Authors: Traitorous Hearts
His head rolled on his neck, but he managed to look down at her.
"Beth?"
"Jon, we have to get you up the ladder. I can't do it for
you. You're going to have to climb up yourself."
He swung his head to look at the ladder. "Can't. Tired... so
tired."
"Jon," she said sharply. She grabbed his head in her
hands and looked into his eyes, trying to find some spark of understanding.
"You have to. For me."
She could see him straighten, gathering himself, finding some
hidden reserve of strength. "For you." He grasped the ladder and
lifted his foot to the lowest rung.
It was laborious going, inching up with the slow motions that
seemed to be the only ones he could manage. Once he stopped and clung to the
ladder, marshaling his strength so he could move again. Finally, he pulled
himself through the hole and collapsed on the loft floor.
Yellow moonlight, nearly as warm and golden as the sun, streamed
through her window. Bennie's sheets were tangled around her legs, her night
rail damp and clinging to her too warm flesh.
It must be nearing the middle of the night, she thought, yet it
was still so hot. She'd tossed and dozed, then turned again, trying to capture
just a hint of coolness. It had to be nearly unbearable in the stable loft.
After Jon had managed to make his way up the ladder, she'd rapidly
dragged up the rest of the supplies and made a pallet for him. He'd crawled
onto the bedding and collapsed on his stomach, out like a candle snuffed by a
brisk October wind.
Bennie had stabled the customers' horses and spent most of the
afternoon with Jon, watching over him, as if that would somehow assure his
health. He'd slept the rest of the day away. Near evening, she'd managed to
awaken him and get a few swallows of thin broth down him, but he'd been
unfocused and nearly incoherent.
She had to go check on him again. The combination of heat and
worry was making sleep impossible anyway. Snatching a thin, dark cape, she
tossed it around her shoulders, more to cover the bright white of her gown than
for any need of its warmth.
Her bare feet glided over the smooth wood of the stairs, making no
noise as she descended and slipped out the front door. The scent of the summer
night was heavy in the still, hot air, thick with growing herbs, fermenting
ale, and the heady fragrance of vibrant blooms.
Dry grasses prickled the soles of her feet, and she wondered when
this unusually warm, dry spell would finally end. Opening the door to the
stables wide, she let in a bit of the moonlight, enough to make out the dark,
familiar shapes. A horse snuffled quietly. Just inside the entrance, tucked
along the wall, they kept a lantern, and she scooped it up before heading for
the loft.
Jon's breathing was harsh and labored. Filled with sudden, icy
trepidation, she ran to him. She fumbled with the flint and steel before
managing to light the lantern; dangerous to do in the loft, where a spark could
ignite the dry hay, but at this moment that wasn't her primary concern. She set
the lantern down close enough to Jon so she could see him clearly, the golden
light illuminating the sharp angles and hollows of his face.
He moaned, moving restlessly, his features twisted into fierce
agony. Oh, God. Was he in so much pain?
"Damn... don't die!" he muttered hoarsely. "Hang
on!"
A nightmare, she thought, wondering what nightmares he'd been
through since the last time she'd seen him. He'd obviously been shot twice.
What else had happened to him? Something to cause this kind of anguish. He
groaned again, and she reached for his shoulder to shake him awake. At a touch,
she snatched her hand back.
He was blazingly hot, far too warm to attribute it simply to the
temperature in the loft.
She laid her palm against his brow, hoping to find it moist with
sweat, but his skin was bone dry, hot as metal left out in the noon sun, and
she knew he hadn't just been having a nightmare. He was in the grip of a raging
fever.
A sick ache settled into her belly. Lifting the lantern high, she
edged up the bandage covering his back and peered under it. The skin around his
wound was puffy, mottled with dark splotches that she knew in the full light of
day would prove to be angry red.
There wasn't time to think. Bennie worked quickly, pawing through
the jumble of patent medicines she'd taken from Brendan's shop. She tilted
bottles towards the lantern, trying to read their labels.
Elixir Vitriol. She vaguely recalled her mother giving that to her
brothers when they'd had various fevers. But how was she going to get it down
Jon's throat?
"Jon."
No response.
"Jon. Wake up!" she said sharply into his ear, hoping
that once again she could get through to him for just a moment or two. His
condition was so much worse than it had been the past morning.
"Beth?" he murmured groggily.
"I've got something for you to drink."
He grimaced. "Flip?"
"No, no flip. Medicine. You have to take it." He was
still sprawled on his belly, and it made administering the elixir more difficult.
She couldn't just prop him up into a sitting position.
His face was turned toward her. She pried his mouth open, and
poured a good swig of the liquid into his cheek. "Swallow!"
She watched his throat until she saw his Adam's apple slide up and
down. She got another swallow into him, eyeing the length of his body. He was
so big. Once more, for good measure.
Waiting for the medicine to take effect, she stroked his face,
feeling the sharp rasp of his unshaven beard. Unable to resist, she slid her hand
to the strong hollow of his throat and over the curve of his uninjured
shoulder. Despite the temporary weakness caused by his illness, it was so easy
to feel the strength contained in his body. He was made of solid muscle and
thick sinew wrapped in smooth, polished skin, and she couldn't quite suppress
the glimmer of heat that rippled through her at the pleasure of touching him.
He began to shiver, and she realized that despite the almost
overpowering heat in the loft, he was chilled. The medicine hadn't done its
job; the fever was still rising. As much as she wanted to give in to the
temptation to warm him and make him comfortable, she knew it was more important
to get the fever down.
She ran from the stables to the well and hauled up a bucket of
water. In the quiet night, the creaking of the rope seemed unusually loud, and
water poured back into the depths of the well.
She filled her own bucket, the small bits of metal that held the
oak slats together cooling almost instantly as it was filled with the cold
water. Their well was deep, one of the coldest in town.
When she returned to Jon's side, she dunked a rag in the water and
began to wipe him down. He jerked away from her touch, mumbling under his
breath; to him, it must feel as if he were being stroked with ice. The toweling
quickly grew lukewarm, and she plunged it in the bucket again, grateful for the
water's smooth coolness against her wrists.
She wiped every part of him that was bare; his forehead, his
cheekbones, the smooth column of his neck, the broad panes of his back. The
moisture didn't evaporate into the humid air, so his skin glistened with it,
reflecting the rich, golden light from the lamp.
He began to talk again, feverish murmurings that made no sense,
fragmented snippets of battle, senseless splinters of his childhood.
Again and again, she ran the cold cloth over him, twice returning
for a fresh bucket of water when the one she had became too warm. The night
took on a rhythm of its own, as she glided the cloth repeatedly over his heated
skin. Her back began to ache, but she kept on, doing the only thing she could,
the steady back-and-forth motion soothing her, and, she hoped, him. His
restless stirring diminished slightly, and she watched shiny beads of water run
down the swells of his back and settle in the hollow at the base of his spine.
His ramblings were more coherent now, no longer jumbled by the
violent shudders of his body. He spewed out a long row of sentences.
Bennie frowned. It made no sense. He was feverish, perhaps
delusional. And yet...
She leaned closer, listening carefully to the words tumbling from
his mouth. As her hands continued to cool him, her brow furrowed in
concentration.
Finally, so slowly she at first thought she'd imagined it because
she was so hoping for it, his body began to cool. When she touched the back of
her hand to his forehead, it no longer felt as if it would burn her own skin.
Wearily, she tossed the rag into the bucket. Through the tiny
window, she could see the first graying of the sky. She'd been at it half the
night, but if she'd been asked, she might have thought it days; the hours had
all run together, a seamless blur of his skin under her hands.
Unfolding a fresh linen sheet over Jon's legs, her own limbs felt
drained of all energy. Climbing down that ladder once again seemed like an
almost overwhelming task.
Her cloak was spread out beside her and, with a sigh, she lay down
on it, slipping her hands under her cheek. She needed to rest, just for a
moment, needed to gather her strength. She could scarcely even manage to think.
There was something she was supposed to be thinking about, she remembered
vaguely, but she couldn't quite manage to catch hold of the thoughts.
***
Why was he so hot? Jon swam dizzily through vicious, heated
blackness. Slowly, he became aware of bits of reality: the scratching of a
rough blanket beneath his cheek, the damp stickiness of sweat on his body, and
a steady, strong ache in his upper back.
Struggling to recall what had happened to him, he tried to force
his eyes open. His thoughts were fuzzy, and it frustrated him that he couldn't
think with his usual clarity.
The light that met his eyes was dim and diffuse, thick with dust
and humidity. A bit of straw tickled his nose, and he huffed it away.
Beth. Not more than three feet from him, resting peacefully on her
side, looking like an innocent child, her hands tucked underneath the smooth
curve of her cheek. For a moment, he stopped struggling to make sense of it all
and allowed himself the pure pleasure of looking at her.
Her skin was flushed with the heat and sheened with perspiration;
her hair was a wild tumble of curls the color of the straw and sunlight that
surrounded her. He realized he'd never before seen her with her hair completely
free.
She was wearing a voluminous night rail that was made of a fabric
thin enough to flow and dip over her wonderful soft curves. It was twisted
around her body, tight over her breasts, and he wondered whether in enough
sunlight the gauzy cloth would hint at the dark tips of her nipples.
She frowned in her sleep, her high forehead furrowing. What
worries disturbed her rest? He shouldn't let her have any worries.
And she was much too special to be sleeping in hay. What was she
doing here? He managed to take his eyes off her long enough to look around at
his surroundings.
Familiar. It was the loft where they'd...
Oh, hell. He remembered going to the rendezvous, only to find it
had all gone bad. Somehow, his enemies had been there waiting for him. He'd
made a run for it, and then there had been that fiery pain in his back.
He'd weakened so quickly. He'd had no place to go, no one he could
turn to. He remembered reaching the stable and pitching head first onto the
nearest pile of straw. The memories were fragmented after that, oddly
distorted. There was a ladder and the awful, impossible task of climbing it.
Beth had been there, twisting in and out of his memories, her hands cool and
soothing upon him, her voice penetrating the fog in his head.
And there'd been nightmares. He couldn't really remember them, but
he knew he'd had them. There was only a residual blackness; emptiness,
violence, and the terrible certainty that, somehow, it was all his
responsibility.
Her eyelids fluttered open, sable lashes sweeping up over eyes an
even richer brown. Hazy awareness settled into them.
"Morning, Beth."
"Jon." Her lips curved into a sleepy smile, and he felt
a sharp pang of regret that he'd never seen her awaken before. She was
unconsciously sensual, settling slowly into wakefulness with an easy, natural
stretch of her limbs. What would it be like, if he had the right to reach for
her, making love to her in the morning when her body was still lethargic and
damp with sleep? He imagined himself entering her slowly, while she leisurely
arched beneath him and rubbed her cheek against the rasp of his morning beard.
He watched consciousness come over her. She sat up and pushed her
hair back, the motion tightening her gown across her breasts, and he couldn't
help watching the play of cloth over skin.
He dragged his gaze back to her face. The welcoming look she'd
given him upon wakening had been replaced with distance and alert wariness. Her
eyes were dark, the color of the best, freshly made coffee, liquid and
shimmering—and impossible to fathom.