Page 62 of The Winter Husband
She couldn’t think about that. There was too much to do. She passed the night checking on Lucas and stretching a new deerskin over the window. She plugged the ragged hole in the glass with rags. As morning dawned, she changed his dressings and made him drink water when he rose into a hazy awareness. He was doing better, she told herself. His muttering was just the nightmares returning, prompted by the bloody fight. With him abed, she had to take care of more than just food, so she ventured outside to collect maple sap. Stepping across wolf prints that had imprinted circles around the bloody splotches on the snow, she brought in extra wood for the fire, made a fresh batch of sagamité, and coaxed Lucas every few hours into drinking a few sips of water.
That night, sleet pattered on the roof, lulling her into an exhausted sleep.
She woke up to Lucas in a sweaty delirium. Panic knocked at the shield of her courage. In the orphanage, fever heralded agues and plagues and the wooden-wheel creak of the tumbrels. She backed out of the bedroom, flung the front door open, and bolted toward the river to think. At the muddy bank she paced, peering up and down, praying for a canoe to appear. Fur-traders heading to the settlements to trade, Celeste and her stepson returning for a visit, that band of Abenaki Lucas had once promised would pass through. When no canoe came, she glared up beyond the treetops. But the clouds kept scudding by, offering up no wisdom for how to save the man who had taught her not all men were monsters, and love,true love, was not an impossible dream.
The birds kept twittering. The mighty river gurgled by. She watched a tree branch floated past with a sparrow perched atop it, fluffing its feathers. The wood rose and dipped on the current. A current that buoyed every spinning leaf right past her…toward the settlement of Quebec.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In his dream, Lucas woke to the sight of a nun in a white wimple.
“There you are.” The nun reared back and called over her shoulder, “Madame, come quickly. His eyes have opened.”
The nun receded in a rustle. He closed his eyes against a wave of weariness. When he opened them again, a lovelier face came into focus.
Marie.
“Lucas, Lucas.” Her kiss warmed his sore lip. “I’ve been waiting for days for you to come back to me.”
Anentaks. His arms were pinned under something, too heavy to lift, his throat as parched as old leather.
“Here.” She reached for something. “Drink.”
A cup appeared before him. In his dream, he pushed upright, collapsing when a sharp pain plunged from his neck to the middle of his back. Angelic Marie leaned over to fuss around him—her scolding words tinny in his ears. He became vaguely aware of soft pillows, stiff linens, and the crunch of a hay-filled mattress. He laid in a bed…his bed? It didn’t seem so. Not big enough. Something wasn’t…right. His head spun.
It hurt just to think.
She placed the rim of the cup against his mouth. He sipped, and cool water coated the rawness of his throat. It felt so real he sipped more eagerly, until there was no more and she took it away.
He tested his throat. “Where…are we?”
“In the Hotel-Dieu.” She refilled the cup from a pewter jug. “The nuns have been taking very good care of you.”
“A hospital?”
“Yes.”
Lucas blinked and looked beyond dream-Marie. Light flooded in through narrow windows. He saw a row of beds, wooden crosses on the walls, and sisters in gray habits bustling about.Augustinian nuns.Like the ones who ran the hospital in Quebec. The thought jolted him. Quebec was far away. The ice had barely cleared the river. The last he remembered, he’d just come home to a cabin filled with candlelight—
The cabin.
Gunfire.
Blood.
“Easy, Lucas.” Marie laid a hand on his arm. “We’re safe now.”
“You’re alive.” His palms ached to touch her, prove she was real, but his body screamed with every movement. “You’re breathing.”
She laughed as she set the cup aside. “It was you who was stabbed, my love. Not me.”
He drank in the sight of her, the shine on her hair, the freckle high on her cheekbone, the lashes clumped with tears. She radiated brightness and energy and pulsing, vibrant life. She was alive, but behind his closed eyes, he re-fought the skirmish, flinching with each blow.
“Lucas, be calm.” A furrow deepened between her brows. “You’re breathing so hard.”
He battled to clear his mind. He’d put her in danger bringing her to the cabin. He’d been a fool to hope danger might have passed. A jagged edge of guilt unfurled inside him.
She spoke in a low, easy voice. “The doctor says you’re as strong as an ox. He’d never seen a man recover so quickly from such wounds.” She sat back, fussing with the skirts of a dress he’d never seen before. What happened to the blue one? “He said it shouldn’t be more than a few days, and you’ll be up and walking. Then we can go back to our cabin.”
