Page 37 of Malady

Iscairn falls into step on my right, effortlessly matching his long stride to my ragged limp.

My own brother put his hands on me.

Gideon.

I’ve spent years forgiving him because he is my brother, and because Beswick looks at Brother Gideon Harrow and sees a good man. Lately, I’m beginning to wonder how much of that goodness has only ever been another sermon in disguise—another way to press me into whatever shape he finds easiest to love and call the bruising salvation.

“You told me it was the winter chill,” Iscairn murmurs. “A cramp. You made no mention of a fall. It happened in a well, you said?”

“The one behind the mill. Billy and his friends caught me picking mushrooms and decided I was a witch, so they threw me down the well and left me there. My leg broke when I landed. I lay in the pitch-black for more than a week, drinking the filthy water pooling around my knees just to stay alive. By the time they found me, the bone had come straight through the flesh, and the wound was stinking of rot.”

I shoulder the shop door open and drag myself inside. The familiar scent of dried yarrow and dust washes over me as I lean against the counter, letting it take the weight off my aching limb.

Iscairn closes the door behind him. “Will you at least let me examine it?”

“There’s nothing to examine,” I say, staring at the wood. “And I do not want a physician looking at it.”

“Why not?”

I sigh. “Because Doctor Taylor spent years trying to convince me to amputate it. I refused him, and I refuse you. I won’t be much use as an apothecary if I’m hobbling around the mud with a wooden peg for a leg, will I?”

“Then let me look and give my opinion,” he says. “Not Doctor Taylor’s. My own.”

It’s cramped in here on the best of days, but as he closes the distance, it shrinks to the width of a breath. The edge of the counter digs into my lower spine, leaving me pinned between the wood at my back and his chest.

He stoops over me, his mask close enough to brush my cheek if I so much as breathe, carrying the cold scent of earth and rain. My body, apparently determined to humiliate me in every possible way today, answers the closeness with a sudden, wicked heat. Am I really this desperate? Has my proximity to the plague rotted my brain so thoroughly that I’m feverish for a man whose face I’ve never even seen?

Then his gaze drops to my muddied skirt, and his black-gloved hand moves towards the hem.

My pulse knocks wildly in my throat. I know exactly what those hands can do. If he actually touches me, all it takes is a flicker of that blue light, and I’ll be slumped unconscious while he examines whatever he pleases. Or worse, he might do whatever he did to Alice.

I shove both my hands against his chest. “No!”

He stops, fingers stilling an inch from the damp wool.

“No,” I say on a breath, wiping my palms against my apron. “I just… Doctor Iscairn, I’m not in an agreeable mood right now.” I swallow hard, willing my heart to slow down. “I apologise for shouting. But I don’t want to be touched.”

“But you let me carry you,” he points out. “You did not flinch from my hands then.”

“I was half-dead from the cold then,” I snap, clutching the edges of my apron to keep my hands from shaking. “And my leg was safely hidden beneath my skirt. There’s a stark difference, Doctor, between allowing a man to carry you home and allowing him to inspect your ruins.”

He steps back at last, leaving the scarred flesh mercifully hidden.

“I apologise,” he says, turning for the door and retrieving his satchel. “I mistook injury for invitation. You have had enough hands upon you today.”

“Are you leaving?” I ask.

He pauses, one gloved hand resting on the latch. “I am going to finish the rounds.”

“Alone?”

“Yes. And you are going to tend your leg and rest until you can stand without looking as though you are preparing to declare war upon the floorboards. Use warm cloths first, and poppy tincture if the pain keeps you from breathing properly.”

“I’m an apothecary,” I mumble. “I know how to tend my own leg.”

“I know you do. I also believe you may be angry enough to ignore it out of spite.”

I consider staying upright to prove him wrong, but my body, traitorous and unreasonable thing that it is, quickly makes that impossible. Every second I spend standing seems to make everything worse, and eventually, even my pride gives way. So, slowly, I grip the edge of the counter and lower myself onto the stool by the shelves.