uncomfortable.
Veris paused in his work to look her fully in the eye. “Yes, it was foolish, if you are only thinking like a soldier. But you will always have my gratitude. Taylor…Yates. That is your name, is it not?
“You and Brody have covered a lot of ground.”
Veris smiled a little. “I insisted, after this morning.”
“You know that knowing too much about your own future can be dangerous, don’t you?”
“I didn’t ask about my future. I asked about you.” He went back to work. “There is a difference.”
“That’s typical of you. Splitting hairs so minute you need a microscope to see them.”
Veris lifted his head. “I don’t understand.”
“It doesn’t matter. I was teasing. And trying to change the subject.”
“Why change the discussion? You don’t like talking about yourself, do you? You’ve tried to deflect me twice since I expressed my gratitude. Or is it my gratitude that bothers you?” He sat back and put the bowl of water aside, apparently finished with the cleaning. He
simply watched her, waiting for her answer.
Taylor licked her lips. “Yesterday, you considered me a hindrance.” She held up her palm, where the scab from his knife cut was still red and healing. “Now I have your gratitude. No one changes their minds that fast.”
His gaze shifted and dropped away from hers. “Brody warned me you do not deal with men as other women do. I keep forgetting that.”
“I treat men as my equals in all but physical strength,” Taylor said. “And I’m used to being treated the same way.”
Veris snorted. Then he glanced at her. “You do not jest,” he said slowly. “This explains much…” He seemed lost in thought. Absorbed for a long moment. Then he stirred and picked up the filthy corner of her tunic where it laid folded back against her shoulder. “This must be changed, and you should bathe and remove all that blood and filth lest it travel to the wound.”
“Good idea,” she said dryly. “I’d love to, except that I’m as weak as a kitten, high as a kite and have one good arm.”
Veris’ mouth lifted in a small smile. “I believe most of what you just said means you approve the idea in general. I will bathe you.” He nodded toward the big pot of water by the fire. “I have all the arrangements in hand.”
Her body seemed to burst into flames and melt into a pile of nameless goo at the idea.
“No, Veris. No. That would be… That’s totally inappropriate. Brody can help me, when he gets back from wherever he is.”
“Brody won’t be back tonight,” Veris said shortly. “He’s camping with his men.”
Taylor drew in a short, hot breath that sizzled on the way down. “Why? Why would he do that?”
“I asked him to.”
“Why?” She tried to breathe, to bring her galloping heart under control and to find words that wouldn’t offend this Veris. Screw it, she decided and looked him in the eye. “Are you trying to seduce me?”
Veris smiled a little. “No.” He rose and walked back to the fireplace and brought back the big pot, carrying it by the handle. “This is a common service doctors used to provide for their patients, in Pergamum. It seems to be a lost art, these days, or one passed on to servants as being too menial a task.” He put the pot on the ground close by and settled down next to her, pushing up his sleeves. “I want Brody in my life. You are wedded to his life in a way that the word ‘marriage’ does not even begin to describe. I want to know more about the woman who shares her man so selflessly, that she will take a spear in the chest in order to save his lover.”
Kiss Across Swords (Kiss Across Time Series) Page 20
