Black Richard's Heart (The MacCulloughs #1) - Suzan Tisdale Page 0,42
then she could see the blood on his forehead.
“Ye’re bleedin’.”
Ye’re bleedin’ was not the response Black Richard had expected. Caught completely off-guard — which was an exceedingly rare occurrence for him— he cocked his head to one side. “What did ye say?” his voice laced with incredulity.
“I said ye’re bleedin’,” Aeschene answered, her voice filled with concern. Placing her palms on either side of his face, she pulled him for a closer inspection. So close, that her nose was touching his forehead. Not since they’d kissed at the alter four days ago had they been this close; close enough that it would have taken very little effort to kiss her. Although he might have been wholly stunned with what she said and what she was doing, it did nothing to quash his desire.
“What on earth did ye do?” she asked as she touched the bump on his forehead. “I believe ’twill require a few stitches.”
Black Richard pulled away from her as if his feet had just caught on fire. “I bumped my head on a beam when I heard Lachlan yellin’ yer name,” he replied. Still dumbfounded and confused he took a step away. This made not a lick of sense to him. “How can ye tell I am bleedin’?” he asked. “Ye’re blind.”
Rolling her eyes in annoyance, she slid from the bed. It was much taller than she had anticipated, but she kept her balance. Looking at him, she said, “Nay, I be not blind. At least not in the sense ye mean.”
He gave his head a quick shake as if doing so might bring some clarity to the situation. “Ye are either blind or ye’re nae,” he said.
Cautiously, she took a step toward him. “Me world is not black,” she told him. “It is just that my eyes do nae work proper.”
Her eyes do not work proper? “What in the bloody hell does that mean?”
“It means I cannae see things as ye see them,” she said. “The world is naught but one big, blurry blob of grays and blacks.”
’Twas a revelation he hadn’t anticipated. Suddenly, it began to make sense how her eyes looked perfectly normal, save for their remarkable shade of blue. They didn’t look like the eyes of a completely blind person.
“I cannae see more than an inch away from me eyes,” she went on to explain. “I can still stitch, but I must hold the fabric up to me eyes like this.” Holding her fingers as if she had a needle in one hand and a bit of fabric in the other, she demonstrated what she meant.
“I —” he wasn’t sure where to begin. “I was told ye were blind.”
Drawing her brows inward, she said, “To a certain extent, I am. That is why I need Marisse’s help gettin’ about. Because my eyes do not work proper, I have a tendency to run into things. Or worse yet, trip over them.”
Giving his head another hard shake of disbelief, he began to pace around the room, holding the cloth to his injured forehead. not blind? At least not completely blind? “Were ye born this way?” He finally managed to think of a question that wouldn’t make him sound like a fool.
“Nay,” she replied, her mood and countenance changing. She sounded forlorn. “Until I was three and ten, I could see like a hawk. Och! I could ride like the wind, could run and fish and do everything with me brothers. I could even best them, and most of the men in our clan, at archery.” She was no longer staring at Black Richard, but at distant memories. Memories that made her smile wanly. “But then, things started to get blurry. Not too bad, ye ken, but bad enough to notice. Then about three years ago, it got to the point where I could not see anything. I was running into tables, chairs, even trees.”
He could only imagine how she must have felt when her eyesight began to fade. Were he in her shoes he didn’t know how he would have responded or behaved. His eyesight was just as important to him as his sword arm. ’Twas bad enough to be scarred and mangled. But blind? That would be something he didn’t believe he could ever fully recover from.
Aeschene turned her gaze back to him and stepped forward until they were nearly toe to toe. “May I tell ye a secret?” she whispered.
“Aye,” he said, raising a brow, his curiosity level with his astonishment.