The Companion by Susan Squires

have seen men walk on coals with no burns or scars.” She drew herself up. “In short, I have seen the mysteries of the world, and know enough to realize that not everything can be explained.”
    He nodded, still speculating. His sandy curls had escaped their ribbon in the heat of battle, and his hair waved about his scarred shoulders. He might have been a warrior on the steppes of Russia or a hunter on the plains of Catalonia a thousand years ago.
    “What do you know of your . . . condition, even if youcannot name it?” she stuttered, looking for some conversational ground that did not move beneath her feet.
    His eyes, so intensely blue now that all trace of red was gone, blinked once and a veil descended upon them. “I heal when none should heal, and fast. I have great strength at my command. It was a careless drop of blood on my lips that started it all. I know no more.”
    “But would it not be something great to convey these powers to others? I wonder how long a man could heal himself. Would life itself be extended?” The possibilities lit up inside her.
    “You run too fast, Miss Rochewell. It would be a sin to pass the malady to others without full knowledge of the effect.” His tone was damping.
    “And you do not like the sun, do you?” she mused. “Is that a part of it?”
    “My eyes and skin are particularly sensitive.” He looked alarmed at her surmises.
    “So to choose the ability to heal would be to deny the daylight forever.” A heavy price.
    “In Tripoli I found if I used colored lenses and covered myself from head to toe I could survive, but it is inconvenient.” His expression was dark. “Enough about this foolish condition.” He looked at her pointedly. “I wish merely to live as much like everyone else as I can.”
    “But surely you want to study the ramifications, that we might know as much as possible about it? That is the way of science, and the progress of mankind.”
    “The way of science will have to plod along without me, Miss Rochewell. All I ask is to be left alone.” He looked so drained after his ordeal she could not in conscience press him now. Who knew what resources a body claimed in order to affect that miraculous recovery?
    “Very well, Mr. Rufford. I shall leave you to your rest. We can talk another time.”
    He looked far from resigned to that event. But as she turned to go, he called out, “Miss Rochewell . . . I am indebted to you for your efforts on my behalf.”
    She felt herself blushing again. “They were nothing and not needed, in any case.”
    She closed the door softly behind her. But she could not close the door on her thoughts. How had he been infected by a drop of blood? What were the full effects of his condition? What was he hiding? He knew something he was not telling her.
    She peeked in on Mrs. Pargutter. Jenny had resorted to laudanum to calm her. The older woman was now sleeping heavily. Beth retired to her own cabin, knowing sleep was far away in spite of the quite pronounced letdown after so much excitement. There was a full-fledged mystery aboard the Beltrane . And she wanted to know more about it—about him.

Six
    Exhausted as he was, sleep did not overtake Ian easily. For the first time, a human being had mastered the natural abhorrence for his state, and she was only a woman. Even a man who had been a soldier and a diplomat like Ware had not done as much. She would not be so sanguine if she knew he sucked blood, and he was glad she didn’t realize he had compelled her to wash.
    Her acceptance was most strange. Perhaps it was rooted in her experience divining rational explanations for things others could not explain, gotten from her father’s archaeology. She might be the one woman capable of accepting as much of him as he would allow her to see. Not that she was much of a woman. She was far from those flowers of white heaving bosoms and sensibility he had known in London or . . . or the other female who so dominated his body and his soul.