Page 138 of A Very Bellamy Christmas

It was even odds whether she—

He hissed when she touched him, the muscles in his abdomen clenching. “Good God! Your hands are like ice.”

She jerked her hands away.

“Here,” Andrew said, holding up his own hands, which were on fire. “Put them between mine and I’ll warm them. Do it,” he added when she hesitated, pleased when she complied.

He chafed her hands between his. “Are you always this cold?”

“Are you always this warm?” she countered.

“I burn hot.”

He rubbed in silence for a moment longer, until she felt, if not warm, then at least not chilled. “There,” he said, releasing her. “You may proceed.”

“You really don’t mind?”

“I adore your hands on me.”

“Even here?” She lightly grazed the largest of his scars, the place where the saber had gone all the way through him.

“Yes, even there, Stacia.”

Her hand shook slightly at his admission, but she didn’t pull away. Indeed, she became bolder, tracing the other wounds—one on his shoulder and the other close to his heart—but returning to the large, puckered strip of skin on his side.

“This must have hurt.”

“It did.” He did not tell her that he had almost died. That he had prayed for death at the time. Not because of the saber damage itself, but the putrefaction that set in afterward.

“I was very sick afterward,” he said, sensing she was waiting for more. “The care I received at the time was…less than adequate. I might have become even sicker if my cousin had not come for me.”

The conditions had been squalid, fetid, and nearly mortal. He had been in a tent with dozens of others, no beds, damned few blankets, and only one overworked nurse and doctor for all of them.

Andrew knew enough about wounds to know that he had been dying. And then Chatham had found him. His cousin rarely lost his temper, but that had been one of the few times.

Months afterward, when he had felt well enough—and grateful enough not to curse Sylvester for not allowing him to die—he’d had a ring made for his cousin, a thick Viking band that proclaimed his life now belonged to Sylvester.

Two years later, when he’d taken care of Sylvester after his cousin had been hit in the face by a piece of shrapnel that should have killed him, Sylvester had bought him an identical ring.

Sylvester had never removed his ring, not even during the years they’d been estranged.

Andrew absently rubbed his finger over the bare spot on his thumb. The indent from the ring was long gone. So was the ring, which he’d flung in Chatham’s face eleven years ago when his cousin had refused to release Mariah.

“This looks like the worst one,” she murmured, carefully caressing the wound, as if it might hurt.

“It is the worst scar, but…”

“But?” she prodded.

“I had my bell rung rather dreadfully once. I was passing too close to one of the big guns when it went off. It quite rattled my brain, and I was stone deaf for almost six weeks. I was terrified that I would never regain my hearing. That fear was worse than any saber cut.”

“But it came back?”

“For the most part,” not telling her about the headaches that had come back along with it. “But why am I talking about such a thing now?”

“Because I asked you.”

“Surely we can make better use of our—ah!” He sucked in a breath as Stacia’s palm left the scar and skimmed over one of his nipples.