Chapter 73

Chapter 73: Chapter 73

Several leaves of plants with white flowers among the green leaves were ripped off. She threw away the flower beds and buds as if they were useless.

‘What is she doing?’

While he was wondering, he smelled something fishy at the tip of his nose.

“Please chew it well. Come on!”

Marianne pushed the blade of grass between his lips as if she were humoring a child who didn’t want to take medicine. Eckart knitted his brows more intensely.

“Why are you giving this…”

“It’s anesthesia. It’s grass called Roshan’s Star. This is poisonous, so you should not eat it. It’s also called lunatic grass because animals go crazy after eating it unknowingly.”

“Then, why are you telling me to chew it now?”

“It’s okay because there is only a painkiller substance in the leaves. Are you worried if I poison you at all when I put all my time and effort into saving your life?”

She looked down at Eckhart with a sullen expression. He felt very strange about her gaze, which was higher than his. In other words, he felt he was really protected by her as she looked down, just like her mother quietly wiped her forehead as a child when he had a fever and couldn’t sleep.

In the end, he shut up and chewed the blades of grass. The unique bitterness of raw grass hovered inside his mouth.

“It doesn’t taste good at all.”

“Medicine naturally tastes bitter anyway.”

She brazenly answered and skillfully trimmed the grass she picked up. She separated only leaves from the branches of dense oval leaves along the stem in a bunch of grass resembling clovers. When she put herbs on flat gravel and crushed them with heavy gravel, the leaves quickly lost their shape and were torn off.

Tak, tak!

The sound of gravel clashing together was produced periodically.

Eckart looked closely at what she was doing, and opened his mouth.

“Do you know how to distinguish between herbs and poisons?”

“Well, yes. To some extent.”

“What is that? Do I have to eat it, too?”

Marianne burst into a smile and laughed at that. She was not supposed to laugh in such a situation, but strangely enough, she felt relaxed and lost track of time.

‘Do all people in distress lose a sense of reality in this way?’ she thought to herself.

“Does it really taste bad?”

“Very bad.”

“Do not worry. I’ll apply this without having you eat it. This little grass is a marsh pennywort, and these branches are beautyberry branches. Both are effective for hemostasis, so I’m going to put them on your wounds. It’s common, but this medicinal herb is not everywhere, but I was so happy to find them nearby.”

Listening to her explanation in detail, Eckart recalled the intelligence briefing report Jed brought to him recently. When reading it, he remembered that one of her hobbies was collecting medicinal herbs.

“I hear you were well versed in plants, but I didn’t know you had such a deep knowledge of medicine.”

“I have been fond of flowers and trees since childhood. My father said that it’s because I look like my mother. At first, I grew a lot of pretty plants, but I became interested in medicinal plants by chance.”

Tak, tak!

The sound of gravel hitting against each other filled the silence.

“I have a friend named Evelyn in the north. I think I was about 14 years old then. We had a picnic together. Eve had a fine personality, and she was not afraid of anything like Ms. Rane.

Thanks to her, I learned to ride a horse, how to shoot a bow, and I learned to handle a very thin sword, though only briefly…”

She was now reminiscent of her childhood days. Her green eyes glimmered as if she was immersed in her memories. He quietly waited for her to continue. Strictly speaking, their conversation like this was useless in this situation.

For him, who had no interest in the lives of others, it was a dramatic change.

“Anyway, I went on a picnic with her, and gave Evelyn a beautiful flower. I wanted to give it to her as a gift because it was a rare flower that I hadn’t seen before in the area. But that was poisonous.”

Trivial stories like this sweetened their ears.

She babbled on like a baby bird, and he looked at her as if he were watching a play.

He even forgot for a moment the pain that seemed to touch all his nerves.

“Without knowing it was poisonous, we smelled flowers, touched its leaves, broke the stem and put it next to our ears. Of course, we were sick. I started studying medicinal herbs right after my fever was gone.”

“Wow! You’re really quick at picking things up.”

“I don’t want to hear it from you because you proposed to me as soon as you met me first.”

She sharply looked at him.

“The family doctor at the Lennox Mansion used to work in the palace. He was also familiar with herbal medicine, so I learned lots of things from him ranging from the basic medical knowledge to the distinction method of poisonous flowers. When I think about it now, I was really lucky. If I hadn’t made a mistake that day, I wouldn’t have had any reason to be interested in pharmacy, and I wouldn’t have been able to help you today.”

Tak, tak. The periodic noise stopped when she was done talking.

Marianne patted all the herbs she pounded and then laid gravel on them. She squeezed and opened her partially numb hands and then turned back toward Eckart.

Looking at her as if he was enchanted, he met her bright green eyes squarely.

“Would you like to take off your clothes now?”

She sat closer. The cloth rolled up for hemostasis was unfastened. One of the few buttons on his vest was quickly released, and the buttons on the shirt also opened gradually from the top.

He stared at her blankly and then grabbed her slender wrist.

“Marianne, I can do it on my own …”

“Please stay still. If the tourniquet gets loose as you move, you may bleed a lot.”

Before she was done talking, she pulled away her wrists, knitting her eyebrows as if she was scolding a stubborn child.

He helpless lowered his arms. Every time her warm fingers touched his skin very briefly, he was shaken by inexplicable emotions.

‘What’s the big deal about somebody taking off and put on my clothes? I have my staff do this several times a day back home. This is just a process for treatment… Damn it, what kind of excuse do I want to make now?’ he reproached himself.

While he was checking his mental condition, his shirt front opened wide.

Like chocolate that was hardened in a waffle-shaped mold, his upper body with smooth muscles was fully revealed. It was a pretty strong build even when she saw it twenty steps from her seat.

“What a relief. There are no big scars here.”

He had bruises on various parts of his body, but he didn’t have any major injuries like bleeding from torn skin.

Feeling relieved, she gently wiped every corner of his body. Given that he didn’t show any reactions when she pressed on his skin, he seemed to have no bone fractures.

Meanwhile, he drew a sharp breath, staring at the stone wall over her shoulders.

“It will hurt. But try to endure it and stand up.”

When Marianne pushed her arms between his sides to raise him up, he felt suffocated as if he was drowned again.

Was it because he was wearing wet clothes for too long? Or was it the bleeding that caused his body temperature to drop?

He felt warm or even hot because her bare shoulders were pressed against him.

“Oops!”

From the moment she started to raise his upper body, he felt his back was hotter 100 times than before. He instinctively leaned toward her and tightened his left arm on the ground.

She began to take off his clothes, holding him in her arms halfway. Every time she twisted his body, she heard him clenching his teeth to endure the pain. It was evidence of extreme pain that she could not even imagine. She carefully moved her hands as quickly as possible, like a mother carefully taking care of her baby.”It’s all done. Let me just cut off the shirt on your right arm. Please lean here for a moment.”

Short of breath like a fast runner, he leaned his head against the wall.

She searched for the stack of items on one side and took out a jackknife. When she pulled on the shirt’s arm tightly and cut it quickly, the silk was broken smoothly. The blood-soaked shirt fell.

“Awesome. You put up with it well. This way…”

Trying to pull himself together, he twisted his body slightly after her words.

Finally, the scars on his back were fully revealed.

“This…”

She closed her mouth with the back of her hands unconsciously.

She saw deep laceration from the base of the tailbone to the middle of his spine.

The wound looked terrible as if that part had been carved out by a sharp knife. When she touched the wound with her trembling hand, blood still came up.