The Gifted Read Online Free Page A

Believe me. But we are sisters and if there’s danger, it’s my duty to share it with you.”
    Jessamine turned back to the man on the ground. “I don’t think he is a danger to us.”
    “Perhaps not in his current state, but what about the gunshot? You keep forgetting that there was gunfire.” Sister Annie leaned forward to peer around Jessamine toward the man. “Does he have a gun?”
    Jessamine let her eyes sweep down the man’s slender body. He wore a coat something like the brothers wore to meeting, but of a richer-looking cloth, and his shirt was very white. The coat lay open to reveal a regular belt around the waist of his dark trousers. “No gun that I can see.”
    “Well, somebody had one. If not him, then somebody else.” Sister Annie looked around. Her voice trembled as she went on in almost a whisper. “Somebody who could be watching us right now. May our Eternal Father protect us.”
    “Do you think he was shot?” Jessamine knelt down beside the man again. She thought of pulling her handkerchief out of her apron pocket to wipe away the blood on the side of his face. That could not be sinful even in Sister Annie’s eyes. “We have to help him.”
    Sister Annie surprised her by agreeing. “Yea, but how?”
    “You can go to the village and get help while I wait here with him.”
    “Nay. I won’t leave you alone with a man of the world, and besides, I would get lost a dozen times trying to get back to the village. That would be no help to him or us either. By the time the elders sent out people to search for us, the man might be dead.”
    Jessamine’s heart jumped up in her throat. “We can’t let him die.”
    “God holds the number of our days.”
    “But I don’t want him to die.” Jessamine kept her eyes on the man’s face.
    “You don’t even know him, Sister Jessamine. You are only imagining one of those stories in your head that get you into nothing but troubling fixes.” Sister Annie’s voice was cross again. “It would be best for you to rein in such thoughts before you fall into sin. This man is not one of the princes in the fairy tales your grandmother told you.”
    “Yea, Sister Annie. You are right, but even so, we must help him. We must take him back to the village where Brother Benjamin can treat him for his injuries.”
    “That might be a proper plan, but how?”
    “Perhaps on his horse,” Jessamine suggested. The horse might still be nearby.
    “The man’s arm appears to be broken. He could have other bones broken as well. Even if we were strong enough to do so, we might make his injuries worse putting him on a horse.”
    “Well, if we can’t move him and we can’t leave him, what can we do?” Jessamine looked at his face with the blood trickling down toward his ear from the angry gash on his head. She did take out her handkerchief then and dabbed it against the wound. She waited to see if Sister Annie would condemn her actions, but when she did not, Jessamine reached out with her other hand to take hold of the handkerchief.
    With great care to make her movement look totally unplanned, she gingerly laid her hand down on the man’s cheek. The emerging whiskers were prickly under her fingers. She forgot about Sister Annie watching her and ran her fingers up his cheek toward his eye. There his skin was smooth and his lashes soft as downy feathers. Quite without thinking she dropped the handkerchief and touched her own eyelashes with her other hand. His felt much the same as hers.
    “Whatever are you doing, Sister Jessamine?”
    “Just wiping the blood from the gash on his head,” she said quickly.
    “I might be more apt to believe that if the handkerchief were in your hand instead of forgotten on the ground.”
    A flush rose up into Jessamine’s cheeks as she snatched up the handkerchief and began dabbing at the bloody gash again. “Forgive me, Sister. But I had never touched a man’s face before. I have continually wondered about their whiskers. How they