Diana Palmer - The Savage Heart

“All that talk about free love and liberated morals,” he chided. “You’re a fraud.”

She glowered, but she didn’t deny it. He lifted her and moved her arm gently to free it from the long sleeve of her blouse. It hurt dreadfully.

He whispered to her in Sioux, a tender command to be still. Once the arm was free, leaving her only in the sleeveless muslin chemise, he turned her arm gently so that he could see the wound. It was a long, deep cut on her upper arm, made not by a cane, but almost certainly by a sword. A sword concealed in a cane? Whoever had wielded it had meant to do damage, perhaps even more damage than he’d accomplished with this wound.

“This is deep,” he said angrily. The rent in her otherwise perfect white skin was sluggishly discharging blood. He took a cloth from the washstand, applied pressure, making her wince, and held it until the bleeding began to stop.

“I wish I knew who did it,” she muttered.

“No more than I do.” He held her hand above the cloth he’d placed over the wound and left her long enough to fetch a basin of water and soap and a fresh cloth. He bathed the wound gently, watching her posture go rigid as he performed the necessary chore. He put the basin aside to fetch a bottle of rubbing alcohol and some cotton flannel. “This is going to hurt like hell,” he told her.

She held her arm steady and looked at him with her teeth locked, then nodded.

The sting was almost unbearable. She made a sharp little cry and bit her lip as he flooded the wound with the alcohol.

“Sorry,” she said at once, pale but game. “That was shameful, to cry out like that.”

“Considering the pain, it was hardly shameful,” he said honestly. He covered the wound with another piece of clean flannel and went to fetch her lacy robe from the clothes closet. Gently, he enfolded her in it.

“No, Matt, it’s the only one I have! The blood will stain it!”

“Robes are easily replaced,” he said indifferently. “Put it on.”

And without argument she did so, docile, he supposed, because of the pain. He drew the front edges together, his knuckles just barely brushing the curve of her breasts above the chemise, and she gasped at the contact.

He hesitated, searching her eyes. Under his hands, he could feel the frantic whip of her heart; he could see the erratic beat of the pulse in her neck. Her lips parted and everything she felt was suddenly visible. A scarlet flush ran from her cheeks down her white throat to the silky white skin of her throat and shoulders and breasts.

Something was happening to her. She felt her breasts draw, as if they’d gone cold. Inside her, there was a burst of warmth, a throbbing that made her feel tight all over. Matt’s hands contracted on the lace of the robe, and if she wasn’t badly mistaken, they moved closer to her skin, the warm knuckles blatantly pressing into the soft flesh.

His eyes were on a level with hers, and her heart raced even faster as she saw the heat in them. They were a liquid black, steady and turbulent, unblinking on her rapt face. For seconds that dragged into minutes, they simply looked at each other in hot silence.

Just as his hands moved again, just as she felt the chemise give under their insistent but almost imperceptible downward pressure, footsteps on the staircase sounded like thunder, breaking the spell.

Matt stood up at once and turned away from her, leaving her to close the robe and fasten it frantically. Her hand went protectively to the flannel she was holding over the wound.

There was a perfunctory knock and the door opened.

The doctor glanced from one to the other. “Matt Davis? And this would be your cousin?” he added with a smile, closing the door behind him. “What happened?”

She told him in a jerky voice.

“I brought her some water and soap to bathe the wound and some flannel and alcohol to clean it thoroughly,” Matt said. “But it will need more tending.”

“Of course it will. Wait outside again if you don’t mind, young man,” he added, assuming, as Matt had meant him to, that Tess had done the treatment herself.

“Certainly,” Matt said formally, and went out of the room.

The doctor pulled the robe aside and probed the wound carefully. “What did this?”

She winced at the unpleasant examination. “A cane, I believe.”

“No, ma’am. More probably the point of a sword cane,” he corrected. “A nasty deep cutting wound, too. I’ll do what I can, but you’re going to be very sick for a few days, young woman. This wound will have to be carefully watched for sepsis. I’m to be called at once if you see red streaks on your arm…or a greenish discoloration around the wound.”

“I’m a nurse, sir,” she said in a strained tone. “My father was a physician.”

“Indeed!”

“I work in the Cook County Hospital,” she added.

“I thought you looked familiar. What a small world. And how fortunate that you knew what to do for this. I shan’t need to lecture you on how to tend it, shall I?” he added with a small chuckle.

He swabbed the wound with more alcohol, then began to take stitches while she recited the alphabet through gritted teeth.

“I have only a small amount of suturing material with me,” he explained. “That wound could do with a few more stitches, but I think the three I’ve made will hold just fine.” He applied a neat bandage.

“You’ll send for me if there are any problems,” he said, rising. “And you won’t work until the wound heals,” he added firmly.

“Yes, sir,” she said with a resigned sigh, wondering how she was going to earn her crust of bread. She still had a little of the nest egg her father had left her. Hopefully, she wouldn’t have to use too much of it. “You’ll send your bill?”

“My wife will,” he said kindly. “And now I’ll give you something to make you sleep.”

He left a bottle of laudanum with instructions on its use, gave her a polite nod and a smile as he snapped his bag shut and left.

Somber and quiet, Matt entered only minutes later. “The doctor said that he gave you something to make you rest.”

“Yes. This.” She indicated the cork-stoppered brown bottle.

“I’ll fetch a spoon.”

“Can’t I have it in water?”

“All right.”

There was a glass carafe near the bed. He poured water from it into its matching cup, mixed the drug for her and watched her gulp the bitter-tasting draft.

“If you have fever, and you probably will, you’ll have to be sponged down,” he said. “I’d prefer to stay with you myself, but it just wouldn’t be acceptable, Tess. You know that. Mrs. Mulhaney already has complained about your nursing and your work in the women’s movement. We don’t dare make matters worse.”

She felt very sick, and her arm was hurting badly. She looked up at Matt, only half hearing him. “I feel terrible.”

“No doubt.” He brushed wisps of hair back from her face. “I’m going to find someone to sit with you. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

Her hand caught his, and she held it to her cheek. “Thank you,” she whispered wearily.

His face was unreadable, but his fingers lightly caressed her cheek before he drew them away. “Try to sleep,” he said. “The laudanum should help.”

“Yes.”

He eased out the door and closed it behind him, his dark face taut with anger. It made no sense at all that someone should deliberately stab her, but that was the only logical explanation for what had happened. And he had a sick feeling that wounding her had not been the goal of her attacker. Far from it. She’d mentioned rolling away from trampling feet just before she felt the pain. Had he been aiming at another target on her body? If she hadn’t rolled over, would she be dead now?