Jessie's War (Civil War Steam) (26 page)

He sat down heavily on the
cushioned bench and pointed to the bag she held in her hand. “Bandages and
thread are in there.” His words slurred together, ending so faintly she almost
didn’t hear them over the sound of the train chugging to life.

“Great. Sit.”

She fished around in the bag,
and pulled out some bandages, some fine silk thread, and an antiseptic. She
found an opium dart and a bottle of chloroform, and pulled that out, too.
Pouring the antiseptic onto a bandage, she wiped her hands with it, ignoring
the sting.

Luke took off his shirt, and
she saw the extent of his wound for the first time.

A long, still bleeding gash
extended from underneath his arm almost to the center of his chest, where the
knife had glinted off him as he had twisted away. His shirt was crimson, and
blood had darkened his trousers. His forearms bore deep cuts she hadn’t noticed
before.

She’d have to patch those up,
too, yet she didn’t have a single new scratch.

Luke.

He’d lost a lot of blood, but
that was survivable. She’d patch him up and he’d be fine. Luke was tough. He’d
be fine.

She wasn’t prepared to lose
him.

He’d be fine.

She repeated those words in
her head, a silent prayer to her ancestors that would go unanswered like all
the others had. Luke would never know what witnessing his pain did to her. He’d
never know how her heart bled for him, how just the thought of his pain made
her want to cry.

She could be tough, too.

She held up the opium dart. “You
ready for this?”

Luke shook his head. “Nah.
Save that for later. It’s not that bad. I gotta stay sober,” he mumbled,
leaning back against the cushions, his head against the wall. His eyes were
closed, and his skin carried a decidedly greenish tinge.

“Stay with me,” she
whispered. As she slowly eased him down onto the bench and helped him roll to
his side, he wearily opened a single eye. She threaded the needle, and soaked
bandages in antiseptic. “You sure you don’t want anything for the pain?
Chloroform? Whiskey? You could at least have that.”

“I’m useless if I take it,”
he murmured. “I can handle this. This is nothing.”

“Bradshaw…” She’d certainly
feel better about what she was going to do if he had something in his system to
dull the pain.

“I’ve had worse. Just do it.”

So she did as he asked.

He didn’t flinch when she put
the antiseptic to his skin and wiped away the blood, though his mouth
tightened.

He was silent as she stitched
together his wound, his breathing so regular she thought he’d passed out. But
once she finished, she found tired eyes regarding her.

She touched his face with the
palm of her hand, and his skin was clammy and cold. Her heart trembled in her
chest, but she smiled at him, pretending she hadn’t noticed how cold he was, or
how glassy his eyes were. For a change, he allowed her to be gentle and didn’t
turn away. “Here, help me sit you up so I can get these bandages on.”

Luke pushed a hand underneath
him and sat up.

As Jessie wrapped the gauze
around his back, his head suddenly turned and he inhaled deeply. She lingered
longer than she needed to, and probably longer than she should have.

He reached up and wrapped her
still-loose hair around his hand, and pressed his lips against her ear. “Christ,
you smell good.”

The muscles low in her belly
clenched as she fought the urge to kiss him. He didn’t need her kisses. He needed
other things from her.

“The benefits of soap,” she
said. She tied off the gauze and studied her handiwork. “That should hold, don’t
you think?”

Luke lifted his arm to
examine the bandages. “Good enough for now.” Something shifted in his eyes.

“Sit with me?” he asked.

She nodded as she put
everything away, though she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. As she took
a seat next to him on the bench, he leaned into her. She put her arm around
him, and within seconds, he lay down, his head pillowed in her lap. He
shivered, and she pulled up his duster to cover his broad, muscular shoulders.

Poor Luke.

She thought he’d fallen
asleep when he whispered, “I’m sorry, Jess. Never shoulda let him look at you
like that.”

“We did what we had to do.”
She forced herself to smile. “It all worked out. No harm done.”

“Never shoulda asked you to
do it. What happened in that room was my fault, not yours.” He swallowed hard. “I
shoulda beaten the tar outta him for looking at you like that.” He rolled into
her and wrapped his arms around her midsection.

She stroked his back, twined
her fingers into his hair, and caressed his neck, touching him for the sake of
touching him.

Her Luke.

Oh, God.
Her
Luke.

“It’s all right. I’m all
right,” she whispered reassuringly, but tears escaped from beneath her lashes.
She didn’t bother to brush them away and let them fall.

“I know you are.” The train
chugged as it began to ascend, and Luke’s next words got lost in the noise.

Jessie gasped. “What?”

“I said… I said… thank you,”
he mumbled. He was more asleep than awake.

But those weren’t the words
she’d heard.

Just as the train began its uphill
climb, right before the engine noise had drowned out Luke’s words, she thought
he’d said, “I love you, Jess.”

I
love you, Jess.

Jessie turned the words over
in her head as she watched the dark shadows of the passing landscape through
the window, and Luke slept.

Had she heard those words, or
had she really mistaken “Thank you, Jess,” for “I love you, Jess”?

She ran her fingers through
his hair as she thought about it, listening to the rhythm of his breathing over
the chugging of the engines and the thundering of the iron rails.

She thought of everything he’d
done for her in the last few days. He had come for her and kept her safe, when
nobody else would have. He’d covered Muha’s body so she wouldn’t have to see
what they’d done to her. He’d known precisely what he needed to do to motivate
her to go on, and had risked her hatred and her anger in order to do it. And
despite the passion between them, he hadn’t taken advantage, even though she
would have let him. Wanted him to, if she was being honest with herself.

The despair in his eyes
continued to haunt her.

Not that she had much
experience, but he didn’t kiss her like she was nothing more than some
assignment. When he touched her, she felt wanted and beautiful, not like
another obligation. Maybe it was simply wishful thinking on her part, her
wanting something so badly she couldn’t recognize the manipulation for what it
was. But she’d never been that girl. She didn’t trust people, and she never
had.

Yet she’d always had a blind
spot when it came to Luke Bradshaw.

Tracing the scar in his
eyebrow, she thought about what he must have been doing these last few
years—he had so many new scars.

She wondered about the scars
she couldn’t see.

Luke moaned and rolled to his
back. His features were pinched tight, his face pale.

She put her palm against his
cheek. “Stay with me.”

“Not goin’ anywhere.”

“Good.” Jessie stroked his
damp hair back from his forehead. “We really should get you to a doctor. When
we stop in Fort Ruby, we can get off and get some help.”

His face relaxed, and he
opened a weary eye. “Nah, Jess. No time. Fort Bastion.”

She placed a hand on his
fevered forehead. “You need help I can’t give you.”

“You’re doing fine.” He
stopped for a moment. “We’ll call in Fort Bastion. I have people.”

“Are you sure?” The
exhaustion in his voice, the pallor and dampness of his skin, and the way he
shook beneath the duster despite the warmth of their small compartment made her
nervous. He wasn’t all right, and she wished he wouldn’t pretend to be. She
wished he would just admit they needed help.

He closed his eyes for a
moment. “Yeah. I’ll make arrangements in Fort Bastion.”

“We’ll get you help in Fort
Bastion, you mean,” she corrected.

Luke closed his eyes. “No, we’ll
call. I have people who can help us.”

“Bradshaw.” Jessie emphasized
his name in the hopes he would listen to her. “You need help and you need it
now. Actually, you needed it hours ago. Arranging for help won’t do you any
good unless you
get
the help you
need.”

He rolled over in her lap and
stroked her hip, and Jessie’s body went soft as tenderness rushed through her.
There was no lust in his touch—it was simple and honest and
affectionate—yet it affected her more than some of his kisses had.

That
touch left marks on her heart.

“I’ll be fine, Jess,” he
whispered. “Don’t worry about me.”

“How can I not?” She caressed
his cheek.

He gave a contented groan.

Before she thought to stop
herself, she leaned down and kissed his temple. “You’re all I’ve got, Luke.
Stay with me.”

Surprised eyes locked on
hers. “Say it again, Jess.”

She cupped his face in her
hand. “Stay with me.”

“No, the other. Say my name,
like you said it before.” He took her hand and toyed with her fingers.

The now familiar rush soared
through her, just from the feel of her hand in his, from the way he played with
her fingers as if they’d been lovers forever. In a way, they had been.

After all, Jessie couldn’t
remember a time when she hadn’t loved him.

She leaned down and kissed
him on the lips. Their eyes met. “Luke.”

His lips turned up in the
shadow of a smile, and he closed his eyes.

Her heart squeezed in on
itself—he looked content and at peace. She tried to ignore the
implications.

“You’re not falling for me,
are you, Jess?”

She ran her fingers through
his wavy, dark hair, scraping his scalp with her nails. “Of course not. You?”

“Of course not,” he echoed.
His expression held no lust or desire, no passion even. But a feeling deep and
palpable, and stronger than all the others. She was bound to him in a way she
couldn’t begin to describe, as if tied by some invisible tether, and she rubbed
her chest against the ache building there.

He blinked wearily, and the
ties were broken. “I’m so tired.”

“Then sleep.”

“I should be taking care of
you.” In his words, Jessie heard both defeat and exhaustion.

“Maybe it’s time you let
someone else take care of you.”

“Mm. Never had that.”

No, he really hadn’t. His
mother had been a drunken prostitute who basically let her son run wild. He’d
never had a father, if his mother even knew who his father was. Her parents had
cared for him, but Jessie wouldn’t say they’d taken care of him. Luke had
always been his own man, even when he was just a boy, and he came and went as
he pleased.

“So let me take care of you
for a change,” she said. “I’ll wake you when we pull into Fort Bastion.”

“I’ll just sleep for a spell,
and then I’ll be right as rain.”

Jessie could only hope he was
right.

* * * *

The hours they spent in that
compartment were some of the longest hours of her life.

Luke would wake occasionally,
and sometimes they would talk of small things, each of them avoiding the
painful topic hanging between them: that with each passing hour, he got worse.

Somewhere between Fort Ruby
and Fort Bastion, in those dark hours before dawn, Luke’s fever spiked. After
that, he slept fitfully. He was restless, mumbling things under his breath,
though he said nothing specific. Even feverish and half asleep, he revealed so
little about who he was and what he had become.

They pulled into Fort Bastion
just as the first rays of dawn were lighting the eastern mountains, faded pink
against a lavender sky, illuminating the barren, snow-covered hills. As they
chugged into the train station, Jessie woke Luke from his slumber.

He didn’t complain, though
dark circles ringed his eyes and perspiration dotted his brow. Sitting up, he
clutched his side and closed his eyes for a long time.

“I’m fine,” he said gruffly,
before she even had a chance to ask. Perhaps he’d seen the question in her
eyes, but it sounded like he was talking more to himself than to her.

Luke pulled down the bags,
stopped short, and pressed a hand to his chest. Opening one of them, he pulled
a silly, frilly bonnet from the bag and handed the thing to her.

“You expect me to wear this?”

The… thing… was a peaked,
rimmed velveteen bonnet, with navy taffeta ribbons and decorated with—of
all things—emu feathers and orange silk flowers. Yellowed lace adorned
the rim. There was nothing practical about this hat, and it was a hideous
color, somewhere between chartreuse and sun-worn olive. Jessie had no fashion
sense to speak of, but even she wouldn’t wear such a thing.