Chapter 6: Let It Rest

Beatrix leaned on her cane in the kitchen doorway and looked at my arm.

"A seamstress's mistake," she said. "The laundress will be dismissed."

"There is no seamstress in this house who sews silver into a hem," Hamish said.

"Then someone is careless, and I'll find out who."

"You'll do nothing. Go to bed, Mother."

She did not move.

"You are carrying her through my house in her bare feet."

"Go."

She looked at me for one more long second, and then she tapped her way down the hall.

The moment she was gone the kitchen seemed to breathe again.

Linnea came in with the healer's kit and set it on the table.

"I'll sit with her," she said.

"I'll do it," Hamish said.

"You'll hold the bandage," Linnea said. "I do the salve. You'll shake it on the floor."

He opened his mouth to argue, looked at his own hands, and sat down.

She cleaned the blisters with a steady hand and wrapped my arm in gauze.

Then she touched my shoulder once, gave Hamish a look I couldn't read, and left us alone.

The kitchen was quiet.

Hamish was kneeling on the floor beside the table with the roll of gauze in his hands.

He did not look up.

"It's not tight enough," he said finally. "Let me."

"Fine."

He wound it over her work with the lightest turns.

His knuckles brushed my wrist.

Not the scars.

The soft place just above them, where my pulse beat.

My body noticed before I did.

Heat went up my arm that had nothing to do with the burn.