Page 18

After the meal was done, Shade was busy clearing off the table, and Quint said, “I’m going to wander around the woods for a bit to make sure no one has camped nearby. I won’t be far off, if you should need me. Just yell out to me.”

Shade turned, bowls in her hands, to find him standing directly in front of her. He reached out and took her face in his hands and kissed her gently not once but twice and then his lips lingered a moment before he kissed her again.

“Your lips were made to be kissed,” he said, then went to the door, stopped, and turned. “By me.”

Shade stared at the closed door. Had he waited to kiss her with her hands full so she could not push him away? Would she have pushed him away? Didn’t she want to explore what was going on between them, the feelings she felt for him, the feelings he ignited in her? She closed her lips tight, sealing the kisses, keeping them close, then smiled without parting her lips.

Shade just satoak cakes on the table when Quint returned. “They’re hot,” she warned when he went to snatch one up. “Let me have a look at your wounds while they cool a bit.”

He obliged her, taking off his shirt.

Shade did her best to ignore his muscled chest and arms and the gentle warmth of his skin and the earthly scent of the forest upon him. She had never been attracted to the scent of a man before. Most men she treated didn’t have a pleasant scent about them, not so Quint. His scent was alluring.

She forced herself to focus on his wounds. She had removed the sphagnum from his shoulder wound not long after he returned. She had applied a salve and kept it bandaged and it was healing remarkably well. The few stitches in his arm looked almost ready to be removed.

She looked the wounds over closely.

“What do you see there?” he asked.

“Your wounds are healing remarkably well. The shoulder wound was deep, though the bone untouched thankfully. The flesh has already healed over the bone and then some. And your stitches are nearly ready to take out, the wound almost entirely healed from within. I have never seen anyone heal so fast.”

“I have healed fast since I was young, but how can you know my wounds have healed from within if they have closed up?” he asked, curious.

Shade pursed her lips and turned her head, annoyed at herself for speaking without thinking. She never spoke so openly about wounds when tending to a person for fear of revealing a skill that she had inherited from her great-grandmother. Or as her grandmother referred to it as the curse. But Quint was easy to talk with and she had grown comfortable around him, so she had responded without thinking and without caution.

“Shade,” he said when she did not answer him and took hold of her chin to turn her face toward him. “We are friends. You can trust me.”

Could she or would he think her crazy or perhaps evil?

“I thought there might be more to your healing skills than you reveal when I recalled how you immediately knew how to tend my wounds. Then I watched you run your hand over Angus’s bruised arm, and you knew instantly it wasn’t broken. Then there is the splinter you removed from your step-da’s finger, and he never flinched. What secret do you harbor, Shade?”

She had let down her guard and allowed him to see too much. Her grandmother had warned her time and again not to let anyone know of her skill, but how did she keep it from Quint now that he questioned her?

He gave her chin a gentle squeeze. “Trust me, Shade. I will never let you down or reveal anything about you. On that, you have my word.”

Shade stepped away from him, his hand falling away from her chin. “My grandmother warned me to hold my tongue and say nothing.”

“Why? Did she share this special skill with you?”

“Nay, her mum did, my great-grandmother.”

“Did she make her husband aware of it?”

Shade looked at him oddly. “She did.”

“And he made sure to keep her secret and protect her?”

She nodded again. “From what my grandmother told me, he did.”

“I will do the same. Keep your secret and protect you.”

She smiled gently. “But you are not my husband and will eventually leave m—” She caught herself and quickly said, “leave here.”

She may have caught herself fast, but he had heard in his head what she meant to say—leave me. And those words caused a painful jab to his heart.

“Your secret still would remain safe with me, and I would do what I could to see you kept safe.”

“No one knows, not even my mum,” Shade said, thinking how much she missed discussing the skill with her grandmother.