“It bought you time.” He glanced up at her, then looked back down to her arm. “What if Declan and I had been a minute later? What would have happened then? Seconds count, Ness. People think they are nothing. They wile them away. But they count. They always do. Seconds can be the most important thing.”
She inhaled a deep breath, her chest lifting in front of him. “It makes me sad to think of all the seconds that have been wasted in my life. Too many to count. Too many spent accepting what was around me instead of devising a way to take them for myself, to make them my seconds to do with what I will.”
He tugged free the last of the linen strip away from her arm and set it on the bed, leaving her forearm balanced upon the broken plank of wood. He looked up at her, their eyes almost level. “That must mean you are now devising a new life for yourself?”
Her right shoulder shrugged. “Possibly.”
“Then I can only imagine it includesA System of Sheep-Grazing and Management.”
An instant smile broke her face wide and her laughter floated into the air, her head tilting back. Magic, the sound of it, the way it lit up her face and the air about her. Magic he would capture and bottle if he could.
Twinkling, her amber eyes centered on him. “I do believe I may have overlooked that option for my future. Something I will have to consider.”
The air between them hard to breathe for how light it was, his lungs were suddenly starving for air.
He rocked up from his heels and stood, going to the chest of drawers by the door. He pulled the second to top drawer open and pulled out a new splint and a fat rolled strip of white linen bandages. “Mrs. Jenkins left two other splints here in case they were needed.”
“That was forward thinking of her.”
“She’s thorough and the best bonesetter for a reason. Though the most cantankerous woman that I’ve ever known. You should have seen her scowl when she first saw you. She thought I was the cause of your injuries.”
Ness laughed. “I don’t imagine you took that well?”
“Why don’t you imagine it?”
“You are not one to let misconceptions hang out in the open without correction.”
She had that right about him. “No, I don’t suppose I am.” He paused for a moment as he shut the drawer, taking a steadying breath of air that actually reached his lungs.
He walked back to her, dropping down to his knees as he studied her arm. Still black and blue, and the skin was shriveled from being under the bandages, but her forearm looked straight, solid. There was no tinge of green to the skin and the scabs had healed over, which was promising.
“Does it hurt?”
She shook her head.
He wasn’t certain of her motion, but let it pass. Of course it would be hurting. Of course she wouldn’t admit to it. She was stubborn, just like him.
His fingertips went gently to the spot on her forearm where the break had happened. “It’s healing well. You’re lucky it was a clean break.”
“It didn’t feel like a clean break at the time.”
“Nor I imagine in the days after before it was set properly.”
A frown set onto her lips, her face darkening. “No, I don’t think anything started to heal until I arrived here.”
He instantly regretted bringing up the past. The past that was still too raw and painful for her. Better topics. He needed better topics, but his mind was blank.
Talen cleared his throat, glancing up at her, spurting out the only thing that popped into his mind before he could stop himself. “Why did you hate that boy?”
“Which boy?” Her brows lifted.
“That boy that you think I am—which I’m not. Conner, that was his name?” He lifted her wrist and slowly started to slip the new splint in between her arm and the broken board below it.
Her head tilted to the side as she looked at him oddly for a long second, but then a half smile lifted the right side of her face. “I hated him for good reason.”
“Which was?”
“He was keen on putting toads in my slippers.”