“Call me if you need me.” That must be the people doctor. “Make an appointment with my secretary for tomorrow. Office opens at nine.” A door slammed, so the doctor must have left.
I felt awfully sleepy, and limp too, and I wanted to stay awake. I had to tell Rafe. I had to get my money from Budnell tonight. I had to get my horses away from here.
“You’re staying where you are, young lady, and that’s that!”
Then I remembered. “Dice? Did anyone see Dice?” I couldn’t get my eyes to focus.
“The doctor gave you a shot, Nialla. Don’t fight it.” A hand stroked my cheek gently, and I rubbed against it, the way Dice rubs against legs. ‘ “Where’s Dice?”
“Pete said he left before the fire, growling, prowling.” “I’ve got to find…”
As I woke up, I was almost instantly conscious of being stiff. What on earth could I have been doing? My side felt as if it were puckered from armpit to waist. My shoulders smarted in a dozen places. And when I yawned, my face hurt with stiff painful patches. I opened my eyes on a darkened room. Then my fingers touched the singed stubbly hair around my face, and I couldn’t help crying out.
“Nialla?”
“My hair, oh, dear”-and that was because I couldn’t even sit up.
Rafe was there, on the edge of an obscenely huge double bed.
“Do you really want to sit up? Dice came back in the night. Mac phoned to say he was curled up on Orfeo’s rump. The gelding’s groggy with shock, but the vet looked in again this morning and said he’s doing fine. Fair steward says you’re not to think of moving him.”
“Is it night?” I kept my hands around my hair, somehow not wanting him to see me in such a state. “God, no. It’s nearly ten.”
“Ohhhh.” The tears sprang to my eyes, and I turned my head away.
“Has the salve worn off? I’ve got more to put on. Where does it hurt worst?”
I batted at his hands in a feeble, half-witted fashion, the tears spilling down my cheeks, the salt stinging in the burns.
“Nialla! Dear heart, don’t cry,” said Rafe in such an inexpressibly moving, deep voice that I cried all the harder.
Very gentle hands lifted me, limp and useless as I was. Then my face was pressed against a soft silk shirt. With exceeding care an arm encircled my shoulders, missing the sores. My singed hair was smoothed back, and I tried to shake his hand off, but I could only cry helplessly.
“That’s good, just cry, honey. It’s reaction. You need to get it out of your system. And stop worrying about your goddamn hair. It can get trimmed in one of those feathery cuts as soon as you can sit up… hey! Why, Nialla Dunn, you lousy fink. You are a redhead!”
That made me weep harder and struggle to get free. His other arm wrapped over my thighs, securing me to his lap as if I were a child. So I cried myself out. He gave me tissues to blot my eyes and blow my nose, until I finally just lay against his chest, mildly fascinated by the slubs of the silk shirt, the comforting bulge of the biceps in his left arm, the low table with the ghastly china bird-bath monstrosity the motel thought a bedside lamp, the brilliant blue rug that went up to the floor-to-ceiling thermo-pane window, curtained in a rather attractive splashy floral. Moving my head slightly, I could see the opposite wall and the partially open closet where his clothes hung neatly on hangers. I counted five pairs of boots, heels out. A jacket had been dropped on the green velvet boudoir chair, the sleeve dangling to the rug. “This is your room.”
“I slept in the adjoining one,” he said. Then added in a meek voice, “I told them we’d just got engaged.”
I pushed myself away from him as if he’d been on fire, lost my balance, and slid off his knees to the bed, stinging all over as my exertion opened barely scabbed burns.
His hand connected with my bare buttock, one of the few portions of me unscathed. It was a disciplinary slap, and stung, as he meant it to, for he grabbed me around the waist and shook me. Then, not releasing me, he bent, his face right above mine, stern and angry.
“Behave yourself, Nialla. You’re hurt, you’re vulnerable. I want to be able to protect you.”
Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.
“What’s impossible, dear heart?” His voice was kind, but his face was so very stern. “Saving that black behemoth of yours? God, I was so proud of you, you goddamn fool. You scared me shitless. I thought we’d never be able to hold him. Do you realize I was riding his head?” He chuckled, awed.
Two-legged ride? Two-legged ride? Oh, God, I didn’t say that out loud, too, did I?
“You did tell me Orfeo would be all right?” And I mustn’t have babbled the other, because now I could hear my voice asking about Orfeo.
“Yes, and I told the truth. I wouldn’t lie about your horses.”
He had straightened, and looked awfully tall from where I lay in the bed. When he leaned down and twitched the sheet over me, I realized that I had been lying there half-naked; the nightgown (sizes too large anyhow) was wrapped around my waist.
As if there were absolutely nothing wrong or awkward, Rafe Clery sat down on the bed, a tube in his hand, and began to spread salve over the pinpoint burns on my arms and shoulder. He might have been back in the stall tending Orfeo, he was so impersonal. He worked in silence for a few moments, his face blank. Then he let out a long sigh and looked me in the eyes. He was about to say something, something very important, from his expression, when the phone rang.
He swore under his breath as he reached for it. He went very taut as he listened, his eyes still. I could hear the mumble of a man’s voice on the other end, but not what was said.
“Orfeo?” I asked, grabbing Rafe’s arm.
He gave a curt shake of his head and then covered the receiver.
“The police are here, and Haworth of the State Fire Insurance Company. They handle the fair indemnity.” He just kept looking at me, waiting with a sort of odd patience for my answer. I knew I’d have to talk about the accident sooner or later. Sooner suited me, because he was here. And this motel room was costing money, money I didn’t have to spare. I nodded.
Rafe gave them my consent, hung up, and strode to the bureau at the far end of the large room. There was evidently a kitchen and dinette behind the lowered paneling. The door to the adjoining room, his, was in the wall against which the bed stood.
He came back, unbuttoning a clean white shirt, which he then put around my shoulders, helping me get my arms through.
“Don’t struggle. That nightgown is not only up to your waist, it’s down to it.”
A startled glance at myself confirmed this, and I buttoned the shirt right up to my throat. It was soft against the burns and exuded that comforting clean, ironed laundry smell.
“Oh, my hair. My face.”
“Vanity, vanity.” He extracted a comb from a hip pocket and ran it carefully through my tangled hair, gentle with the snags. Distressingly huge clumps came free. He studied the result of his handiwork with a smile that unnerved me more than he knew.
“Dear heart, your face could be covered with mud, and you’d still be worth a second glance.” There was a knock on the door.
The policeman was identifiable because he wasn’t carrying an attachй case. He was a rough-hewn type in his mid-thirties, and he looked tired. His suit looked tired, and he walked with that beyond-tired, odd, broken-kneed gait that infantrymen develop. Korea? The insurance man, Haworth, looked more the picture of the hayseed county cop, except that policemen rarely look so worried. Stern, disgusted, annoyed, impervious, tired, but not anxious-worried.
“Jim Michaels, County, Fourth District. Sorry to trouble you, Miss Dunn.” He flipped open an identity wallet and let Rafe get a long look.
“Nigel Haworth, representative of State Fire Insurance Company, Miss Dunn. We handle the fair.” Haworth had a habit of hesitating between phrases, until you could almost hear the silent “ah” between them.