Chapter 3 #2
Adeline squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted a mother who could hug her in this moment. She wanted a friend who wasn’t a servant and could offer true comfort. She wanted a husband who wasn’t a stranger and an enemy. She wanted a kingdom that wasn’t in the midst of a war of their own making.
All foolish wishes. She was a crown princess, and a crown princess didn’t have the luxury of wants and wishes. Just the weight of duty that would only grow heavier on the morrow once she became queen.
Still shuddering, Adeline tried to pull herself together. She couldn’t fall apart like this. This night was far from over.
Straightening, she lifted her chin once again. As if understanding her wish for a moment of quiet, Jelsa silently picked all of the pearls from Adeline’s hair. Once done, she unwound the braid, taking out the pins, so that it now lay down her back.
“Do you wish me to help you into a nightgown?” Jelsa didn’t do something as obvious as glance at the door to the bedchamber, but something in her stance gave her thoughts away.
Tonight, there would be a man in Adeline’s chamber. In her bed.
True, she had every expectation that that man was in no shape for pressing any advances.
If only she could have told Thaddeus to put Lord Lorne in the connecting room to her own. But there must be no doubt that this marriage was valid, starting with sharing her room with the lord for at least these first crucial days.
“No. Help me into a day dress.” Hopefully one of those would be loose and comfortable enough for sleeping, should she find herself drifting off. “I will be called to my grandfather’s side as soon as he arrives. I’d rather remain dressed for that.”
“Yes, milady.” Jelsa disappeared deeper into the room for a moment as she searched through the dresses, finally pulling out a day dress in a soft yellow.
Perfect. It was old and at the point where she didn’t wear it often anymore. But it was exactly what she needed for tonight.
As Jelsa started helping Adeline out of her ruffled, pink evening gown, the outer door opened and shut, followed by the sound of male voices.
That was likely the physician. He wasn’t the royal physician, as that man was waiting in her grandfather’s chamber for him to arrive. Nor did she trust the royal physician enough to send for him for something clandestine.
Instead, this physician was the one who tended the guards and the servants. He was a brother to one of her personal guards, and both he and his brother were loyal enough to her for her to risk sending for him.
Once out of her evening gown, Adeline pulled the day dress over her head, tying the front laces loosely.
With that done, she took a deep breath and forced herself to walk on shaking legs to the door between her dressing room and bedchamber. Her hand trembling, she lifted the latch and tugged the door open just as a cry of pain rang out in the other room.
Her groom lay on his side on the bed, his back to where she stood. As he no longer wore a shirt, she got a good look at his broad shoulders…and the mess of red gashes and scabs that covered his back from his neck all the way to the waistline of his trousers.
The physician had pulled up a chair to the bed and was currently dabbing at Lord Lorne’s abdomen with a rag, which came away bloody. Thaddeus stood beside him, holding a candle to provide more light.
At the sound of the door, or perhaps her gasp, both the physician and Thaddeus looked up.
“Highness.” The physician bowed as much as he could while sitting down. Coming from him, it wasn’t an oversight but a practicality. “Perhaps you should wait in the sitting room. This will not be…pleasant.”
“I understand that.” Adeline forced herself to walk closer, aiming for the bed rather than the door. “But he is my husband. I need to see what my grandfather did to him.”
Lord Lorne and his men had crossed the border under a flag of truce. This never should have happened to him or the others.
Her grandfather would argue that her parents had been riding under a flag of truce when they’d been killed in an unprovoked attack when their kingdoms hadn’t even been at war yet. But returning Lalsacian war crimes with war crimes of their own was no way to fight a war.
“Then if you are going to stay, I could use another set of hands, if you are willing to lend your maid.” The physician turned his attention back to his work, pressing the rag to a wound.
Lord Lorne jolted, muffling his cry by pressing his face to the pillow.
Her stomach swooped into her toes, but she forced herself forward. “Jelsa may help if she wishes, but I would like to help as well.”
No matter how much her stomach churned, she needed to do this. This man was now her husband. Perhaps that didn’t mean much to him, but it did to her. She’d made her choice, and she desperately needed him to be her ally. And she couldn’t expect him to be that if she wasn’t that to him as well.
She carefully climbed onto the bed and crawled across the large mattress to sit next to Lord Lorne’s back, trying not to jostle the bed, and thus him, too much.
This close, she could see all too well when the physician grasped what appeared to be a stained bit of cloth stuck to gaping wounds across Lorne’s stomach and yanked.
Lord Lorne flinched and cried out again. Thaddeus leaned forward and grasped Lord Lorne’s wrist before he could shove the physician away.
“Jelsa, could you please fetch me a basin and hot water? I can begin washing his back.” Adeline somehow kept her voice somewhat steady, despite the flipping in her stomach.
Standing in the doorway of the dressing room, Jelsa bobbed a curtsy before she hurried toward the door to the sitting room. “Yes, milady.”
Lord Lorne turned his head, cracking one eye open to peer at her. “You don’t have to stay.”
“You don’t have to guard my sensibilities. I can handle this.” Adeline forced her voice to remain calm, collected.
Lord Lorne squeezed his eyes shut again as the physician swiped at the now bleeding gash. “It’s my pride I was thinking of, more than your sensibilities.”
“I think neither of us has the luxury of pride in our current situation.” Adeline wasn’t quite sure what to do with her hands until Jelsa returned with the basin and water. It seemed presumptuous to offer him comfort.
“Perhaps.” He bit off the word before curling in on himself under the physician’s administrations. “I certainly won’t have much by way of dignity left.”
Adeline wasn’t sure how to respond to the joking, lighter note in his voice. She wouldn’t have expected it, given their short acquaintance, the fact that they were enemies, and his present injured state.
She let the pause linger as the physician finished cleaning the gashes across Lord Lorne’s stomach.
“What caused those?” She gestured toward the gashes, now seeping blood.
“Sylon cat.” Lord Lorne’s voice was slightly slurred, his eyes closed once again. Some of the tension had faded from his face, his muscles more relaxed than they’d been moments ago. “They set sylon cats on us to capture us. One attacked as I was surrendering.”
“And your back?” Adeline wasn’t sure she wanted to know. And yet she would be queen within days, if not hours. She couldn’t shy away from seeing the horrors of things like this.
“Whipped.” The word was so slurred it was barely understandable. “Also beaten.”
“Is something wrong?” Adeline glanced from Lord Lorne, who seemed to be slipping away, to the physician.
“Not to worry. I gave him a tincture to help with the pain. It’s working.” The physician prodded at Lord Lorne’s ribs, which earned a low moan and a flinch, though the moan wasn’t nearly as loud as the cries from earlier.
“The stuff feels nice,” Lord Lorne murmured. “Not as nice as a fleech dragon. I can see why you’d kill for them. But they’re precious. Can’t be…be…”
He seemed to have lost his train of thought, his breathing slowing and steadying.
According to the legends she’d heard, fleech dragons had a magic that eased pain, sent a peaceful calm through a person, and perhaps even healed, if the stories coming out of Lalsacia were true.
She’d never experienced it herself, of course.
But it was one of the reasons fleech dragons were so highly prized and worth starting a war for, at least to people of her grandfather’s ilk.
There was something tragically ironic about starting a war over dragons who gave peace and healing with their magic.
“How bad off is he?” Adeline took in the gashes, the bruises, the network of torn skin across his back. Had she married a lord who was promptly going to die on her?
As long as he lived long enough for the crown to land on her head, she’d fulfill the law. She wasn’t required to remarry to remain queen, although she would eventually need an heir.
Yet that wouldn’t help her forge peace with Lalsacia. It might even hurt her chances, if the Lalsacian emissary promptly died after she married him, even if his death wasn’t her doing.
“While he isn’t in mortal danger, I am concerned.
” The physician pointed to the gashes. “These are enflamed and should have been cleaned long before now. Same for his back. Several of his ribs are broken, and I can only guess how much bruising and damage he sustained to his internal organs. He will need a great deal of rest, and we can only hope the infection hasn’t set in too deeply. ”
The door opened, and Jelsa returned with the requested hot water and basin. She balanced the items on the bed next to Adeline and handed her a rag.
Adeline dabbed at the blood on Lord Lorne’s back. After a few minutes, Jelsa nudged her aside and took over, scrubbing far harder and more thoroughly than Adeline would have.
She didn’t know how long it took to clean all the wounds and bind them with salve and bandages.
By the time the physician finished and left with Thaddeus, Adeline blearily cleaned her own hands in the fresh water Jelsa brought, dismissed her maid, and collapsed onto the other side of the bed, too tired to even care that there was a man sleeping nearby.