CHAPTER 19

It was well past midnight when we returned to camp, me riding behind Lord Greco. He positioned guards on the outside of all four sides of the tent. I glanced to my left, considering my chances at escape, but when I glanced back to the right, Lord Greco stared down at me with a look that said don’t even think about it.

Sighing, I preceded him into his tent, and with a low-toned word, he sent a servant off to fetch bandages and hot water.

He laid out a clean shirt and another pair of leggings across the bed. “Forgive me, m’lady,” he said with a small smile. “I didn’t think to pack a gown for you.”

“It will be well,” I said. I’d be swimming in his clothes, but at least they were clean.

He ducked his head and stared at me. “Are you able to manage changing? The camp physician should be here any moment…”

“Yes,” I said quickly. “I shall manage.”

He picked up the clothes and nodded to a makeshift screen across the floor, little more than a blanket hanging over a stretched rope, in the corner. “Forgive me, m’lady, but I must keep my eyes on you at all times.” He lifted a brow. “Given that you have experience in slipping through the backs of tents. You shall find reasonable modesty there.”

Glaring at him, I grabbed the shirt and leggings from his hands and turned to limp over to the screen. There, I untied his cape and set it to one side, then eased my tattered shirt from my shoulders. I looked down at my bandages, dirty, bloody, knowing that I’d done more damage to my ribs this evening. I glanced at Lord Greco over the blanket’s edge, making sure he was staying put; he stared dolefully back into my eyes, the only part of me he could see.

I quickly glanced down, untied the rope at my waist and let the ragged, filthy leggings fall. Gingerly, I turned my right leg outward, trying to see the back of my leg. Already, the bruising was stretching across the span of it and down toward my knee. Hammy. The ol’ hamstring. Yessiree, I really did it this time. But at least it’s not a slice to my gut again. Now that was bad…

“Lady Betarrini,” he said.

I peeked over the blanket, and he gestured toward a tall, spidery man beside him. “The doctor is here to see to you. If you wish for him to examine your leg, you can come out in the shirt alone. I shall turn my back.”

I hesitated, even as he turned. “I thought you had to keep your eyes on me at all times.”

“You wish for me to watch?”

“Nay!”

He smiled over his shoulder and then turned fully away again. “Even you would not be brave nor foolish enough to flee into a camp full of soldiers in naught but a shirt.”

He had me there. I sighed and then edged around the screen.

The doctor gave me a kindly, fatherly look. “Come closer to the light, m’lady, if you please. Here, to this chair.”

I limped over to him, and he studied me from head to toe, viewing me in the detached manner of a medical professional. He took my hands and turned them palm up, frowning over the deep gouges there and along my left arm. He let go of them and lifted my hair, finding the cut on my forehead, the other at the top right of my chest. “Turn, please.”

I did so and he squatted behind me, his knees cracking as he did so. I flinched when he touched my leg with cold, thin fingers.

“Forgive me, my dear. Now this might hurt a bit more. Hold onto that post, please.”

I nodded and tried not to scream as he dug his thumbs in and ran them down the length of my thigh, apparently feeling for a tear. He took hold of my ankle and slowly made me flex my knee, and I cried out. I gripped the post so hard I thought I might leave dents in the wood. Lord Greco was before me in an instant, covering my hands with his, frowning in concern. Confused by the empathy I saw on his face, I studied him, but then the doctor’s hands were examining my hurt leg again. I bit my lip as I screamed, trying to keep it to myself. And failing.

The doctor rose. “I am done,” he said to me. He looked to Lord Greco. “Injured muscle,” he said. “It shall take some time to heal, but I do not believe it is torn. We must bandage it tightly, and she must rest.”

“No dancing,” Lord Greco said to me, his furrowed brow lifting in the center.

“Oh, and there was that ball I had hoped to attend,” I returned.

Lord Greco gave me a small smile. He admired me. I felt it. It ignited a tiny hope in my heart.

“Please, m’lord, turn away again as I examine the lady’s ribs.”

Lord Greco immediately did as he was told. I studied his broad back as the doctor methodically unwound the strips from my torso, trying to ignore the humiliation of the moment. Rodolfo Greco. He and Marcello had been friends as boys. He was taller than Marcello by a couple of inches. But they had similar backs, strength through the shoulders, arms.

I covered my breasts as the last of the bandage slipped away. The doctor turned me toward the light and gently ran his cold fingers along one rib and then another, then still another. “Broken, two of them,” he muttered. “With more severely bruised.” He looked into my eyes and let Lord Greco’s shirt fall to cover my torso like a nightshirt again. “The Lord kept you from death. Had those ribs moved much more, they might have punctured a lung.”

“God be praised,” I said numbly.

“Along with his saints,” said the doctor, nodding. “I shall wash your scrapes and cuts, and bind them. Then I shall bind your ribs and thigh. Give you something for the pain”—he arched an admiring brow—“which must be considerable. That should keep you until morn.” He took me by the elbow and ushered me over to Lord Greco’s narrow bed. There he did as he had said, seeing to all my needs in a max of twenty minutes. At the end, he slipped some powder from a parchment packet and leaves from a small box into a cup of hot water. He let it steep for a minute, then strained out the leaves and handed it to me. “Drink it down. It shall help you sleep.”

I hesitated. The last time I’d taken medicine a doctor had given me, I’d very nearly lost my life.

He straightened and looked over to Lord Greco.

“Drink it,” Lord Greco said, staring at me, hard.

Reluctantly, I brought it to my lips and smelled. It didn’t have any of the cut-grass smell the poison had held. It smelled of spearmint and flowers. I sipped, rolling it over my tongue.

“It is what he says it is, m’lady,” Lord Greco said with a sigh.

“I shall return come daybreak,” said the doctor.

“’Tis but hours away,” Greco said.

The doctor nodded. “Once the battle begins, I shall not have time to see to her.”

“’Tis well. We shall be away on the morrow, en route to Firenze.” He glanced back at me, as I drained the cup, and then to the doctor. “No signs of the plague on her?”

The tall, thin man’s eyes narrowed, and then he shook his head. “Nay. You should have warned me, m’lord, that you suspected it.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” he said, ignoring the man’s complaint. They walked to the tent flap, and Lord Greco paused to speak to the knights outside.

Tomorrow. He meant to take me to the city tomorrow. My eyes drifted to the southern wall of the tent. Marcello…

Greco was before me, then. How’d he do that? He moved as swiftly and stealthily as a cat! My head felt groggy, like I’d had too much wine. The medicine…

“Lie down,” he said gently.

I frowned. Did he mean to—

“Nay, m’lady,” he said, reading the fear in my eyes. “We are both in need of rest. Trust me. Lie down. On your back.”

I hardly had a choice, with him hovering over me. I lowered myself, suspiciously staring up at him. Crazily there were three of him now. All three Lord Grecos moved to the bottom of the cot and unfolded the heavy blanket, pulling it up and over me. They really weren’t looking at me with anything more than the eyes of a friend. Maybe they’re gay…

I closed my eyes, knowing it was the drug making me think there were three when there was only one. I was so terribly tired. So terribly, horribly, mind-blowingly weary.

I peeked just in time to see him—thankfully back to one person—throw out a second blanket beside the cot, sit down on it, and then put out his hand. “Your right hand, please.”

Frowning sleepily, I reached out my hand. He took it and tied a thin rope around my wrist, tight enough that there was no way I’d get it off without a knife, and yet still with enough room to give my fingers circulation. “This way,” he said, tying the other end of the three-foot rope to his right wrist, “I shall know if you even try to roll over in your sleep.”

“Excellent. I always wanted a watchdog.”

“Every She-Wolf deserves one,” he returned evenly. He finished his task and stretched out beside me.

I thought of trying to wait him out, wait until he was snoring to work on the knots that held my wrist. But as I listened to his slow, rhythmic breathing, watched the rise and fall of his shoulder in the candlelight, I knew that this night, there was no fight left in me.