The Perfect Stranger (30 page)

His smile faded, and he released her abruptly. “Have you broken your fast?” he asked curtly.

“Not yet. I was waiting for you.”

“I’m not hungry. Make haste. I’d rather we got on the road as soon as possible.” He strode off, leaving Faith staring after him, dismayed and wondering what she’d said.

And then she noticed it. A trail of blood where he had walked. Nicholas was bleeding.

“Nicholas, wait!” She ran after him. “Did you cut yourself? Where does it hurt?”

He stared at her as if she was talking nonsense. “What are you talking about?”

“You’re bleeding.” She pointed to the blood on the ground and crouched down in front of him. “I think you’ve cut your foot.” She examined his feet as she spoke, and sure enough, one of them was cut and bleeding.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “I can’t even feel it.” He made to keep walking, but she held on to him.

“You’re not moving, Nicholas, so don’t argue with me! Now sit down and let me look at it. At the very least, let me clean all this dirt off it so I may see how badly—or not—it is cut.”

She made him sit down and called to Stevens to bring some hot water and a cloth. Stevens came, and Estrellita followed, watching curiously from a short distance.

When she had washed the dirt from his foot, she saw it was quite a deep cut. It was bleeding profusely. “You must have cut it on a sharp rock or some broken glass. How could you not have noticed?”

He shrugged indifferently. “I suppose the cold water numbed my foot. Clap a bandage on it, and let’s get on.”

Stevens bent over Faith’s shoulder and peered at it. “I think it mebbe ought to be stitched, Capt’n. It’s pretty deep.”

Nicholas shrugged again. “Then do it. I don’t want to sit around here all day.”

“I’ll fetch the necessaries.” Stevens stomped off to get them.

Faith felt a bit ill at the idea of stitching up her husband’s flesh. To cover it, she said, “You’re being very brave about it. I’m sure I would be crying at such a deep cut.”

He shook his head, but there was a pucker between his brows. Obviously it hurt him more than he was letting on.

Stevens returned with the needle and thread, the pot of salve, and a bottle of brandy. He handed it to Nicholas, who waved it away impatiently.

“No, I don’t need it.”

Stevens frowned but said nothing. He nudged Faith aside. “I’ll do this, miss.”

Faith nerved herself to say it. “I—I thought perhaps I ought to do it. It’s one of the duties of a soldier’s wife, isn’t it?” To her chagrin, her voice trembled a little.

Stevens gave her a shrewd look, but all he said was, “Be quicker and less painful for the capt’n if I do it, miss. You watch and see how it’s done, and then next time he needs sewing up, you’ll know what to do.”

“Very well.” Relieved, Faith moved aside and braced herself to watch.

Stevens splashed the cut with brandy. Nicholas didn’t even flinch. His frown, however, grew. Stevens glanced at him and frowned also. He opened his mouth to ask a question, but—“Get on with it,” Nicholas growled.

Stevens got on with it.

He was obviously used to this task; his hands moved quickly and deftly as he sewed and knotted, sewed and knotted. Faith felt ill each time the needle pierced Nicholas’s skin. By the third stitch, she felt clammy and faint.

Nicholas noticed. He took her hands in his and said in a low, almost savage voice, “Don’t watch if it makes you ill. I’m really quite all right. Go and have your breakfast, Faith. That’s an order.”

But Faith shook her head. She was determined to stick it out. If he could endure it, she could watch. She was determined to prove to him that she could fit in to his rough-and-ready life.

He wanted to wrap her in cotton wool and send her back to lonely comfort in England. She had to make him see that she relished this life with him, even the hard parts. Despite the discomforts, she had been happier on this journey with Nicholas than in any other time of her life, and she was not going to jeopardize her future with him by getting missish and fainting at the sight of a needle entering flesh!

She clutched his hands, battling waves of nausea, and watched as Stevens’s needle pierced the ugly gash in her husband’s skin. She tried not to wince as he tugged the thread tight, pulling the two pieces of flesh together to make a neat seam. Every now and then he dashed some more brandy on it, to wash away any blood and, he said, to keep the wound clean.

All through the procedure, Nicholas neither flinched nor made a sound. Soldiers were different, she thought. It had to be hurting him terribly, but he sat there in silence, apparently unmoved, apart from a black frown.

His hands held hers as if she were the one who needed comfort, his thumbs stroking her. He watched her; she could feel the touch of his gaze like a warm caress, willing her to look at him, not his wound. But Faith would not be distracted. She would not lift her gaze from the stitching taking place. She was determined to show him she could manage whatever this trip threw at her. She was totally resolute: she would travel on with him after Bilbao, facing whatever he had to face, side by side.

His big thumbs rubbed back and forth across her skin, soothing, rhythmic, and immensely comforting.

“Miss, do you know what plantain looks like?”

Faith blinked in surprise at Stevens’s question. Botany seemed rather irrelevant at the moment. “It’s a weed, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but a very useful one. Would you recognize it if you saw it?”

Faith frowned, trying to remember. “I don’t know all that much about herbs, only the ones Cook used to use when we were sick. Is plantain the one with purplish green flowers, not particularly pretty?”

“That’s right, miss. Low growing with broad green leaves. In the army we used to call it soldiers’ herb, and if you could find some, it would do Capt’n Nick’s cut a power of good. A real healer it is.”

“Is it? Then I could go and look for some immediately. I’m sure there will be some growing around nearby. It grows nearly everywhere, doesn’t it?” Faith looked at Nicholas. “Will you be all right by yourself if I go and look for this herb?”

“Yes,” he said gravely.

She dropped his hands and scrambled to her feet, albeit a little shakily. She felt better having something active to do.

“I help you find it,” Estrellita said from behind her. Faith jumped. She had forgotten the gypsy girl.

“You want plant for stop blood, yes?” Estrellita confirmed with Stevens.

“That’s right. You fetch us some, and we’ll use it to help the capt’n here.”

Estrellita snorted. “I not do it for him, I go with her so she not lose her way.”

Nicholas watched the two young women hurry off toward the woods. They were a strange pair; the gypsy girl despised and mistrusted him but seemed to have adopted Faith.

“Hope you don’t mind, Capt’n, but I thought it best to get Miss Faith out of the way. Turning green she was.”

“I know.”

“Determined to see you through it, she was.”

“I know.”

“She’s a good ’un, Mr. Nick. A real good ’un.”

“I know.”

Stevens frowned and seemed about to say something more, then changed his mind. He bent over the cut foot again. “That gypsy girl will keep an eye on her, make sure she don’t get lost in the forest. No flies on that one. Interesting how Mac treats her, don’t you think?”

“Interesting how she treats Mac, too,” Nick responded.

Stevens worked in silence for a few minutes. Then he carefully tugged the final stitch tight and knotted it. “Is it my imagination, or can you not really feel what I’m doing to you?”

Nick gave him a level glance. “It’s not your imagination.”

Stevens grunted and cut the thread with his knife. “Not good, that.”

“Depends on how you look at it. Some would say it’s a blessing,” Nick said wryly.

Stevens grunted, unimpressed, and began to bandage the foot. Nick didn’t want to think about it.

They had not gone far when Estrellita caught Faith’s arm in both hands and forced her to stop. “I not come to help you find the soldiers’ herb,” she said in a low, intense voice.

Faith’s curiosity was roused. “Then why did you come?”

Estrellita glanced around her in a furtive manner. “I come to beg for The Old One’s life.”

“What? You mean your great-grandmother? But none of us would dream of harming her, Estrellita. Why ever would you think so?”

The girl obviously didn’t believe her. “Your husband—I watch you with him. He listen to you. He care for what you think.” She clutched Faith’s arm tighter. “Please, lady, tell him not to hurt her. Tell him not to come near her.”

Faith found the girl’s anxiety distressing. She, better than anyone, knew how protective Nicholas was toward women. She took Estrellita’s hands in hers, squeezing them comfortingly. “Nicholas will not hurt her, I promise you. He might look fierce—and he can be—but with women, he is the gentlest creature. I should know.”

The girl shook her head. “No! You his wife. He not hurt you because he love you. But The Old One he not know, not love. But you, lady, he will listen to. So tell him not hurt her.”

“No, it’s not simply because I am his wife. He rescued me—just as he rescued you—when I was a complete stranger to him, an unknown girl running from terrible men.”

But Estrellita wasn’t convinced. “You beautiful. Of course he help you. The Old One, she old and wrinkled and no man call her beautiful—but every mark and wrinkle on her face beautiful to me.” Her eyes filled with tears. “She is last of my family. All dead now, except her and me.”

“Looks would make no difference to Nicholas. When he saved me, it was dark, and he couldn’t even see my face, but that’s not important. If Nicholas was the sort of man who could hurt an old woman, why was he unable to hurt any of those women who were attacking you in that village? He wanted to rescue you, but even though those women were hitting and scratching him, he didn’t hurt any of them, just fended them off and lifted them aside. Does that sound like a man who would hurt any old lady, let alone your great-grandmother?”

Estrellita’s eyes clouded briefly with doubt, but after a moment she shook her head and said in a flat voice, “In my dream I see it. The Old One on the ground, her breast covered in blood. And your husband, too, with blood on his hands. What else can it mean? My dreams, they do not lie.” She added in a tragic voice, “The Old One and I, we are last of our line. If she die, I am all alone in the world.”

Faith bit her lip. In the face of Estrellita’s doomed certainty, it was not possible to say that sometimes dreams were just dreams. The girl would not believe her. Besides, Faith was a believer in the power of dreams. But dreams had let her down before, whereas she would stake her very life on Nicholas’s essential goodness.

She put her arms around the girl and gave her a hug. “Estrellita, I assure you, my husband will not hurt your great-grandmother. He is not that sort of man.”

Estrellita shrugged fatalistically. “He will kill her; I know it.”

“No, he will not,” Faith said firmly. “I promise you.”

“We will camp the night here,” Nick announced as they reached a forest clearing in the foothills of the mountains.

Faith slumped in the saddle. It was disappointment as much as tiredness. Ever since Estrellita had joined them, they had camped out of doors. Faith was not sure whether it was because Nicholas didn’t think any inn or lodging house would accept the gypsy girl or whether he simply preferred it. The weather had been fine, and Faith had to agree she found it pleasant under the stars. It was amazing how one’s body adapted to sleeping on the ground. It felt like no hardship at all, these days.

But she was worried his decision to camp was caused by a desire to keep her at a distance. When they camped, she and Nicholas did not have marital congress.

Nicholas reached up to help her out of the saddle. “Not too long now,” he said gruffly. “I realize this journey must seem endless.”

Endless? She wanted it to be endless. She wanted to be with him forever.

“My guess is we’ll reach Bilbao in another three days.”

“Three days!” Faith gasped. It could not be so soon. She glanced at the unyielding profile of the man beside her. She just knew he was going to make her leave once they got to Bilbao.

She had just three days in which to make him love her!

She avoided his hands and tightened the reins, causing her horse to take a few steps backward. “I don’t want to camp here,” she declared. “I’m tired, and my back is aching. I want a hot bath, and I want to sleep in a proper bed.” She avoided his eyes in case he divined her scheme.

He scowled. “I told you to expect hardships, madam.”

“You did, sir,” she retorted. “And I’ve endured them so far without a murmur. But now I want a bath and a bed.” She gave him a friendly smile. “You can stay here and camp. I still have the money you gave me in Calais. I’m sure it will be enough to pay for a bedchamber and a hot bath at the next town.” And before he could respond, she wheeled her horse around and cantered down the road.

He followed a few moments later, thundering after her, as she knew he would. She refused to slow her pace, and he was forced to canter along beside her while he shouted, “What the devil do you think you’re doing, madam?”

She called back cheerily, “Finding myself a bedchamber and bath, sir. Didn’t you hear me?” It was a shame her horse was tired. She would have loved to have raced him, but even at a canter, the poor horse wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace for long.

“You married a soldier, madam, and as my wife—”

“But you’re not a soldier anymore, surely? The war is long over—isn’t it?” She gave him a challenging look. If he wanted her to treat him as a soldier, let him explain his mission in Spain and Portugal.

“I told you at the very beginning—”

“And I listened.” It felt gloriously freeing to be riding along like this in the twilight, tossing arguments back in her husband’s face. “I think I have done quite well. I have learned to fish and—” She broke off, flushing, remembering her disastrous attempt at hunting, then hurried on, “And although Stevens has done most of the cooking, I have helped.”