“Come then. I am tired and hungry. Then I will deal with you.”
She tried again to rise. Slowly, slowly, she got to her feet. Even more slowly, she turned to face him. “I can’t come, Severin. You can just leave me here. It doesn’t matter. You have Oxborough, you have Marjorie. Aye, just leave me here.”
He took a step toward her, his feet planted right in front of her. His hands were on his hips. He sounded like he was ready to do murder. “Do you wish me to strangle you righ
t here, Hastings?”
Such anger in his voice, she thought, but it didn’t really touch her. All that touched her now were sharp jabs of pain that went deeper with each moment that passed. She felt light-headed. She felt dizzier. The pain was bowing her forward, folding her in on herself.
“Aye, mayhap it would be better than this,” she said, and with a sigh, she fell to the ground at his feet.
She heard him cursing again, the ripest words woven with animal parts. Then she felt his warm breath on her face, felt his hand on her side. She made a small sound deep in her throat and was gone from him.
“Drink this. Don’t turn your head away, Hastings. Drink, you need this.”
Need what? she wondered, and opened her mouth. It was warm ale with something in it, what, she didn’t know. It tasted wonderful. Until the pain came and she choked, the ale running down her chin onto her chest. She heaved with the pain, jerking upward, then twisting onto her side, anything to avoid it. But she couldn’t. It held her close.
“Did you poison me?” she whispered. “Is that what I tasted in the wine? Poison?”
“Shut your mouth. Gwent, help me hold her down. She’ll make the bleeding start again.”
“Carlic swears the chives he found near the stream will staunch the bleeding. He said he would have bled to death once if his grandmother hadn’t ground it up and fed it to him. We’ll see. No, Hastings, try not to jerk away from me.”
His face was close to hers now. “Listen to me. Don’t drag air into your throat, it will just make the pain worse. Breathe lightly. That’s right. Focus on my face. No, don’t look away from me, Hastings.”
“The babe?”
It was at that moment that he knew he’d been a fool, knew he could have harmed her and his babe when he threw her over his saddle, when he had shoved her down the path to the beach, but he hadn’t believed her.
But he did now.
He had gotten her with child. He felt a burst of satisfaction deep within him, a feeling he had never before experienced. It was satisfaction and something else, something else that was deep and now a part of him. He shook his head, leaned close to her, and said, “The babe is fine. The knife went through the fleshy part of your side. There was a lot of bleeding but the wound didn’t go deep. I cleaned it through with hot water. Besides the chives for the bleeding, Carlic found some delphiniums. He said his grandmother gave it to him for toothache, but pain was pain.”
“Not poison.”
“No, not poison.”
She tried to nod, but the pain ground her down. “ Severin.” His name was a whisper of sound.
“Aye?”
“Have you ever beaten or strangled a woman?”
“No. In fact I only began talking about it when I married you. It seems to relieve my spleen.”
She laughed. It was too much. She gripped his hand, feeling a wave of pain brim through her body. Then, suddenly, it lessened. “The delphiniums,” she whispered, “they are good. I will speak to Carlic about this.”
“Not just yet.”
“Mayhap his grandmother still lives.”
“Mayhap. Sleep now, Hastings.”
She slipped away, but not for very long. He lifted up the bandage on her side. The wound was bleeding sluggishly. It needed to be stitched. He said to Gwent, “Take two men and go to that village we passed. I don’t want to carry her there, it’s too dangerous. Get me needles and thread, Gwent.”
The big man shuddered. “I’ll bring what else I can find as well.”
Severin covered the wound with a pad of clean gray wool. Almost clean wool. Now the second sleeve of his tunic was gone. He hunkered down beside her. When she awoke, he would have her drink more of Carlic’s potion. He looked up to see that his men had made a small fire and were roasting several rabbits. The smell made his stomach sing out. His men had buried the two outlaws. They had found nothing worth keeping on the men.