Devon looked up at her, frowning. "I'm not sure that that would be the best thing—he's—he's not wearing any clothes at the moment, and I don't think I can move him around enough to get anything on him—"
Fleur had to suppress a smile as she watched her friend draw herself up to her full height of five-three and give Devon a tight smile as she became Nurse McClaren before their eyes. "Mister Fields, I will remind you that I was a nurse during the war. I am quite sure that your cousin doesn't have any parts that I haven't seen many times before."
Fleur watched Devon color brightly. "I—well, uh, it's not just that—he's—well—there are scars—"
"And I will remind you that I have seen many, many horrible injuries, long before they became as pretty as any scars he might bear."
Seeing that he was beaten, Devon rose, and Patsy followed him. Fleur knew she should probably remain in the kitchen—for propriety's sake—but they barely got three steps away before she said to hell with that.
Devon heard her chair scrape against the floor as she got up and joined them, and he turned to her, saying, "You might want to wait here for us to come back, Fleur. As I said, he's—he's not dressed, and he's not a very pretty sight to behold without clothes."
Although she blushed fit to rival his, Fleur continued to meet his eyes, watching them go round with shock when she confessed quietly, "I've seen him naked since he's been back, Devon."
Upon hearing that, Devon turned away from her and the three of them trooped up to Lawson's room, which was an exercise in wading through more garbage, just to get to it, and then to clear a path to his bed.
At first, Devon hovered a bit, as if uncomfortable at the idea that he was in a room with a naked man and two women he might have argued shouldn't actually have been there at all. Patsy, at least, was a medical professional, and he was concerned for Lawson's health beyond the drinking. In fact, before he arrived, Devon had been about to call a doctor on his behalf.
But Fleur's bold revelation had been a bit disturbing. He shoved it to the side to deal with later, though, in favor of helping his cousin get healthy. He would have loved to think that Lawson might give up the booze, too, but he didn't hold out much hope for that. He was so obviously drowning his sorrows, and who could blame him for that, really?
He had to admit that Patsy's bedside manner was absolutely impeccable. She didn't even wince slightly at the sight of him as she took his temperature and blood pressure, then proceeded to examine him in an embarrassingly thorough manner, pausing at the ruins of his right thigh, which she probed and pressed a bit.
"Devon, would you help me turn him over, please? He doesn't have to go all the way, but I need to examine his back."
In the end, it took all three of them to accomplish that feat, the two of them at his shoulders and Fleur at his feet.
The sight of the lattice of raised red lines that lay across his broad back was apparently a new one to Devon. "What caused that?" he wondered out loud, not really expecting either of them to be able to answer him.
"A whip," Patsy had replied in a bald, clipped tone.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph!" Fleur whispered under her breath. She had seen that pattern before but hadn't thought to associate it with something like that! What the hell had happened to him over there?
"Okay, we can lay him back again." With that accomplished, Patsy addressed Devon, "Please go downstairs and call Dr. Baker. Ask him to come as quickly as he can and to bring an ambulance. If he concurs with what I'm thinking, he'll need to be hospitalized—"
But she never got to finish her thought. Instead, Patsy cried out when she found one of her wrists caught and held in a very tight grip by the man that they had all assumed was unconscious.
"No hospital!" he stated very firmly, looking directly into her eyes, then Devon's. "NO HOSPITAL!" he said again, for emphasis, although it seemed to be taking everything he had to be able to do so.
Although she'd been startled when he'd glommed onto her, Patsy didn't try to remove his fingers' death grip around her wrist. Instead, she said, "Hi, Lawson. It's Patsy McClaren. I think you have an infection in your right leg that will—at the very least—need to be drained."
He repeated himself even more emphatically.
Patsy patted his hand. "I understand. I'll call the doctor, myself, and tell him to come prepared, and I'll assist him. We can do what's necessary here, if that's what you prefer." As she said the words, she hoped to God that she was right about what she was saying. She didn't like to lie to her patients, even if the news wasn't good.
After another strong statement of his opinion, he released her, his bleary eyes flitting to Devon's, then past him, to Fleur. "What is she doing here?"
She couldn't help it. She flinched at the venom in his tone.
"I asked her to bring me some things so that I could stay with you. She brought Patsy so she could examine you, and it sounds like it's a good thing she did."
"Get her away from me! She shouldn't be here!" Then he began addressing her directly, "I thought I told you to get out! GET OUT! GET—" he collapsed mid-tirade, thankfully.
But the damage was already done.
Again.
Fleur was as white as the wall she'd backed up against and trembling badly.
Patsy quickly made her patient as comfortable as possible, then got up to go over to Fleur, whom she put her arm around while saying, "I will go call the doctor. But before I do, Devon, I'm going to put a bowl with a cloth and some rubbing alcohol in it, as well as a glass with a couple of aspirin tablets on the stairs that I'd like you to come down and retrieve. Then I'd like you to do your best to help him swallow the pills and wash him down with the cloth and alcohol? They'll both help bring his fever down, hopefully." Looking down at Fleur reassuringly, she asked, "Fleur, honey, would you be a doll and find a bedroom less of a pigsty than this one. Try to find one that's close to this one, hopefully—and clean it as best you can? Clean everything you can—take the bedspread off, and just leave a clean bottom sheet—but use plenty of soap and hot water on everything else. Get as far up the walls as you can, okay?"
Patsy knew that this task was vital to getting as clean an environment as possible for what she was pretty sure was going to be the operation that Lawson needed in order to clean out the infection he was brewing, and it would serve the dual purpose of giving Fleur something to do and think about other than him.
IT TURNED out that Patsy's diagnosis was dead on—it should have been, considering how often she'd seen exactly these symptoms before, even in patients whose wounds had supposedly healed. Sometimes a hard to see or find pocket of flesh became infected, and then it would spread from there.
They used his parents' room as an operating room, since the stubborn cuss wouldn't go to a hospital. In the end, he lost another—relatively small—chunk of flesh, but the risk was that the infection would worsen, in part because of the operation itself.
The doctor left Patsy with strict instructions for his care, to be followed to a "t". Unfortunately, she had a job to do, so she had to deputize Fleur, who was reluctant merely to enter the room with him, even though he was unconscious, and was likely to be for quite some time.
"Do you want to help him recover from this?" she hissed down at her friend, not having the time or the inclination to coddle her at the moment.
Fleur swallowed, knowing that, deep down, she did, so she nodded, however reluctantly.
She learned to do everything Patsy would have done, and when the doctor arrived to see that she was the one who had been taking care of him, he praised her for a job well done. "You could have a future in nursing, Miss O'Meara, if you wanted one."
Patsy echoed his praise when she arrived later that day to check on her charge, and it was her friend's sincere compliments that meant the most to her.
Devon was there as much as he could be, but he, too, had a job. Fleur was the only one who could dedicate herself completely to the task of getting him well.
And
she did—no task was too menial. She did everything for him, without the slightest word of complaint, working as diligently and seriously towards helping him get over this as if she still loved him.
Sometimes, especially in the middle of the night, it seemed, when she was alone with him, his fever spiked and he became quite delirious.
And very talkative—always, surprisingly, addressing her.
And he became very handsy, too, whenever she was around him, wiping his brow or wiping his entire body down.
Although he was recovering, slowly—for which she was more grateful than she should have been—one of the last times he succumbed to delirium, she was sitting down on the bed next to him, waking him up enough to take a couple of aspirin, because she could tell just by touching his forehead that his temperature was up some, if not nearly alarmingly as it had been for quite some time. He complied surprisingly well—but then he'd proven more cooperative for her than either Devon or Patsy.
But when she turned back from putting the glass on his nightstand, she found herself caught in his arms as he pulled her against him so that she was lying half on top of him.
Fleur tried to struggle, but even the rampant infection hadn't seemed to diminish his strength in the least, although he didn't hurt her—he never had, unless he wanted to. Until he'd come back from the war, and except when he'd spanked her—and, if she was willing to admit it to herself, and she wasn't often willing to do so—even then—he had always been very careful of her, mindful of how physically powerful he was and how physically delicate she was.
But now, she knew she could no longer trust him to behave in that manner.
"Lawson, let me go," she ordered in her most no-nonsense voice.
"But you feel so good against me, my little Petal."
It had been so long since she'd heard him call her that, in that loving tone he'd used with her more often than not, that her eyes filled with tears at the memories that flooded back to her of better times between them, of hopes and dreams that she now knew would never be fulfilled.
She felt herself being drawn, slowly, inexorably, up his chest, her body dragged against his, until he claimed her mouth as his in a kiss that was painfully reminiscent of memories she'd hoped to keep buried.
But her body had other ideas. It flared to life beneath his knowing touch, especially when his right hand trailed possessively down the front of her, gliding over the tight tips of her breasts, then reaching down to use those surprisingly nimble fingers to gather the material of her skirt into his palm until she was completely exposed to him as he continued to kiss the breath out of her.
He slipped them beneath her panties as he held her in place, teasing her lips with his, drinking in her gasps and the way her breath caught as his fingers found her secret place.
Fleur struggled against his hold, but his left hand caught the hand she pressed against his chest, twisting it behind her back, and—even in his fevered state—she knew she was going nowhere unless he allowed it.
And he certainly didn't seem to be in any kind of a mood to allow it.
He held her there, lying atop him, as his fingers had their wicked way with her, watching her, his eyes blurry but still, somehow, surprisingly attentive, too.
She tried again to stop him. "Lawson, no—don't!" But it was an embarrassingly breathy, weak plea, sounding as if she was saying it just because she thought she ought to.
He leaned down to nibble at her ear lobe. "Shhh, baby. You know what I want."
"But we can't!"
"And I say we can, and you're going to, I promise you. You have no idea how much I love to hear those little sounds you make when you come for me."
Fleur tried to resist him, tried to think about anything else other than what he was doing to her, but he was too blasted good! He'd learned—in those two short encounters they'd had—exactly the right way to stroke her to make her writhe and shudder and press back against his hand like a wanton.
"That's it, my delicious little flower," he groaned right along with her.
But then he surprised her by bringing his other hand down sharply on her panty-clad bottom, causing her to arch against the big hand that was buried in the front of her cleft, dragging his fingers over her at the same time.
"No! Stop that!" she whispered, even though they were alone, reaching behind her to try to catch his wrist, or any part of him that was involved in spanking her, but missing it by a mile every time, receiving swat after painful swat, regardless of her efforts to deter them.
He merely chuckled, continuing to provide a powerful counterpoint to the discomfort he was causing by rapidly flicking his fingertips over the center of her bliss, increasing both sensations expertly until he finally allowed the scales to tip in favor of ecstasy, and as one hand squeezed her scorched cheeks, the other continued to play with her, to manipulate her body to his own ends, making her scream as if he was murdering her as he strummed that little nub fiercely, not easing up until he'd felt her surrender her glorious pleasure to him three more times.
By the time she was able to lift her head off his chest, he was already either asleep or unconscious again, and she was eternally grateful for whichever it was. She was blushing quite badly enough without him seeing her embarrassment at the wild—and highly inappropriate—way she had responded to him.
From then on—mostly because she didn't want to give him the opportunity to catch her like that again, but also because he was obviously recovering—she never sat down on the bed with him again, and she asked Patsy to take over bathing duties.
Her friend had given her a questioning look, but thankfully didn't take it any further than that or she would have found the reasons for her request to be rather hard to explain.
THAT WAS the beginning of Fleur's conscious withdrawal from his care. There was no denying that he was getting better, spending more and more time awake each day, and she had no interest whatsoever in subjecting herself to another one of his tirades against her, so she began to turn more and more of her nursing duties over to Patsy, who, because he was able to do more for himself, could manage them again. She continued to clean up the house and still did errands for Patsy and Devon, who were the more active caregivers, but after that evening, she never spent another night alone with him, nor did she ever venture upstairs to his room again, no matter who was or wasn't in the house.
One evening, not long after she'd let him take liberties with her person that she shouldn't have, Fleur and Patsy were downstairs, talking and laughing over the remains of their dinner as Devon brought a hearty stew that Fleur had made up to him, along with a big, yeasty roll with butter and a slab of chocolate cake.
As he put the tray down on his cousin's lap, Lawson stared down at his favorite meal—the same one she'd had been bubbling on the stove for him when he'd first come home—and asked quietly, "She's here?"
There was no use pretending that he didn't know to whom he was referring, and it wasn't Patsy.
"She is," he said, taking a swig of coffee from his mug before sitting in the chair that faced the bed.
"I'd—I'd like to see her, to thank her, for her part in taking care of me."
Although he could see that his cousin was struggling with this situation—being sick didn't set well with him at the best of times, and knowing that he had shunned a woman who he knew loved him to the very core of her being, multiple times—and in the most hurtful and heartless manner possible each time—had nonetheless taken care of him selflessly when he was at his weakest point did not lead him to feeling particularly charitable towards him.
"As well you should," he replied, not bothering to hide his scolding tone. "That woman you threw away so callously brought you back to life almost singlehandedly."
He had the grace to look ashamed. "Do you think she'd come up here so that I could do that?" he asked, sounding surprisingly diffident.
Devon snorted. "I hardly think so. I'm amazed she'd set foot in this house at all. It's a testament to her unimpeach
able and exemplary character that she ever has, since the night your sorry ass arrived back here to plague all of us who love you—but mostly her."
Lawson swallowed hard. Asking for things didn't come easy to him, although he didn't have a choice in some things. Not having touched his food and not looking at the other man, he asked quietly, "Would you tell her for me, then, please, how grateful I am for her care?"
"No, I will not," he replied staunchly. "I think a little guilt might go a long way towards benefitting your character, which seems, of late, to be sorely lacking." With that, he rose. "I'll be back up shortly to take the tray down. I find I much prefer the company downstairs."
Lawson sighed heavily when his cousin exited the room as if the devil himself was chasing him, but then, he guessed he'd been pretty devilish since he'd returned, and he could hardly blame him, especially since he'd treated Devon nearly as badly as he'd treated Fleur.
He'd been in a bad way when he got home, toying with the thought of cutting short his putrid existence and saving everyone a lot of grief, but that was no excuse to take it out on either of them, regardless of his motives. He hadn't wanted to come back here at all, only to be reminded of what he'd lost at every turn. Hell, he couldn't even hope to get a job of any sort! Hale and hearty men were having a horrible time finding employment post-war—who was going to hire him?
It was Fleur, though, who was by far his biggest, most devastating loss, and one brought about by his own shameful actions.
And as he was recovering—and doing so more quickly than he let on, which added to the feelings of guilt that his cousin had wished on him—she had quietly and efficiently, with great heart and empathy, shown him just how wrong he had been about her, about his need to shelter her from who and what he had become, from how the war had changed him, inside and out.
He'd truly had what he thought were altruistic intentions in pushing her out of his life, but her devotion to him—that was so apparent in everything she did for him while he could do nothing for himself—had made him realize just how much she had to love him, even now, to be doing all that for him of her own volition, and, except when he was being deliberately scary, he'd never once seen her shy away from him.
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