Chapter 12 Friends
FRIENDS
She was bleeding. Sybil was bleeding and bruised and Apollo’s heart had turned into a wolf, howling and snarling with nowhere to run.
“I’m fine.” She laid a hand on his chest, but his wolf heart would not be still.
“You’re not. God, there’s blood all over the floor.”
She winced. “My foot hurts.” She twisted, trying to see the wound.
“A doctor. We need a doctor.” He carried her for the door.
“You’re naked!”
“Right.” He set her gently on the bed, unable to look at her foot, unable to look at her.
He’d been playing a game, not listening to his damned brain, chasing after what he wanted—her.
No matter the consequences. He dressed as quickly as he could, though his clothes strained at the seams. He likely looked indecent. Needed a waistcoat, a jacket. No time.
Sybil’s legs were drawn up and her skirts pooled around her hips on the bed as she inspected her ankle, the deep gash on her foot.
She’d removed the useless shoe, and he brushed it aside, sitting beside her.
His weight pulled her toward him, but he barely noticed the touch of her shoulder against his arm.
He was pulling off her stocking. He’d dreamt of doing this slowly, enjoying every inch of revealed skin. He didn’t enjoy a bit of this, not a single creamy inch. All he saw was the blood, stark against her skin. He wrapped the stocking around her foot, tied it tight, then lifted her in his arms.
“I might need stitches,” she said, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He nodded, his jaw too tight to speak. She was so damn pale.
Running down the stairs, he yelled for a doctor. A maid gave him directions as he stormed toward the exit, then he sped out the door. It wasn’t raining anymore, thank God.
“Slow down,” she said, her breath hot against his ear. “I’m not dying. I would probably limp along with your help. I can use you as a crutch.”
Not dignifying that with a response.
He found the doctor just where the maid had said he would, in a little cottage near the edge of town. Apollo saw him through an open window as they approached.
“Out now,” Apollo said, all but kicking down the door.
“Who are you?” the doctor demanded. He was tall and gray haired with a grizzled gray beard.
He was treating a little girl whose nose seemed to be made entirely of snot and the little girl’s mother, whose mouth was shaped by a yawn.
The front parlor had been fashioned into a surgery of some sort—a big table at the center, cabinets along one wall, various potted plants near the window, and tools hanging from the low beams that crossed the ceiling.
The doctor bristled, his hair sticking straight up.
“You cannot barge in here like—oh. She is bleeding an awful lot.” He waved mother and child out the door.
“Give Sally some tea and lots of rest, and if she’s not well in a week, come back.
Now you, sir”—he turned to Apollo and gestured to a table—“put the lady here.” Apollo set her down and began pacing the space beside her.
“Sit,” she said. “Do sit, Apollo. You’re making me nervous.”
He did not sit.
He watched the doctor take Sybil’s foot and turn it about. She hissed and bit her lip and he thrust his hand atop hers where it rested on the table.
“Here,” he said, “Squeeze it if you need to.”
She took it with a shy, grateful smile in her too-pale face. “Thank yo-OW!” She squeezed hard.
Apollo cursed.
The doctor stepped back. “Gonna need stitches.”
“I could have told you that,” Apollo snarled.
The doctor narrowed his eyes. “I’ll send you right out of here if you don’t behave, young man.
” He turned a kinder expression on Sybil.
“I’ll fix you up. Please tell your husband to sit, or lie, or shake, or whatever his particular trick is.
” He began to rummage through cabinets at the side of the room.
Sybil’s skin was cold and clammy, her grip weak.
“What did I step on?” she asked.
“The damn tankard, I think. The one I was reshaping in the fire.”
“Why wasn’t the tankard set?”
“No idea. The stuff is cheap.”
The doctor chuckled, rummaging inside a cabinet. “You staying at the Blue Anvil? The innkeeper, Grinkle, keeps the tankards unset so he can manipulate them. He expands the insides of ’em so it looks like you’re getting a full pint, but you’re only getting about half that.”
“How deceptively clever,” Sybil said.
“Usually, I’d agree with you, but perhaps we can focus, Doctor, on Sybil’s foot?”
The doctor returned, scowling, with a small wooden box and a bottle. He handed the bottle to Apollo. “Pour some on the cut then into her mouth. Got it?”
“Hold tight, Sybil.” Apollo tipped the bottle over the arch of her foot.
She mangled his hand with her grip, hissing. He took the pain, deserved it.
“Might be best if you pass out now.” He held the bottle to her lips.
“No.” She grabbed the bottle and helped herself to a very large gulp. Then another before handing it back.
Apollo drank generously, too, before asking the doctor, “Do you have anything to put her to sleep?”
“This ain’t a potion shop,” the doctor said. “But you can look through the plants.”
The plants were healthy but sparse. “No lavender or valerian.”
“All right, miss,” the doctor said, “It’s going to hurt. Bite down on this.” He handed Sybil a rolled piece of leather.
She eyed it dubiously but took it. Before she placed it between her teeth, she squeezed Apollo’s hand. “Talk to me. About anything. Just keep my mind off it. Please?”
“Of course.” Anything.
With the leather between her teeth, she must have seen the panic in his eyes. She removed it to say, “What is valerian?” Back in went the leather, and he finally had something to bite on, too.
“It’s a plant.”
“A weed.” The doctor was moving by her foot. Something small glinted in his hand.
“A plant, a good one too. Can put a fellow right to sleep if prepared correctly. With lavender preferably. If I had some”—a cutting look for the doctor—“I’d make a tea that would put you right out. Lady Guinevere surely has some drying in her still room.”
The doctor laced a needle through Sybil’s foot and her entire body clenched.
Apollo stroked her hair back. “It’ll be over soon.”
She nodded.
“Lady Guinevere?” the doctor sneered. “That woman in London? Has a gentleman like you truly been taken in by that potion nonsense?”
Sybil’s looks could kill, and Apollo was glad not to be on the receiving end of the one she slashed at the good doctor.
Needle pierced skin again and muscle spasmed.
“Shh.” He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “I know it hurts. Where was I? Ah yes. Plants I wish the good doctor had in abundance other than thyme.”
“Thyme has important properties,” the doctor grumbled, pulling the thread tight then diving back in.
“Now which gentleman’s been taken in by potion nonsense?” But Apollo didn’t speak to the doctor. He spoke entirely for Sybil, trying to eke a smile out of her. No smile. “Almost done, Doctor?”
“Almost.” He began to hum a rather chipper tune.
“After I take you back to the inn, I’ll search out a potion mistress and find something for you. Several somethings. For sleep, for pain, for healing.”
“Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,” the doctor sang. Then he stood upright and stretched his back. “There. All done. Don’t walk on it for a week. Keep it clean. Try not to let it get infected.”
Apollo crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s all you have to say?”
The doctor chuckled. “You’re welcome to take some thyme.”
Apollo scooped up Sybil, who was paler than ever, her forehead beaded with sweat, strands of golden hair curled and plastered to her temples. He took some thyme, too, with a final parting glare at the doctor, who blocked the door.
“Money.” He held out a palm.
“As you see, we left in a rush. I have none on me. We’re at the Blue Anvil Inn. You can send a bill there.”
“I will.” He stepped aside.
Apollo traveled slower than before, holding Sybil as if she were a stack of fragile plates he was destined to drop.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. Quite.” She rested her head on his shoulder.
And he wanted to rest his lips on the top of her head.
Instead, he said, “We should get drunk.”
“I agree.”
At the inn, he set her on her bed. It wasn’t hard to find a potion mistress or a few bottles of wine if one knew where to look. And he always did. For that sort of thing at least. When he returned to her, she was sitting up right with a notebook on her lap.
“What the hell are you doing?” He dropped his parcels on a table and strode to the bed to push her back down, cover her up, inspect her foot. “Your bag’s all the way across the room.”
“Don’t worry. I didn’t put the foot on the ground. I hopped. Hurt like hell, but I made it.”
“Doesn’t look like you popped any of the stitches.”
She grinned.
He opened the wine and a small potion bottle. He sniffed it. Smelled fresh. Kneeling by the bed, he said, “It might sting, but it will keep the wound clean.” He poured it right onto her foot.
She hissed and clutched the notebook to her breast. Her breathing turned ragged.
“There. Done for now. But we should put more on in the morning. At least twice a day.”
“How do you know so much about plants? Thyme and aloe and… and valerie did you call it?”
“Valerian.” He recorked the potion and brought the bottle of wine to the bed. He settled on the mattress beside her, the headboard propping them both up.
“Yes, that.”
He took a swig from the bottle and passed it to her.
“My grandmother kept a journal of all the plants in the garden, their properties, their uses. My father was going to throw it out when she died. I guess that sort of thing usually goes to daughters, but she had no daughter. Nor a granddaughter. I stole it. Still have it. The only thing I consider my own.”
“What do you mean?”
“Which part?”
She took a sip of wine and handed the bottle back to him. “About not owning anything but for the journal.”