Johanna was gone to town. On business, she said. Something about meeting another doctor. Quentin felt her absence like a physical ache.
His entire body ached with wanting her.
A chunk of wood the size of a man’s thigh flew a good several yards and landed with a thud. Quentin let the axe slide from his grip and wiped his hands on his trousers.
Careful. He might find chopping up a tree satisfying given the scarcity of more pleasurable exercise, but not at the risk of doing real damage to the landscape or its denizens. He retrieved the axe, clamped his teeth together, and lifted it for another attack. He drove the head so deep in the wood that it stuck. He snorted in disgust.
“The tree’s already dead, friend.”
Quentin left the axe where it was and turned on his heel. Either Harper had approached with the silence of a loup-garou, or Quentin had gone deaf to the world. He thought the latter much more likely.
Harper raised his hands. “Sorry. Shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that.”
“No harm done,” Quentin said, concealing his surprise. It wasn’t that he and Harper hadn’t talked, but this was the first time the man had sought him out.
And Harper was beginning to carry the look of a healthy man—healthy in body and spirit. His eyes were no longer sunk so deeply in his face; the etched lines between his brows and at the sides of his mouth had flattened. There was even a hint of greater fullness under his cheekbones, a little more flesh over his ribs.
That was how much good a few hypnotic treatments with Johanna had done him.
But it was the expression in Harper’s eyes that had changed the most. They hadn’t entirely lost their haunted look, but they were clear and sane. No more retreating into a world of his own. He was of this world now, and planned to remain in it.
He had more backbone than Quentin did.
Company was not what Quentin had in mind, but now that Harper was here he felt the tension drain from his muscles. Any distraction from thoughts of Johanna was welcome.
He sat down on the largest branch and stretched his legs. Harper joined him, turning his face up to the sun.
The quiet between them was comfortable, almost comforting. Quentin hadn’t expected it. Harper had witnessed his spontaneous trance yesterday, and all that it entailed. It wasn’t his business to withhold judgment, as Johanna did, and yet he seemed perfectly at ease.
Perhaps nothing so bad had happened after all. But if Johanna had failed to tell Quentin the whole truth about yesterday’s incident, Harper might be persuaded to fill in the blanks.
“Thank you,” he said. “For what you did yesterday.”
Harper shrugged. “Just helping a comrade in need.”
“Even though we didn’t fight for the same country, or in the same war?”
The other man’s gaze had an uncanny directness. “You sure about that?”
He was equally direct in his speech. Quentin bit back the impulse to ask him what he meant.
“I seem to remember,” Quentin said, “you saying something about the enemy being gone, and the war over. I gather that I needed the reminder.”
Harper didn’t answer straight away. He stretched out his own legs—long enough to match Quentin’s—and cracked his knuckles. Each movement he made was that of a man who felt joy in the simplest actions.
A simple man, Harper. Except that he claimed to see visions.
“You needed to be reminded, then,” Harper said at last.
“Because the enemy isn’t gone,” Quentin said. “The war isn’t over.” He smiled bitterly. “Are you here about yesterday, Harper? Do you have something to tell me?” His mind raced with dire possibilities, matching the tempo of his heartbeat. “Did I do something to frighten Johanna?”
“Doc?” Harper chuckled, as if he found the notion of Johanna afraid inconceivable. “No. Not in the way you mean.”
Quentin released his breath. “What did I do, Harper?”
“Reckon she’ll talk about that in her own time.” Harper searched his pockets for something that wasn’t there. “I don’t remember very much of what I said. Must have talked about what happened during the War. Don’t want to think of that yet. Not just yet.” He shivered. “Doc says it’ll come back to me when I’m ready. I reckon it’s the same with you.”