“Nae, lass. They arena fit fer yer ears.”
She smiled as she reached the shop and stepped inside with him. “My ears and your eyes, and yet you saw them. Besides,” she added while she went about the shop lighting several lanterns, “you forget I am the wife of an apothecary. You would be stunned and horrified to learn what I have heard people say.”
“I havena forgotten, lass,” he told her in voice as deep at the shadows.
She turned to him as he hung his cloak on a peg near the door. In the soft golden glow of the lantern light, he looked more like an angel than a man of war.Shehaunted him now. Brother Simon didn’t have to tell her that Elias cared for her for her to know. She wanted to tell him he haunted her as well, but she couldn’t. Her heart and her belly ached with the need. She would have to find a way to speak with Brother Simon tomorrow while they traveled.
For now though, all she could do was try to help Elias. “You saw many men die?”
“Aye,” he said, nodding, and then saying nothing more.
“And women and children?”
He nodded again and picked an empty jar up off a shelf and looked inside.
“’Tis a difficult thing to forget,” she thought out loud.
“There is no forgettin’,” he told her quietly while the wind howled outside and light around them flickered and danced with the shadows. “Ye must learn to live with it.”
“How do you do that?” she asked and went behind her table and began crushing some coriander.
“I havena figured that oot yet.” He dragged a stool to the opposite side of the table and smiled at her as he sat.
“What is the worst thing that haunts you?” she probed. He most likely never spoke of the horrors he’d seen. Mayhap he needed to. She wasn’t here to heal him. She was here to help him. “I can tell you the most horrific thing someone once told me about their foot if you prefer. You will discover that you do not always have to see a thing with your eyes to have it affect you.”
He laughed with a soft mocking tone. “I already have things I wish to forget and ye wish to burden me with more?”
“What do you want to forget most?”
His laughter subsided into a remorseful smile. “That Richard is yer husband.”
She brought the pestle down on the coriander and her finger.
“Owwww!” she squeaked and pulled her finger away to shake it. He took hold of her hand in one of his hands and covered it with the other.
“It could be broken, lass. Dinna shake it. Let me have a look.” He leaned over the table and pulled a lantern closer.
Her blood pumped loudly in her ears while she watched him examine her in the light. His much bigger hands were gentle moving her finger, testing the bone. She almost forgot the pain staring at him, breathing in the scent of him. “I dinna think ‘tis broken,” he said and his breath fell warm on her hand. “Just bruised.”
He lingered a moment longer as if he had more to say, but didn’t.
Finally, he let her go and straightened again on the stool. He closed his callused hands around the mortar and pestle and took it with him as he went.
“You do not have to—”
“I said I would help.”
“I am not usually so ungraceful,” she laughed at herself.
“My lady,” he said, slowing his work with the mortar and pestle and looking at her across the table, “every single thing aboot ye is graceful.”
She was glad he wasn’t holding her hand anymore because it was shaking. She lowered both hands under the table. She didn’t want him to see how he affected her. She was ashamed that he did.
Seeming to sense her sudden unease, he resumed pulverizing coriander, even adding more leaves to the bowl. “What is this good fer?” he asked, lightening her mood. She loved talking about her herbs.
“Fever.” Their eyes met again, knowing fever was one symptom of the pestilence. There were many others.
“And that?” He pointed the pestle to a tied bunch of stalks and leaves on the window.