He removes the borrowed cloak from my shoulders, and I hiss as the cold air sets the cut stinging.
He is silent for so long I nearly squirm, except I worry the movement will bring me more discomfort. when I feel his fingers on my neck, I pull away before I can stop myself. "What are you doing?” My voice sounds unnaturally high to my ears.
“Removing the ruined bodice so I can tend your cut.”
“No, milord!” I jump up from the bed and spin around, putting my back safely out of his reach. Panic flutters in my breast. He cannot see it. He mustn’t see it.
Duval looks at me as if I am mad. "Would you rather I send for a physician?”
“No!” I say, beginning to feel trapped. I have no love for the court physicians, and they will ask questions I do not wish to answer. But I cannot bear for Duval to see my ruined back. “If you will leave me, I can tend it myself.”
He snorts in disbelief. “Is that yet another miracle of Mortain? That His acolytes are able to contort themselves enough to tend their own backs?” His voice turns gently chiding. “If you are worried about the gown, I am sure the reverend mother will understand.”
But of course, it is not the gown that worries me. The sense of panic in my chest grows until I can hardly breathe. every taunt thrown at me by the village boys, every slur cast my way, every insult echoes in my head. And those were all from villagers and peasants, people much accustomed to ugliness and deformity. Duval is of noble blood, was raised amid the beauty and finery of court. I cannot bear that I will be the ugliest thing he has ever seen. “No.” I take a step backwards, determined to stay out of his reach. “I do not need your help.”
He frowns at my unreasonableness. “If we do not tend your injury, you could well lose the use of your shoulder and arm, and how would that serve your god or your duchess?”
I hiss in frustration. Trust Duval to find the one argument that will remind me of my true purpose here. My only purpose here. My service to Mortain comes before all else. There is no place for modesty or shame. Perhaps the god is testing me even now to see if my vanity is stronger than my duty to Him. Feeling raw and exposed, I cannot help but grumble. "What would a man know of stitching anyway?”
Duval laughs outright at that, and a small hidden dimple winks briefly at the corner of his mouth. “If a man expects to survive in battle or help his fellow men-at-arms afterward, he will indeed learn to stitch, and to stitch well, if not prettily. Now quit putting this off.”
Slowly, I return to the bed, sit down, and turn my back to him. I feel hollow inside and remind myself that what Duval thinks of me or my scar is of no importance. Indeed, perhaps his disgust and revulsion will help rebuild the barrier that once stood between us. The words he spoke when we left the convent echo through me. Being sired by one of the old saints puts your lineage into a class all its own, a class as untouchable by the nobility as the nobility is by turnip farmers. He may claim such lofty ideals, but it is another thing altogether to see with one’s own eyes what marks such parentage leaves behind.
I hold myself rigid as he unlaces my bodice. It starts to fall forward and I catch it with my hands, hugging it to me like a shield.
There is a rustle of movement as he takes a dagger from his belt. The tearing sound as he cuts away my ruined chemise is loud in the quiet room, and the rush of air against my damp back makes me shiver. I clutch the front of my gown tightly and steel myself against what must surely happen next.
The silence grows impossibly long and I am painfully reminded of the hideous silence when Guillo saw my back. Of his fear and anger and revulsion. I force myself to breathe.
“Ah,” Duval says. “So this is what you didn’t want me to see. Poor Ismae.” His voice is as soft and tender as a caress. I square my shoulders and stare straight ahead. “How did you come by it?” he asks.
“’Tis where the herbwitch’s poison burned me when my mother tried to cast me from her womb.”
when he touches my shoulder again, I bite back a yelp of surprise, and my skin twitches beneath his fingers. Slowly, he traces my scar. It is exquisitely sensitive, and pleasure unfurls across my skin, so intense and unexpected that it feels as if I have been brushed by an angel’s wing.
It is all I can do to keep from leaping from the bed and bolting.
Perhaps sensing this, Duval speaks, his voice low. “There is no shame in scars, Ismae.”
I long to laugh at his gentle words, to throw them back in his face and claim I do not care what he thinks. But I do care. Far more than I have any right to, and his acceptance undermines every last defense I possess.