“Colonel, catch her!” The sharp, urgent command came from Gabriel, standing behind him.
Tamsyn swayed, her knees buckling. Just in time Julian moved, catching the slight figure as she crumpled to the deck. “What the hell…?” He stared down at her, unconscious in his arms, then looked incredulously at Gabriel. “She must have fallen on a splinter, but it doesn't look bad.”
“It's the blood,” Gabriel said matter-of-factly. “Always sends her off like that.”
“But she's already covered in blood,” Julian said in disbelief.
“Aye, but it's not hers,” Gabriel explained. “The bairn can't abide being cut. As a baby she'd scream the house down for a pinprick… anything more than that, she'd be beside herself. The baron tried everything to get her out of it, but he gave up in the end.”
“Dear God,” Julian muttered. Of all the absurdities.
She rode like a cossack, fought like a mountain lion, didn't flinch from discomfort and deprivation, but she fainted dead away at a pinprick. He thought of Cornichet's knife and wondered in amazement what it must have cost her to face up to the mere prospect without breaking.
“We'd best get this splinter out quickly,” he said.
“It's going to bleed a lot more then than it is now.”
“I'll get Josefa.”
Julian carried Tamsyn into the day cabin, and her eyelids fluttered open as he laid her down on one of the cushioned lockers.
“What happened? Oh, God, my leg. It's got that thing in it!” Her voice rose on a frantic note.
“We're going to take it out,” he said calmly. “It's just a splinter. You must have fallen on it when you tripped.”
“But it's sticking out of me! All my blood's coming out!”
“Tamsyn, don't be absurd!” It was so ridiculous he wanted to laugh, but her distress was acute and definitely not feigned. He pulled his dirk from his belt and cut the leather of her britches away from the wound. “Now, don't look,” he instructed when she wailed in horror at the sight of the splinter and the blood that was now flowing strongly.
“I hear you need my services.” The surgeon sounded amazingly cheerful as he came into the cabin, still in his bloodstained apron, accompanied by Josefa and Gabriel. “Oh, my, that's a big one,” he said with the same cheeriness. “Soon have it out.”
“No!” Tamsyn screeched. “I'll do it.” She struggled to sit up, reaching for her thigh.
“No, you won't! Now, stop being so silly!” Julian sat down behind her, lifting her head onto his lap, holding her shoulders steadily. “Keep still. It'll be over in a minute. “
Josefa bustled over, taking her nurseling's hands, chafing them, crooning softly to her, as the surgeon deftly pulled the splinter clear. Blood spurted; Tamsyn groaned and fainted again.
“Good God, what's going on?” Captain Lattimer entered his cabin to find it filled with people not generally welcomed into his private quarters.
“We're having a little trouble,” Julian said, a chuckle in his voice. He shook his head in renewed disbelief, maintaining his hold on Tamsyn's shoulders. “This absurd girl is behaving like a milk-and-water miss because she has a splinter in her leg.”
“Good God!” Hugo said again. “After what she was doing during the battle! According to Lieutenant Godfrey nothing slowed her down.”
“There's none so strange as folks,” Samuel declared in his Yorkshire burr, bringing a bowl of hot water to the surgeon. “I'll fetch ye a roll of bandage.”
Tamsyn came round again as the surgeon was washing the wound. She gazed up into Julian's face. “Has it stopped?”
Her face was deathly pale, her expression as fearful and vulnerable as a terrified child's. All the resilience, the dominance of her personality, had vanished as she looked to him for reassurance and comfort with a trustfulness that he couldn't possibly have destroyed.
He smiled and brushed her hair away from her forehead as he'd wanted to do earlier. “It's almost stopped. The surgeon's going to bind it up, and you'll be as good as new in a day or two.”
“It wasn't too deep, Miss Tamsyn,” the surgeon said, shaking a dusting of basilicon powder over the wound. “There should be no danger of infection.” He wound gauze and bandages around her thigh, and the patient lay very still, her color returning slowly. “It'll probably ache, though. Would you like some laudanum?”
“I don't mind it hurting,” Tamsyn said. “I just don't like it bleeding.”
“Well, it'll stop soon enough.” The surgeon dusted off his hands and stood up. “I recommend you don't do too much running around for a day or two, though. Let it heal up first.”
“I am sorry,” Tamsyn said in a small voice. “Did I behave very badly?” She asked the question of Julian, her embarrassment and anxiety clear in her eyes.
If he'd wanted revenge, now was the perfect opportunity. But he 'couldn't take it. She was trusting him to help her with the same simplicity with which she offered him her body, invited him to join in her love games.
“'Unexpectedly,' is the word I would have chosen.”
He hitched her up until she was sitting on his lap, leaning against his chest. “But we're all entitled to our foibles.”
“I feel very peculiar,” Tamsyn declared, settling naturally against him. “All weak and shaky.”
“You could do with a bath, like as not,” Samuel suggested. “And some 'ot milk and rum.”
“See to the hot water, then, Samuel,” Hugo said.
“Set it up in here, there's more room. And take what you need from my supplies. We'll leave the lass and her woman to themselves.” Having nobly relinquished his sanctum, he turned to go back to work, and it was only when he reached the quarterdeck that he realized that while everyone else had followed him, the colonel had remained behind.
He raised an eyebrow, regarding the closed door to his cabin, where a marine sentry had taken up his customary post now that the ship's routine was in a fair way to being restored. Interesting, he thought, but for some reason not surprising. He turned to his second lieutenant, who'd taken over from Will Connaught, now commanding the prize crew on the Delphine.
“We'll splice the mainbrace, Mr. Denny. The crew have earned it.”
A ragged cheer went up when the order was given, and Hugo nodded to himself, well satisfied. At the moment he had a happy ship.
In the day cabin Tamsyn remained in Julian's comforting embrace, while Samuel heated up rainwater from a scuttlebutt on deck and filled a hip bath. The baron used to hold her in much the same way on similar occasions, and it felt both natural and reassuring. She was still embarrassed by what she knew must have been a ridiculous display, although she couldn't remember much of what she'd said-only the horrible panic that overwhelmed her at the thought of her flesh tearing.
She knew it was irrational, but she could no more control it than she could part the waters of the Atlantic.
Josefa bustled around the cabin, ordering Samuel about in voluble Spanish, commands that he basically ignored, going about his business in his own way.
Once he'd left them, Julian heard himself instructing the Spanish woman, “Bring a nightgown and robe, Josefa, and then you may leave us.” He hadn't intended to say anything of the sort. He'd intended to deposit his burden on the cushions and leave her in the competent hands of her nurse. Nevertheless, that was what he said.
Josefa looked as if she didn't care for this instruction, but the colonel's air of authority was intimidating, and her nurseling offered no objection. In fact, Tamsyn's eyes were closed, and it looked as if she was dozing.
“Ay de mi,” Josefa muttered in customary fashion, and hurried next door to fetch the required items, placing them carefully over a chair. Then she stood irresolute for a minute before hurrying out with an expressive shrug.