Chapter 11 #2
He had wanted to watch his wife disrobe. Of course he had! He just hadn’t expected there to be an audience for it. Ever, of course, but especially not for the very first time.
The nightgown was a soft, puckered, cream affair with a twisting line of brown wooden buttons that wound around the back, starting at her hip.
She floated to the bed, perched her injured shin flat on the mattress, and set about the work of unfastening them, one by one, while Matthew just stood there staring while his organs disintegrated.
“Do you want help?” Mae offered, but Rosalind only shook her head.
“No, you did a wonderful job,” she said happily, seemingly unbothered by exposing her long, pale leg to Matthew’s view, perhaps because she’d had to do it for so many people so often in the last couple of weeks. “It is very easy to manage.”
Mae moved around him to fluff a pillow up for Rosalind to lie upon, immediately making him curse himself for not doing it first.
“If you wish to sleep on your back after the ointment without ruining your sheets,” Mae said, giving a playful little smirk, “I was thinking that perhaps a pillow just under your hips might prevent it from soaking into the linens. It might be worth a try. I was thinking about it after all that business with your brother and the tomato.”
“Oh, that is a thought,” said Rosalind, finishing the final button and climbing onto the bed.
She did not look at Matthew, her cheeks gone a little pink as she scaled this particular piece of furniture for the first time and waddled on her knees toward the pillow Mae had prepared.
“It has admittedly been a little difficult to get comfortable since I hurt myself.”
She slid onto her stomach, crossing her arms under her chin, and wiggled her hips into place, reaching back to part the unbuttoned fabric over her naked thigh.
Matthew thought he might faint.
At least until Mae rounded the bed and finished moving the fabric away and he laid eyes on the state of her injury for the first time since the day she’d sustained it.
He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting, exactly. Something smudged and purple, he supposed, and maybe still a little scraped up like it had been when he had held the ice to it.
This was not any of those things. It was not flat, to begin with.
It rose against the rest of her undamaged skin like a hill of yellow and pink flesh with a cluster of tiny, dark red stripes at the center, like strawberry seeds.
It had rings of color, gradually darker toward the center, as though it were healing in concurrent stages, like a geometry puzzle.
He must have gasped, because Rosalind turned her head to him with a little frown, cushioned and half-hidden by the pillow.
“I know,” she said. “I tried to bend over in front of a mirror to see it properly a few times, but I can’t get the best look. What I could see is just awful.”
“Rosalind, dear,” Mae said with a strained little laugh, “don’t tell men you’re bending over in front of mirrors. Come here, please, Reverend.”
He glanced at Mae, wondering at why this time, and only this time, she hadn’t called him Mr. Everly. But he went where he was bid, anyhow.
She took his hand and placed it over the bruise, and he noted immediately that when his palm touched the center of the thing, it was almost exactly the size of his grip, to the tips of his fingers.
God, but she had really landed very hard on that plinth, hadn’t she? A flash of ache tore through him, as though he felt it in his own body as he considered it.
“Do you feel how it is a bit hot to the touch?” she asked, glancing at him. “It is because blood is hot. It is the body trying to create a warm compress for her to assist in the healing. Isn’t that miraculous?”
“Is that true?” he asked, blinking at the healer. “Are you being literal?”
She nodded, giving him a little smile. “Yes. Have you ever gotten a water blister from a new shoe? That is the opposite. The body creating a cold pack. Why, it is enough to make one believe in a higher power, isn’t it?”
He released a little sound, his mind reeling at what she’d said as she pushed a little harder on top of his hand.
“That is the clot I told you about,” she said, as his palm filled with what felt like a slick, hard bubble underneath her skin.
“Do you feel the shape of it? It is a dome. That is what you are going to be massaging. You aren’t going to force it apart, just encourage blood flow to the area, and maybe give it a few little cracks so the new tissue can get into this old bit of armor and let it retire and go home from the war. ”
He nodded, blinking as he stared down at his own hand. He couldn’t quite account for how he was feeling in this moment. His hand was flat on Rosalind Murphy’s exposed, naked thigh, but his teeth were also still humming from the burst of horrified empathy he’d felt at seeing the state of her injury.
It was very confusing.
Mae retreated, turning to lean over Rosalind’s leg and pick the jar up from the other side of the bed.
“Let’s just put a very thin layer over the bruise,” she said.
“When you do this tonight, I’d like you to heat up some water in a kettle and put the jar in it for five or ten minutes before you apply it so the ointment can get warm.
It will help everything along a little more. ”
“What was the word you used before?” Rosalind asked, muffled in the pillow. “Not clot. It was something prettier.”
Mae frowned, coating her fingertips with the ointment and tilting her head to the side. “Contusion?” she guessed, sounding skeptical.
“Yes, that was it,” Rosalind said, her curls nodding against the pillowcase. “Contusion. It sounds like a dance, doesn’t it, Matthew?”
He gazed up at her, his hand dropping away as Mae came in to dab the ointment along the dome of the bruise. “It is a nicer word than clot,” he allowed, blinking.
“All right, the moment of truth,” said Mae, pulling back and rubbing the excess ointment into her hands like it was a bit of moisturizing cream. “Go on. I will watch.”
“Me?” Matthew said, and then immediately cringed in apology. “Right, obviously me. Here I go.”
Mae tittered. “Rosalind, dear, if he hurts you, just cry out or call him something awful, all right, sweeting?”
“All right,” came Rosalind’s muffled voice against the pillow, then, as Matthew’s hands cupped her thigh, a squeaking “Oh!”
He pressed his lips together and told himself to focus. He told himself to imagine Mae Casper’s wholly unerotic forearm.
And somehow he managed to do just that. He felt the contusion bob and protest under his thumbs, and the heat simmer a little at being tended to. Rosalind’s muscles tensed a few times, her hips twitching and her breath stuttering when he hit a tender area.
All in all, though it felt like a titanic task, it only lasted a couple of minutes.
“There,” said Mae with satisfaction. “Perfect. Now she can just have a little nap and you can do it all over again tonight.”
“A nap sounds nice,” Rosalind mumbled, and then turned her head toward them with a sleepy smile. “Matthew, do you want a nap?”
He looked down at her, marveling at her pillow-creased face as she caught a yawn behind her fingertips. A yawn that immediately lodged itself in his own throat, mirroring right back at her.
“I think he does,” said Mae. “Go on, get some rest. I’ll see myself out.”
He turned around to protest in the name of manners, but she was already gone. And after listening for a moment, he realized everyone else was too.
So that was how it came to pass that Matthew Everly slept with his wife for the first time: Fully clothed, in the midafternoon, with the windows open and the scent of medicine in the air.
He never even removed his cravat.