Free THE IMPERIAL ENGINEER by Judith B. Glad Page A

With
one shoulder under his armpit, she guided his stumbling steps to her bedroom and let him
topple onto the bed. The sheets would wash.
    He fell on his side, and that was when she got a good look at the back of his shirt.
It was stained and bloody, and patches of the fabric were stuck to him. "Oh, my God!"
    Could she get it off of him? Not without hurting him terribly. On his shoulder
blades, the linen shirt was well and truly affixed to his skin. She got the scissors from her
mending basket and started cutting. Once she had the sleeves and front removed, she rolled
him so he lay prone, then attacked the fabric on his back, cutting carefully around the
places where it adhered. His skin was red, as if sunburned, except where the fabric was
stuck to him, and there it was blistered.
    The blisters had broken and wept and the dried fluid acted like glue. "Oh, Tony,
that must have hurt," she whispered. Now what? I've got to get that off, so I can doctor
his back.
    "Don't move," she told him. "I'll be right back."
    All she could remember about doctoring burns was that they had to be kept clean.
Her mother hadn't held with putting grease on them. She and Pappa had argued about that
more than once when Mamma burned her hand cooking. The water was hot now, so she
poured it into a basin and refilled the teakettle. Picking up all the clean towels she had, she
carried them and the basin into the bedroom.
    He lay where she'd left him. If she hadn't seen the slight rise and fall of his chest,
she would have wondered if he even lived. Black, sooty smears were streaked across her
clean sheets. I should have taken his trousers off.
    She soaked a towel in the warm water, wrung it out, and lay it across his back. He
stiffened, groaned, relaxed again. She took a good look at his trousers, perforated with
hundreds of small holes with charred edges. In one place, at the back of his right calf,
reddened skin showed through a larger hole, where the fabric had actually caught fire.
    She replaced the cooled towel with another one, noticing as she did that the scraps
of stuck-down fabric seemed looser. "You're going to hate me, but I'm taking your
trousers. I need to see if you're injured anywhere else." She took up her scissors again and
started cutting.
    His body was smooth and golden. But the gold was marred by dozens of red burns,
from fingertip-sized to the one on his calf that was larger than her palm. What a shame, like defacing a work of art.
    The big burn on his calf was blistered and weeping, too. She wet another towel and lay
it across his leg. I wish I could turn you over, but I want to take care of your back first
of all. She hadn't noticed any serious charring of his clothing on the front, and crossed
her fingers she wasn't missing something important.
    And then she saw him.
    Before he had been like any injured creature, in need of her help. An object of
concern, of pity.
    Now she saw the man. A perfect, golden body, like a marvelous sculpture. Broad
shoulders with well-defined muscles spread from the straight indentation of his spine. His
wide, deep chest tapered to a slim waist and hips, and his tight, round buttocks were
relaxed now but still firm. His thighs were as muscled as his shoulders, his calves those of
a man who knew how to walk all day long. His feet, dirty from soot and mud that had
found its way into his boots, were slim and long, the toes straight.
    She wanted to touch him. To stroke her hands from his shoulders to his buttocks,
to feel him tighten under her touch. Her hands itched to feel the flex of his thighs, to
explore the tender backs of his knees, to rub the tiredness from his calves. She wanted to
wash his feet, wanted to stroke each tendon with soapy hands, slipping her fingers between
his toes and massaging across his insteps.
    Mouth dry, she backed away from the bed before she could lay hands upon him. If
she touched him, right at this moment, she would not be able to stop.
    Snatching up the basin and the used