She exchanged a look with Robert. “Aye, it is.” And would no doubt require an explanation. The question was, how much should she explain?
The ride home seemed to last days rather than hours. Of necessity, they took it slow. But Beth knew every movement must cause Marcus agonizing pain.
One of Beth’s classmates in college had had to have an emergency appendectomy. And Beth recalled the woman confiding that every tiny little bump the car had hit on the ride home from the hospital had sent pain rippling through her.
Poor Marcus didn’t have the comfort of a cushy car seat in a shock-absorbing vehicle. He rode atop a constantly shifting and moving warhorse, Michael and Adam on either side of him ready to brace him should he begin to fall.
Beth chewed her lip the whole time, afraid the brave teenager would die before they could get him home. But they made it.
Once at Fosterly, she helped Robert and Michael clean and bandage Marcus’s wounds while Adam and Stephen saw the prisoners safely installed in the dungeon. Both Robert and Michael were remarkably proficient at rendering first aid, and Beth marveled at the difference being raised around a gifted healer had made in the two men—both in their actions and their attitudes. Before bandaging the wounds, Robert opted to coat them with healing herbs Alyssa had given him instead of honey or Beth’s ointments. Since he had used such in the past with success, Beth offered no objection. But she did encourage him to let her give his squire some ibuprofen for the pain.
“What about you?” she asked Robert. Hadn’t he mentioned receiving a scratch? She didn’t want some wound he deemed negligible to get infected and end up killing him.
“’Tis paltry,” he said with a shrug.
“I want to see it.”
Smiling, he looped an arm around her shoulders. “Come. You are weary. You may tend my wound upstairs.”
Weary didn’t begin to cover it. Once the adrenaline had worn off and her hands had stopped shaking, exhaustion had assailed her. Feet dragging, Beth felt as though she had spent the past twenty-four hours working road construction in Houston in triple-digit temperatures.
She leaned into Robert’s big body and let him lead her upstairs to his chamber, where a warm bath awaited them. Robert insisted she bathe without him, letting her wash away the day before he befouled the water, as he put it, with the blood of battle that coated him.
Beth wouldn’t describe the wound on his arm as paltry. She didn’t think it needed stitches, but it took several butterfly closures to seal it.
A boisterous meal followed in the great hall, one with a great deal of merrymaking as Robert’s people celebrated the long-awaited defeat of his enemy with toasts and song and dance.
Beth said little, ate less, and couldn’t even manage to muster a smile.
The battle today had driven home yet again just how foreign this time, this way of life, was to her.
And she had killed a man. Again. Had seen the blood spurt from his forehead and life leave his eyes as his knees had buckled and he had crumpled to the ground.
Robert did not comment on her silence. He seemed to understand that she sometimes grew quiet like this when she needed time to think or process events that threatened to overwhelm her.
He really did seem to know her better than anyone else in the world. Perhaps even better than Josh, who had always poked and prodded her into talking about it whenever he thought something troubled her.
Robert just held her hand, his thumb stroking her skin, his fingers giving hers an occasional squeeze to let her know he was there for her.
Damn, she loved him.
Stephen, on the other hand, pretty much made her want to smack him. He either didn’t understand or simply didn’t care that she had no desire to talk, because he would not let the subject of her weapon go, constantly peppering her with questions.
Beth sighed and looked up at Robert. “We’re going to have to tell them, aren’t we?”
“Not if you do not wish to, love,” he countered.
She found a smile. “If we don’t, Stephen will drive us mad, asking about it every five minutes.”
“Not if I knock him on his arse.”
She laughed. “I’m actually tempted not to tell him just so I can watch you do that.”
“’Twould be my pleasure,” he told her with a wink.
Stephen muttered something under his breath.
Robert laughed.
Beth shook her head. “Let’s just do this and get it over with, then.”
She, Robert, Stephen, Michael, and Adam retired to the chamber Marcus had been given for his recuperation, where Beth plunked down her backpack and told them as succinctly as possible that she had traveled back in time from the twenty-first century.
Marcus slid Robert a look.
The three knights all stared at her blankly.
Then, leaning toward Adam, Stephen muttered in a loud aside, “I was right. She is as mad as the miller’s daughter.”