“He’s bleeding,” Will insisted. “See there?”
Linnet had noted the pale pinkish liquid seeping from the cut. She nodded, not yet ready to explain that that might simply be seawater oozing back out of the wound, tinged with blood that had bled out before. Before the man had died.
Yet it was possible he still lived. The sea had all but frozen his flesh; any bleeding would be extremely slow, even were he alive.
Continuing to trace the wound, she discovered that it curved inward, angling down and across the man’s stomach. She couldn’t see further than the side of his waist, but a gut wound… if he had one, he was almost certainly dead, whether he’d already died or not.
Lying as he was, the pressure of his body combined with the effects of the icy sea might have held the wound closed, inhibited the usual bleeding.
She glanced at Brandon’s face, then at Will, alongside her. Chester was hovering at her shoulder. “I need to check the wound across his stomach. I need you to help me ease this side of him up-enough for me to look.”
The boys eagerly reached for the man’s left shoulder, his side. Settling on her knees, Linnet placed Brandon’s hands on the man’s shoulder, positioned Will’s hands beneath the left hip, set Chester ready to help support the shoulder Brandon would lift. “All together, then.” Linnet licked her lips, said a little prayer. She was too experienced in matters of life, death, and the sea to allow herself to become invested in a stranger’s survival; she told herself it was for the boys’ sake that she hoped this stranger lived. “Now.”
The boys heaved, pushed, propped. As soon as they had the man angled up and steady, Linnet ducked down, close to the heavy body, peered beneath to trace and follow the wound-then exhaled the breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. Easing back, she nodded. “Let him down.”
“Will he be all right?” Chester asked.
She couldn’t yet promise. “The wound is less deep over his stomach-no real danger. He was lucky.” A scenario was taking shape in her mind-a picture of how the man had received such a wound. It should have been a killing, or at least incapacitating, slash. He’d escaped death by less than an inch, just before his ship had wrecked.
“But he’s still not really breathing,” Brandon said.
And she still wasn’t sure if he was alive. Linnet checked for a pulse in the man’s wrist, then in his strong throat. There was none she could detect, nor any discernible rise and fall of his chest, but all that could be due to being close to frozen. There was no help for it; shuffling nearer, with one hand she brushed back the fall of black hair hiding his face, bent close, focused-and stopped breathing.
He was startlingly, heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful. His face, all clean, angular lines and sculpted planes, embodied the very essence of masculine beauty-there was not a soft note anywhere. Combined with the muscled hardness of his body, that face promised virility, passion, and direct, unadorned, unadulterated sin.
Such a face did not belong to a man given to sweetness, but to action, command, and demand.
Chiseled lips, firm and fine, sent a seductive shiver down her spine. The line of his jaw made her fingertips throb. He had winged black brows, a wide forehead, and lashes so black and thick and long she was instantly jealous.
She’d frozen.
The boys shifted uneasily, watching, waiting for her verdict.
As usual her instincts had been right. This man was-would be-dangerous. To her peace of mind, if nothing else.
Men like this-who looked like he did, who had bodies like his-led women into sin.
And into stupidity.
Dragging in a breath, she forced her eyes to stop drinking him in, forced her mind to stop mentally swooning. She hesitated, needing to get nearer-and too rattled to lightly risk it.
Maintaining her current, already too-close distance, she held her fingers beneath his nose. And felt nothing.
Turning her hand, she held the sensitive skin on the inside of her wrist close, but could detect not the smallest waft of air.
Lips thinning, mentally muttering an imprecation against fallen angels, she leaned down, close, in-angled her cheek so that it was a whisker away from his lips…
And felt the merest brush of air, a breath, an exhalation.
She eased back, straightening on her knees, and stared at the man’s face. Then she turned to the wound in his side, checked again. And yes, that was blood, not just seepage. “He’s alive.”
Chester whooped. The other two grinned.
She didn’t. Getting back to her feet, she looked down at trouble. “We need to get him up to the house.”
“
Stepping back, she planted her hands on her hips and all but glared at him, unconscious though he was.
Muriel tucked the covers in on the bed’s other side. “Now to thaw him out. I’ll send the children up with the hot bricks.”
Linnet nodded, her gaze locked on the comatose figure in her bed. She heard Muriel go out, the door shutting behind her. Folding her arms, Linnet swapped her glare for a scowl as she battled to wrench her mind and her senses from their preoccupation with the body in her bed-with the idea of all that muscle, naked, washed, dried, and with his wound stitched, salved, and well-bound, denting her mattress.
She’d seen more naked men, of all descriptions, than she could count-inevitable given a childhood spent largely on her father’s ship. It certainly wasn’t any degree of novelty, nor attack of missish sensibility, that had left her nerves fluttering, jittery, her breathing tight and shallow, her stomach feeling peculiarly hollow. She would have said, and been certain of it, that seeing another naked male would barely register-would have no effect on her, make no real impression.
Instead… there was a naked fallen angel in her bed, and her pulse was still hammering.
Of course, after Edgar, John, and the other men had arrived on the beach and carried the stranger up to the house, to her bedroom, then heaved him onto her bed, she’d had to help Muriel tend him. Had to help her aunt peel off his clothes, uncovering all that solid, muscled flesh. Had to help bathe and dry him, then stitch and bind his wound. It was hardly surprising if she still felt hot after all that exertion.
She hoped her aunt put the uncharacteristic flush in her cheeks down to that.
Between them, she and Muriel had stitched and bandaged thoroughly. As he thawed and his blood started to flow normally, he’d bleed as usual; his immersion in icy water had been an advantage in that respect. They hadn’t been able to put a nightshirt on him; not even one of her father’s would fit, and the difficulty in manhandling the stranger’s heavy arms and body… Muriel had fetched extra blankets instead.
“Here’s the bricks.” Will pushed the door open with his shoulder and came in, bearing two flannel-wrapped bricks that had been heated on the kitchen hearth.
The others-Brandon, at thirteen nearly as tall as Will, Jennifer, twelve, Gillyflower, eight, and Chester-followed Will in, each carrying at least one brick.
Lifting the down-filled quilt, Linnet took each brick and nestled it on the sheet covering the stranger’s body, working her way around so that eventually he lay cradled in a heated horseshoe that ran from his chest down and around his very large feet. Once the last brick had been set in place, she tucked the quilt in.
Stepping back, she looked down at their patient. “That’s the best we can do. Now we wait.”
The children stayed for a little while, but when the man showed no hint of stirring, they drifted out. Linnet remained.
Restless, wary, strangely on her guard, she had no idea what it was about the man that kept her pacing the floor, her eyes, almost always, trained on his fallen angel face while inwardly, silently, she willed him to live.
Every now and then, she would pause beside the bed and lay a hand across his brow.
It remained icy cold.
Deathly cold.
Despite all they’d done, it was entirely possible he would never wake, much less recover.
