Nightingale by Susan May Warren

Author:Susan May Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781609360252
Publisher: Guideposts

CHAPTER 11

They’d strapped him to the bed.

Peter wasn’t going to escape. Oh, how Esther wanted to scream that—the man could barely move. A sling strapped his right arm to his body—his shoulder had been dislocated, the three ribs beneath it fractured. And a truth embedded deep inside her told her that something about the report from the guards—and the other prisoners—didn’t sit quite right. Peter, escape?

And, even as the accusation gnawed at her, she’d told herself it had nothing to do with her. He wouldn’t escape for her, would he?

She ignored the sweet, forbidden swirl of emotions churned by that thought.

Still, as Esther buckled on the leather straps, securing Peter’s left wrist to the bed—per Dr. O’Grady’s terse orders when he’d shown up for his shift—the truth chewed at her insides, brittle and sharp.

Peter was a prisoner. Of war. The enemy.

However, watching him sleep the last two nights, his dark blond hair soft and catching the barest hint of dawn as it fell over the bandage around his head, his face stripped of expression, his bare chest rising and falling under the bandages around his torso—no, he didn’t bear any resemblance to an enemy.

In fact, she had this insane, terrible urge to curl up beside him.

Not that anyone would know. Dr. O’Grady sequestered him in a private room, although the guards had talked him out of demanding an armed man at the door. After all, they only had a flimsy snow fence penning in the remaining able-bodied 136 prisoners down at the marsh. And with Peter strapped to the bed, he wasn’t going anywhere.

Even if he had —supposedly— tried to escape.

She glanced at the clock as she sat up in the chair, rubbing her hands down her arms, humming softly. Three-fifty-five. Five more stolen moments—then she’d return to her desk, do another walk through the wards, then sit by Linus’s bed until he awoke.

She hoped Linus wouldn’t have another nightmare. She’d begun to fear his sleep. And in the daytime, well, the demons that ran through his mind in the dark roamed his face in the haunted wells under his eyes. He sometimes—too often—stared at her without seeing her. And not once had he asked for Sadie.

Not that she’d bring Sadie in to him. After all, it was a hospital, and she was too young to visit the infirm. Still, the lack of Sadie in Linus’s thoughts nagged at Esther.

If he wanted Esther, surely that meant he wanted his daughter too?

Peter stirred, a groan, then a breath that drew deep, caught. A wince crossed his face.

“Shh… Don’t move. Go back to sleep.” She said it so softly, he couldn’t possibly have heard it, yet his eyes opened.

She stilled, struck with the urge to run. Instead she allowed herself a smile, one that she didn’t have to fabricate.

He blinked at her, as if shifting her image from his dreams to reality. Then he, too, smiled. And something about it heated her clear through. Oh, he had devastation in his smile. And his voice, low and caressing her bones.

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