Free Linda Needham by The Bride Bed Page A

helping to take the guardtower.”
    “No injuries, de Monteneau?” Talia lifted her eyes to the frown she knew she’d find. “What about this boy’s wound? Ragged and dangerous and completely untended. Or don’t your young soldiers count for anything? How many others do you have lying about mortally wounded?”
    “Away with you, lad,” he barked, “to the barber.”
    Talia planted herself between them. “No, my lord. I’ll dress the wound myself. Sit.”
    She backed the startled boy to the bench, and hesat down with a plunk, watching in terror as she started rolling up his sleeve to his shoulder. She’d brought her medicines with her this morning, certain that she’d find something exactly like this.
    And just as certain that de Monteneau wouldn’t approve. “I have a company surgeon, madam.”
    “Aye, my lord, but where is he just now? Tending to your horses, I suppose?” Talia sat down beside the boy and studied the wound. Not life-threatening, at least not yet, but sore enough to make him suck air between his teeth when she dabbed gently at it with a rag dipped in a tincture of agrimony and vervain.
    “If you please, kind lady, I…I can wait for His Lordship’s surgeon.” The boy kept his eyes trained on de Monteneau and tried to stand.
    “You should have thought of that last eve, lad. Now hold still. I’ll do my best not to let it hurt.” Talia kept him in place with one hand to his shoulder and dabbed at the wound again. “Now, you’d please me a great deal if you tell me your name.”
    “Kyle, ma’am.”
    “You’re doing just fine, Kyle.”
    At last a shy smile from the boy and a sigh that seemed to melt him. “And ’tis feeling a lot better.”
    De Monteneau leaned the heel of one hand hard on the table. “Madam, I insist that you—”
    “Excuse me, my lady, but when you’re done there, could you please give look to my fingerwhen you’re finished?” It was the huge man who’d put out the fire in the stable and had promised not to harm Figgis. “Burned right through my glove. Hurts like a damned conflagration.”
    “Damnation, Simon!” De Monteneau grabbed the soldier’s hand and scowled at the angry red blister that must have broken recently. “Why didn’t you see Hartman about this?”
    “Didn’t hurt till this morning, and he’s with the horses like the lady said. I thought since she was tending to Kyle here, she wouldn’t mind tending to me.”
    “I don’t mind at all, sir.” In fact, it pleased her to no end to see de Monteneau’s will thwarted. And the boy grinning at her. Perhaps she’d even be able to resurrect the old garrison infirmary.
    “According to the lady herself, Simon, she’s got far better things to do than to play nursemaid to—”
    “Every wound on the battlefield is a danger, my lord. You know that. Is there anyone else in your company the worse for last night’s attack? I’d be happy to look at them.”
    Why the devil was it more disturbing when the man grew quiet rather than blustering?
    “Fine, then play nursemaid all you wish, madam. I’ve a castle to secure.”
    Talia resisted the utterly childish urge to stick out her tongue at de Monteneau as he walkedaway toward the dais, leaving Simon unfazed by the man’s bluster.
    “And I’d be doubly happy if you’d give a look at my squire Keenan and the knot on his head.”
    “Of course, Simon.” And so went the next hour, with Talia sorting through the reports trickling in from her household staff and tending to a never-ending parade of de Monteneau’s ever-more-slightly wounded men, who afterward offered their seemingly genuine gratitude for every poultice and salve, until Quigley was at last standing in front of her, a fidgety cast to his old grey eyes. That telltale blend of fear and triumph that had allowed him to serve her and her father so faithfully and well.
    He waited till the last patient was gone from her makeshift infirmary, then whispered softly, “Three barrels of lamp