Lily by Patricia Gaffney Page B

climbed the long staircase to the second floor as quietly as possible.
    In his room, Devon collapsed at the foot of the bed and leaned against the post. In a fog of pain and fatigue, he listened to the scratch of flint and steel and watched as Lily lit two candles at his bedside. In the sudden soft light, he thought she looked like a half-drowned cat. But he must look even worse, because when she turned, holding one candle aloft, her flushed face paled and her eyes widened with alarm.
    “God save us,” she breathed. He looked like a corpse. His eyes, the only color in his face, were haggard and lifeless, maybe already feverish. The bloodless lips were set against his pain in a tight grimace, and his huddled body, so dogged and stubborn before, looked blunted now, almost insensate. The buckskin jacket was black from his blood, the shirt under it bright red. “Please,” she begged, “for God’s sake, you must let me fetch a doctor.”
    She thought he wouldn’t respond, that his numbed gaze would be her answer. But finally he roused himself to speak—slowly, conserving his strength. “I think it looks worse than it is. It wouldn’t have been my choice, but I’m afraid you’re the only one who can help me. I’m sorry.”
    She stared at him for a few more silent seconds. “Right, then,” she said with a briskness she was far from feeling, and set the candle down. Her hands fumbling at his coat were as gentle as she could make them, but his closed eyes and drawn breath made it plain that everything she did hurt him. She got his soaked shirt unbuttoned and started to ease it over his shoulders. He didn’t move and made no sound. The sight of his face made her stop, frightened, and turn nearly as white as he. “Are there any scissors in this room?”
    “Desk. Drawer.”
    She got them. Sitting beside him, she cut away the bloody cloth in a long line from his cuff to his collar, and the shirt fell off him. Painlessly. They both sagged a little from relief.
    Lily put a hand out to brush the damp hair back from his forehead. “All right?” she murmured. He nodded slowly.
    His wound was a gash—from a knife? a cutlass?—in the fleshy part of his shoulder, above the collarbone. It went deep, but, from what she could see, only flesh and muscle had been injured. If the weapon had struck a few inches to the right, it would have severed his jugular vein.
    She found the pitcher and basin on his washstand and carried them back to the bed with an armful of towels. While his fingers clenched again around the wooden post, she soaked away the blood and cleaned the wound as best she could. All that kept her from swooning was willpower, and the knowledge that there really was no one else to help him. He would despise her—she would despise herself—if she passed out at his feet because his wound was ugly and his blood sickened her. And when she came to, she would only have to begin again. So she gritted her teeth and clamped down on the panic and nausea churning in her stomach, and did her work as cleanly and efficiently as she could.
    “It ought to be sewn,” he said.
    She kept her hands busy, her head down.
    “Did you hear me?”
    She rubbed the wet end of a clean towel lightly across the bloody stains on his broad chest and the hard muscles of his stomach, drying his skin afterward. Her throat tightened. Finally she lifted her eyes. She mouthed the word “Please,” but couldn’t get out a sound. Her shame was complete when she felt her eyes fill with tears.
    Devon rested his temple against the bedpost. “All right,” he said on an exhausted sigh. “We’ll skip that. Bind it with cloths now, as tightly as you can.”
    She obeyed in silence, shoulders hunched with dejection, winding clean strips of toweling over his shoulder and under his opposite arm, making a firm bandage. Afterward she helped him to stand up and got him into bed. She pulled his boots off, then his stockings. She ought to strip off his wet breeches.