But these thoughts were stupid. He was so tired he was going daft. After rescuing a damsel who would surely have been killed if he hadn’t, being chased and having arrows shot at him, and keeping his wits about him while saving Sophie from a pack of wolves … he’d never felt so alive.
Once Gingerbread was taken care of and set free to drink and graze on the new grass on the river bank, Gabe turned to Sophie.
“Take off that bandage and wash your arm.” He’d never get away with barking orders to his sisters that way, but he imagined Sophie understood.
“What about you?” She stepped up to him.
“Me?”
“Your face.” She reached out and ran her fingertips along the edge of his bruised cheekbone.
Her feather-light touch created a tingling sensation that spread down to his stomach. He swallowed and drew in a shallow breath. “It’s nothing.” He turned away from her to his saddlebag and found the roll of clean bandages he’d brought. He yanked out a blanket — the only blanket he’d brought with him besides the sweaty horse blanket that had been under Gingerbread’s saddle. When he turned around again, Sophie was gone.
He spread the horse blanket on the ground to dry, as far under the rock outcropping as he could get. Then he loaded his crossbow with another bolt.
Looking around, he saw Gingerbread, calmly grazing. And he barely made out the edge of the river. But he didn’t see Sophie anywhere. The only sound was his horse cropping the shoots of grass a few feet away. Where was she? God, let her be all right.
Chapter 10
Sophie bent, dipping her hand in the stream for a drink. The water was cold and tasted good.
Poor Gabe. How tired he must be after all he’d been through today. She wanted to apologize to him for what he’d suffered to save her. He had barely spoken all day, although it had been hard to talk while riding. But since the archer had shot at them and chased them into the ravine, he’d been very short with her. Perhaps he was only tired and focused on getting to safety. Or perhaps he was angry about all the trouble she’d caused him.
She hoped he didn’t resent her. Brothers didn’t mind risking their lives for their sisters, did they?
Although at times she didn’t feel very sisterly toward him. Today, he had pulled her up into the saddle and taken her away from the duchess, he had taken care of her when the archer was shooting at them, he had saved her from the wolf … He made her feel so safe, so protected, in a way she’d never felt before. And he was so handsome, the way his brown hair lay thick across his forehead. Once or twice she’d looked back at him and seen such a look of compassion in his brown eyes it had made her heart flop around like a fish on dry land.
In those moments, she did not feel what a sister would feel for a brother. But that would no doubt pass. She would simply ignore the fact that sometimes when he looked into her eyes, her breath left her and she felt a bit weak in the knees. She could never admit those feelings, and if she continued to ignore them, they would go away. She would pretend she had only sisterly thoughts about him. Just as she pretended to Duchess Ermengard that she wasn’t afraid. Just as she pretended she didn’t mind spending time in the dungeon, that she didn’t hate the duchess. Ignoring her pain had made her life bearable.
Grateful to be off the horse’s back and on firm ground, she sank her hands into the water and brought them up to scrub her face. The coolness in the air chilled her wet skin and made her shiver. She still wore her apron, and she lifted it to dry her face. Next, she obediently untied the makeshift bandage and dipped her arm into the cold water up to her elbow. The wound began to throb again, but she ignored it as she held it underwater and smoothed away the dried blood with her fingers. When she finally got it clean, she held it up to the moonlight. The arrow had sliced from her elbow to her wrist, but it didn’t look terribly deep.
She dried her arm on her apron, then dipped the bloody bandage in the cold water. As she wrung it out, a movement caught her eye. Someone was walking toward her. The figure was tall, but she could only make out the outline. She held her breath until she recognized Gabe.
“Sophie.”
She stood and moved toward him.
“I was worried when I didn’t see you.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I went to wash my arm.”
He reached for her arm. His hand warmed her cold skin as he studied the cut. “Does it hurt very much?”
“No. Not very much.”
“I’ll wrap it. Come.”
She followed him back to the rocky overhang. His crossbow, loaded and cocked, lay on the ground.
“We had better try to make it through the night without a fire,” he said as he motioned for her to sit down. Then he knelt beside her, took a roll of cloth, and wrapped the cloth tightly around her arm several times. “Our healer, Lena, says that cleaning a wound with water and then keeping it bandaged makes it less likely to turn deadly.”
“Oh. I never heard that.”