Chapter Eight #3
She looked at him and added fiercely, “But the puppy was not too young to leave its mother. And the milk was poisoned. So, yes, I will run and run and run, if it will keep my son alive. What other choice do I have?”
“You can’t keep running. Count Anton must be stopped.”
She nodded. “Yes, I know I should shoot him, but I don’t think I can kill a man in cold blood. If he was attacking Nicky, I could, of course, but—”
His lips twitched. “That’s not what I meant.”
“You mean I could pay someone to kill him? I know, but that would make me just as wicked as Count Anton. And I don’t want my son to have a murderess for a mother.” She frowned and looked at him indignantly. “Besides, I don’t want to be a murderess.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” he said, amused. “And don’t look at me like that, I didn’t suggest you should murder anyone.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He gave her a long look. “I have a plan,” he began.
“And we’ve got dozens of leeches!” the crown prince of Zindaria announced from the door. “And some of them are still on me!” A wide grin split his face. Mud and water dripped from him. He was utterly filthy, and as happy as she’d seen him for…ever.
“Nicky, look at you!” Callie exclaimed. “I thought Tibby—”
Tibby stepped into the doorway. Mud and water dripped from her. She, too, was utterly filthy. “I tried to stop him falling in, I truly did. But I slipped.” She met Callie’s eye and started giggling. “I’ve never been so dirty in my life.”
Ethan stepped in. He was also covered in mud. “Me new coat, too,” he said, looking dolefully down at the mud-caked garment. “Miss Tibby fell in tryin’ to save Nicky and I fell in tryin’ to save her.”
“I didn’t fall in at all,” Jim announced proudly. “I just picked the leeches off ’em. The ones I could see, anyway. Here y’are.” He handed over a jar containing a black mess of writhing leeches. Callie felt squeamish looking at them.
“What do you mean, the ones you could see,” Tibby said suddenly. “Do you mean I could still have some of those horrid creatures on me?”
“Bound to,” Jim said cheerfully. “You did a lot of splashing around and they like that. And you wouldn’t let me look on your legs, remember?”
“She wouldn’t let me look, either,” Ethan murmured.
Tibby gave him a severe look. “I should think not.” She turned to Callie. “I must go upstairs immediately. Could you help me, please?”
Pick those dreadful, slimy things off someone? Someone on whose flesh they’d attached themselves, whose blood they were drinking? She felt her gorge rise at the thought.
But someone had to help poor Tibby. There was only herself or Mrs. Barrow. She looked at Mrs. Barrow, who was attending to Gabriel’s injuries.
She could face any amount of blood without turning a hair, but those ghastly wriggling, black, slimy things…She felt queasy just thinking about it.
She turned to Mrs. Barrow and in her most gracious, princessly manner she said, “Mrs. Barrow, would you mind assisting Miss Tibthorpe? I will attend to Mr. Renfrew’s injuries.”
“Yes, of course I will, lovi—Your Highness,” Mrs. Barrow said.
“You’ve gone quite green, haven’t you? Miss Tibby, you get along upstairs and get those wet things off you.
Take this salve.” She took the small pot from Jim and handed it to Tibby.
“Leeches hate the smell of that; one touch and they’ll drop right off you, no harm done to you or them.
I’ll see to Mr. Gabe here, then I’ll come up and check you over for any in places you can’t see. ”
She turned to the boys. “You boys go upstairs with Mr. Delaney. Change into clean clothes and ensure no leech remains on any of you.” She handed Ethan another little pot and gave them a look that had all three exiting meekly.
“If Mrs. Barrow had been a general, I would not have been at war for eight years,” Gabe said to no one in particular.
“Right, let’s see to you,” Mrs. Barrow said. She reached into the jar and fished out several leeches. They looked like dark, slimy worms.
Callie’s stomach lurched as Mrs. Barrow placed the creatures against the swollen and discolored flesh under his injured eye. The creatures instantly attached themselves to the tender flesh.
Callie shuddered and turned away. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“Not a bit. Can’t feel a thing, as a matter of fact,” he told her cheerily.
After a few minutes Mrs. Barrow said, “That’s that.
Now, Mr. Gabe, you know what to do—you can see Her Highness can’t stand the things—they take some people like that, I know.
When they’ve finished, put ’em in the jar again.
There’s a market for good leeches and young Jim could earn a few pennies for ’em.
I’ll go and see how those others are doing and then I’ll be back to do the rest.”
“I am perfectly capable of tending injuries,” said Callie feeling ashamed of her weak stomach. “Tell me what needs to be done after those creatures are finished.”
“If you really don’t mind, Your Highness.” Mrs. Barrow passed her a jar. “Rub this salve into the cuts and bruises on his back. He can do the front himself, but he can’t reach the back.”
“Of course I don’t mind. It’s my fault he was injured in the first place,” Callie said.
“Rub it in well. It’s my own special mix. It’ll help loosen up the tightness and help him to heal faster. But it has to go on after all the leeches are finished—they can’t abide the smell.” The elderly woman hurried out and they were left alone.
“I don’t mind blood, you know,” Callie said defensively, even though he hadn’t said a word and she had her back to him so she couldn’t see his face. But she was sure he must be laughing at her.
“Really?”
“I’ve tended some quite serious injuries and not turned a hair. And vomit—I have cleaned that up before. I didn’t mind.” Much.
“Dear me.”
“And pus. I’ve dealt with pus and I wasn’t the least bit sick.” Not true. She had felt quite ill when that pus had come gushing out of Papa’s swollen leg that time, but she wouldn’t have Gabriel thinking she was some sort of weakling who felt ill at the sight of a small black leech.
“Even pus, eh? Well, well, well.”
He was laughing at her, she could tell by the way his voice quivered. She turned to glare at him, but was forced to turn her back again, quickly.
The wormlike creatures fastened under his eye had thickened, like slugs, engorged with his blood. The creatures dotted his torso, clinging to every major bruise, feeding off his body.
“I don’t know why it works,” he told her, “but it does and it’s painless. And see? The salve works—one sniff and they drop off.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Silence fell.
“So,” he said after a moment or two, “while we’re sitting here waiting for these things to finish their picnic, how about you tell me how a girl born in England came to be a princess of Zindaria?”
“My father was English, but Mama was a princess. Papa was ambitious. He’d inherited a substantial fortune, but his birth was merely genteel, so he found and married a princess—”
“Just like that, eh? How did he manage it?” Gabe inquired. “I have a friend who’d like to marry an heiress.”
“Oh, Mama wasn’t an heiress, only royal. She was the youngest daughter of the house of Blenstein, hereditary rulers of the tiny and very poor Principality of Blenstein before it was absorbed by the Austrian Empire, but she was a princess, and that was all that mattered to Papa.”
“And you were born here.”
“Yes, in Kent.”
“So how did you end up married to the prince of Zindaria?” he asked, adding, “Those leeches have finished now; they drop off when they’re full. You can turn around.”
Callie turned cautiously. “Good heavens.” The swollen eye was no longer so swollen. He could see out of it almost normally and the darkening color had faded considerably. There were two small bloody marks where the leeches had been.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it,” he agreed. “All the bad blood is inside them,” he said, holding out his hand. In his palm lay two bloated black leeches, now the size of giant slugs.
“Eeyech.” Callie averted her eyes and waited until he’d dropped the leeches back into the jar.
“There really is no need for you to accompany me,” she told him. “If we leave here quickly, Count Anton will be none the wiser. Nicky and I will do very well by ourselves. I did get him across Europe without assistance, you know.”
“I know, and I’m impressed. Nevertheless I shall escort you. You can’t pretend you wouldn’t welcome an extra source of protection for your son.”
She couldn’t. She’d be happy to have some protection. She just didn’t want it to be him. He unsettled her, the way he looked at her, teased her, treated her as something fragile and precious when she knew she wasn’t at all fragile. And nobody had ever thought of her as precious.
It was very seductive to be treated like that, and she had no wish to be seduced in any sense of the word.
She’d fallen into that trap before. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
The kisses in the stable had been difficult enough to resist, but if she lived to be a hundred, she wouldn’t forget that kiss he’d given her as he went off to rescue Tibby.
Hard. Possessive. Passionate.
She didn’t want to be squashed into a carriage for hours on end with a man who thought nothing of kissing a woman he barely knew, and whose kisses made her forget all her resolutions and go weak at the knees.
Besides he was bossy. Really bossy. All her life she’d been ordered around by men, her wishes ignored, her opinions spurned. Finally she was free: as a widow she owed obedience to no man.
And no man was ever going to take that freedom from her. Not even a blue-eyed devil who kissed like a dream.
But there was her son to think of. Gabriel had offered to protect Nicky as well. She knew he’d protect her and her son or die trying. One couldn’t ask for more.
But it was a lot to ask of a man, especially when you offered him nothing in return.