The Tudor Secret - C. W. Gortner [74]
I sighed. It was just a skein of riverweed or an old rope.…
That was the last thing I thought before the water closed over my head.
* * *
Rain, intermixed with what sounded like fistfuls of gravel being flung against a rooftop, was the first thing I heard, the first sound that told me I was miraculously still alive.
Cracking open a grit-sealed eye, I tried to raise my head. The pounding in my temples and a wave of nausea told me I’d best stay put.
After the spinning in my head waned, I tentatively lifted the sheet covering me. I appeared intact, though my torso was a mass of contusions. I wore a linen undergarment—not my own—and my bruised chest was bare. When I tried to move my left arm, sharp pain coursed through my bandaged shoulder. I looked up. The room was unfamiliar; sprawled in slumber across the rushes near the door was a silver dog.
“Some watchdog,” I muttered.
As I drifted back to sleep I thought the dog looked remarkably like Elizabeth’s.
* * *
When I next awoke, delicate sunlight drifted in shafts throughout the room. The dog was gone. I also found, to my relief, that I was both less stiff and less sensitive, and I could sit up, albeit with much clumsy maneuvering. Easing a pillow under my head, I reclined against the daub wall and prodded my wounded shoulder. It was tender to the touch. Oily salve seeped through the bandage. In addition to tending to my obvious bodily functions, someone had taken the time to dress and treat my injury.
Lying on the bed as afternoon faded into dusk, I glanced from the door to the half-shuttered window. I heard water dripping from gutters. The slant in the ceiling led me to deduce I was lodged in a garret. I wondered when whoever had brought me here would make his or her appearance. I could still remember plummeting through seemingly endless abyss, crashing into black water. I even had a faint recollection of trying to stay afloat, swimming for a time against a sweeping current. After that, nothing. I had no idea how I had been rescued or ended up here.
My eyelids started to droop. I blinked. I couldn’t be certain what I’d find upon awakening. Despite my efforts, I slipped off again, only to be jolted awake by the creaking of the door. I struggled upright. When I saw her walk in, bearing a tray, I stared in disbelief.
“I’m pleased to see you awake.” She pulled up a stool by the bed and set the tray beside it. She wore a russet gown laced over a chemise. Tendrils of lustrous hair curled about her face. I couldn’t believe how, given my state, my loins could react to her proximity. But they did.
She uncovered the tray, releasing the aroma of hot bread and soup.
Water flooded my mouth. “God,” I said, in a hoarse voice I didn’t recognize, “I’m starving.”
“You should be.” Kate unfolded a napkin, leaned over to tie it about my neck. “You’ve been lying here for four days. We were afraid you might never wake up.”
Four days …
I averted my eyes. I wasn’t ready to remember everything.
“And you’ve been here,” I ventured, “all this time … caring for me?”
She broke the bread in chunks over the soup, ladled a spoon, and cooled it with her breath before lifting it to my lips. “Yes, but don’t worry. You look like any other naked man.”
Was I so bruised that the birthmark on my hip had gone unnoticed? Or was she being tactful? A closer look at her didn’t reveal anything, and I was too flustered at the moment to ask.
“This soup is delicious,” I said.
“Don’t change the subject.” She narrowed her eyes. “What on earth possessed you to stay behind in that room, when you should have followed Her Grace and Barnaby? I’ll have you know, we risked our lives waiting for you at the gate. Her Grace refused to budge. She kept saying you’d arrive at any moment, that you knew the woman attending His Majesty and had tarried to question her. It was only when we heard gunshots and saw the duke’s retainers coming out from every doorway that she