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want to do the same to me?”
    “To help you.”
    “How? How will this help me?”
    “Lye will seal the wound and allay the bleeding. But more than that, when your body does not have to fight the fever, the wound will heal faster.” Her forthright, reasoned explanation echoed quietly around the shelter, a sentence just short of death.
    The spiraling flames cast a flickering play of light across her intent face. While he enjoyed the candor of observing a woman without having to check his stare, he could not settle. The memory of her body struggling under his collided with the feel of her hand clenching his shaft. He shifted uncomfortably on his seat made of rock.
    “No, I don’t believe you,” he said, honing his frustrations into a weapon. “You’re aggrieved because of your sister and because I left you by the river. Now you want revenge.”
    “I did when you left me. Had the Devil provided me a club, I would’ve beaten you and fed you to his hounds.”
    “You harbor those ill thoughts in your skull, woman?”
    She laughed like bell chimes. “You believed me a simple, infirmed girl made of sugar?”
    “Yes. And I would’ve agreed to a large and foolish wager that you’re more naïve than your boldness implies.”
    “Do you make such wagers often?”
    “No,” he said. “Gambling is a harder means of living than swordsmanship.”
    “Good. Never wager on what you know of me.”
    “As ever I ate bread, you’re a madwoman.”
    She pulled hard at an iron coil. “I’m not mad.”
    Will flinched. He could all but see anger in her sightless eyes.
    Saints be, none of it mattered. Hendon was dead, but Carlisle would take word of the successful ambush back to the sheriff. Marian was still in danger. If Meg was important enough for Finch’s men to threaten a nobleman’s family, she was still useful. Instead of offering the truth about Whitstowe’s murder, hoping to be believed, he would trade her for a pardon and a guarantee of Marian’s safety.
    A surge of pain twisted his gut. He should not have eaten the dried meat.
    “And what do you want from me in return for this—well, I hesitate to call it a kindness.”
    She tucked her bottom lip into her mouth. “Deliver me to a safe destination.”
    “Your cabin?”
    “No. My cabin is five miles distant, but Asher ha-Rophe lives only a mile north of Asfordby. He and his son will see me home.”
    “Jews?”
    “My father’s friends, yes.” Her face turned to moonstone, hard and unreadable. “After the wrong you did Ada, I’ve no wish to prolong our association.”
    He no more trusted her motives than she should trust his. But though he might be a fool to agree to her strange medicine, his wound already ached and throbbed. She might accidentally do him a sympathy if she settled on revenge and killed him.
    “Tell me more,” he said.
    “The treatment will be painful, yes, but you’ll not suffer as Hendon did.” She pulled a glass vial from her bag. “This is vinegar. When applied to the lye, the burning stops.”
    “How?”
    “I—” She hesitated, frowning. A childish splash of satisfaction washed over him when she faltered. “I know not. No one does. But lye and vinegar counter each other.”
    “And you carry them with you?”
    “I make a habit of carrying items for many possible events.” She eased the last ring of steel from his shoulder and pressed a strip of her kirtle to the bleeding flesh. “How else would I protect myself?”
    “At least that explains the smell.”
    “What smell?”
    “You, your hair and clothes. You smell of vinegar.”
    She scowled and withdrew, wrapping slender arms around her middle. “I have wolfsbane to ease the pain, but if you’d rather, I can toss it into the fire.”
    Spiteful witch.
    But resignation and a sick helplessness smoothed his internal struggle. He only wanted to succumb to the lassitude stealing beneath his skin, lulling him despite the pain.
    “I’ll see you to the Jew’s cabin,” he said,