Chapter 8 #3
Outlander or not, she was dressed like a lady and she was the guest of their Prime, and it showed in the way they clutched their hats as they rose to greet her.
“Please, stay seated,” she said gently, raising her hands palms down.
They seemed unsure for a moment, but she took a seat herself and they followed her example.
She didn’t think they were used to sitting at a table with a lady of station, and they seemed uncomfortable and awkward.
It was a different experience for her. Reule seemed to value every Sánge under his rule, right down to this type of farmer, making no real distinction of class when it came to personal interaction.
The reverse, it seemed, wasn’t as easy for the commoners.
“Please tell me why you have come,” she encouraged them gently.
Both males were staring at her with wide, shocked expressions.
Staring at her eyes.
“I cannot be of any assistance unless I know what’s wrong,” she prompted again, refusing to lower her gaze in any way that would allow them to think there was a good reason for them to be wary of her strange eye color.
“It be a blood fever,” the farmer said shortly. “Starving my boy from the inside out. I figured, you being an outlander physic and all, maybe you know more than what a Sánge physic knows.”
Mystique didn’t correct him about being a physic.
She supposed that was exactly what she was, considering the knowledge she had swimming in her head at the mention of a blood fever.
She didn’t think it was a big jump to assume that was what she’d been in her former life.
She turned to the young man and gave him a gentle smile, this time lowering her lashes so her eyes weren’t so intimidating.
“What’s your name?”
“Stebban, my lady,” he said with a sniff, raising a pointed chin to prove to anyone who cared that he wasn’t afraid of a woman, even if she was an outlander.
It made the woman in question grin. She took in his lank brown hair and the dullness of eyes that ought have sparkled with blue the color of the sky.
He was squeaky clean, well cared for in spite of his illness.
His skin had grown sallow under his natural russet coloring.
“My name is Mystique,” she said warmly, holding her hand out palm up. “May I see your fingernails, Stebban?”
The boy hesitated only long enough to glance at his father.
The elder man nodded grimly, as though giving him permission to take poison.
Mystique merely concentrated on the hand that, deprived of health, was almost as small as her own.
Stebban laid his palm on hers and she could feel the cold in him.
She could see the yellowish tinge to his nails indicating the duration of his illness, and the bluish hints beneath that meant something more dangerous.
She closed his hand in her warm one, making him shiver at what was no doubt a welcome warmth.
Sánge disliked the cold. She had learned that from …
She didn’t recall, so she firmly kept herself on task. “You lose your breath easily, Stebban? Do you have an appetite? When you move, is it like walking uphill even when the ground is even?”
He answered all of the questions she came up with, even though she amazed herself with her own efficiency and how naturally it all came.
She drew him closer, inch by inch, question by question, until he stood between her toes and she could reach to touch him.
She asked more questions to keep him distracted as she ran her fingers over his throat, under his arms, and down to his wrists.
She’d remained seated so she’d be less threatening.
It kept him from hesitating in any way when she asked him to shed his shirt.
She worked hard not to react when she saw the protrusions of his ribs and the hips that were barely keeping his pants on.
Every bone in his body stood out in stark relief.
“Thank you, Stebban. Please put on your shirt and go sit closer to the ovens for a little while. There’s a chair close by right over there that will be out of the way.” Once he’d gratefully gone to the warmest part of the kitchen, she turned to the father. “Your name, sir?”
“Uh, Kell, your ladyship. But I’m no sir.”
“You are to me,” she said dismissively. “Now about Stebban. How long has he been this way?”
“The apothecary said he had the fever four months past. He got sick just before planting. He was able to help us plant some, but còme harvest he could only sleep and eat. He’s a good boy and a hard worker.
Not like him to be so lack like. My wife, she be feeding him constant.
Good food too, like the physic said to. No expense too much for my son, and that’s the truth. ”
“Of course it is. What good foods did the physic recommend, sir?”
Kell twitched a smile when she called him sir again.
“You know. Thick foods, to make him fat like. Though they didn’t work at all. Meats in stew. Lard and good fats. Fresh breads. Cakes and mash. Gave us this tonic, too. Seems to make him terrible sick though when he takes it.”
He handed her the bottle with its cork stopper and she smiled through clenched teeth.
Medicines ought to be sealed tighter than that to preserve potency.
She pulled the cork and sniffed delicately.
She coughed when the unexpected odor of greenroot struck her.
Greenroot was an emetic! Of course the boy was sick when he took it!
Her gaze swung to the boy in horror as an unthinkable possibility ran through her.
Had the physic made a boy purposely ill?
The emetic would cause weight loss if taken over enough time, no matter what he was fed.
Not to mention the foods suggested were poor recommendations to start with.
What would he have done next? Withdrawn the medication and presented another, pretending to cure a boy on the brink of death?
Mystique forced herself to take a deep breath. No. The emetic and bad advice were only part of the problem. The boy was genuinely ill, even if the physic hadn’t recognized the actual problem. His cures had only made Stebban weaker more quickly and with a more dramatic effect.
“Can you help my boy, my lady?” the farmer asked, looking so terribly hopeful in spite of tired, disillusioned eyes.
“I might just at that, sir,” she said, the response so thoughtful that the farmer felt a real surge of hope this time.
She had strange eyes and peculiar hair, but he sensed the truth in her even though he couldn’t read her thoughts or emotions.
He wasn’t at all a strong ’pathic, but instinct served him well.
“Can you leave him here at the keep, Kell? Would you trust me to care for him? You can visit anytime, his mother as well. We’ll make a place for him and take good care of him.
I’ll need three or four days before I’ll know for certain what path he’s on. ”
Reule leaned back against a corridor wall as, just across from him, he watched a storeroom with three long windows and an unused larder being transformed into an infirmary.
They were summarily stripped of their contents, cleaned within an inch of needing to replace the mortar, and restocked according to the wishes of the little whirlwind of feminine energy at the center of the ruckus.
He wouldn’t care if she took over the keep in its entirety, if it would make her happy.
It’d be worth handing it over just to be able to watch her flush with color and laughter, as she was now.
The Pack, a flock of attendants, and the lower servants fell all over themselves to amuse her, responding to her every wish and basically keeping just shy of falling at her feet in devotion.
Rumors of what she’d done for Chayne had spread like springtime throughout the keep’s residents, winning their affection overnight.
On the downside, she now had four other eligible, potent males in her path at every turn.
Rye oozed his courtly charm. Darcio was constantly teasing her.
Even dark, broody Delano was making a spectacle of himself trying to see to her needs and win her smiles.
Saber was a flat-out dead man, Reule thought darkly.
The Defender had put his hands on her twice already.
Once to swing her out of the way by lifting her by her little waist, and again by catching her when she’d toppled off a ladder.
If his hand had come any closer to her bottom, Reule thought with heat, he’d have pulled back a bloody stump.
Every last member of the Pack, exempting the traveling Amando, knew he wasn’t pleased with their antics, so of course they pushed him.
They wanted to see just how far they could go before provoking him into making an ass of himself.
Something he refused to do. So Reule stood against the wall, clenched his teeth, and held his arms folded tightly against his chest. He focused on Mystique, poured all of his concentration into her, drinking in her effervescent spirit and energy.
She fascinated him as she used incredible logic and a streaming fount of knowledge to set up her infirmary.
There were cots, separated by brocaded curtains in dark colors, lined up head first around the walls nearest the windows.
Sunlight spilled on each bed, a direct contradiction to the way they’d found Chayne and to the way Reule had always known sickrooms to be.
The curtains provided privacy when heeded, but could be drawn back completely.