Captured by Him ~ The fourth novelette from "Different Desire", a Gay Victorian Romance and Erotic novelette collection

him!
    “Who , in the Devil’s name , are you?” Milton demanded to know.
    “Ah, so you remember me now , then?” t he other man answered him calmly, his smile deepening somewhat, which made him look annoyingly charming. “You can call me ‘Badger’, that is what everyone around here calls me. And I am the one who saved your life.”
    Milton scoffed and ignored the stab of pain it brought him from his side. “You mean to say that you are the one who ran me through with a rapier!”
    “That was an accident!” Badger said , and his hoarse voice grew a little bit tight around the edges.
    “Preposterous!” Milton snorted. The other man was insufferable, he thought.
    “It was your own fault, you know that.”
    “Oh, really? I do not recall holding a rapier and somehow manag ing to stumble on a rock and fall on top of it,” Milton said. “No. I do not recall that at all!”
    To his satisfaction , he noticed the other man’s vexing smile was gone , and instead , his lips were compressed to a thin line.
    “Why can you not just say ‘thank you’?” Badger asked.
    “For what? Robbing me? Kidnapping me? Trying to kill me?”
    “For saving your life!” Badger growled. “Besides, I did not mean to kidnap you, but I could not leave you to bleed to death on a dusty country road. Perhaps I should have!”
    He stepped closer , and Milton felt his mouth go dry; however , the other man only sat down next to Milton on a three - legged stool and picked up a wooden mort ar and a small sheaf of different kinds of herbs from the floor. The mort ar was old; the wood had almost turned black with usage. Badger started to pinch off leaves from the herbs and added them into the mort ar . His movements were careful and controlled ; however , Milton thought with satisfaction that he looked rather irritated.
    They were qui et for a while before Badger spoke again.
    “Your wound is healing well, I would say. You were very lucky , by the way . T he blade was thin , and it must have gone straight through without damaging any vital parts.” He paused and added slowly, in what Milton thought sounded like a rather uncharacteristically concerned voice , “You have lost quite a lot of blood , though.”
    “I need to be taken to a doctor or to a proper hospital, you do realize that?” Milton said. His sudden angry outburst had left him feeling weak.
    “To a doctor? Oh, I think not. If you die at the hospital, they will blame it on me and my friends , and we will be hunted down for murder. It is better for both you and me if I treat you myself. Trust me.”
    “But you are no doctor or even a qualified nurse!” Milton protested.
    “No, that I am not,” Badger agreed. “However , my mother was a wise woman , and since she never had any daughters , she passed her knowledge on to me instead.”
    “A wise woman?” Milton said with a mirthless laugh. “Surely you are joking? You are going to be the death of me! It is only down to pure dumb luck if the wound has not festered yet. Please, you must let me go back! Perhaps no one has even noticed that I have been gone … ”
    Badger frowned at his comment. “Oh, I think they have,” he said. “You, my little ‘Sleeping Beauty’, have been unconscious for three full days now.”
    “Three days? Really?” Milton gasped in disbelief, ignoring the other man’s attempt to taunt him. Sleeping beauty, indeed! The man was both intolerable and vulgar!
    “Yes,” Badger said with a small crooked smile, before he grew serious again. “Consider yourself lucky to be alive at all.”
    Milton pondered this for a moment. He did not feel especially lucky or favoured. Indeed, perhaps it would even have been better if he had ended his days at the blade of a rapier in the hands of a highwayman?
    “Oh, do not worry. I think you are out of the woods now, so to say,” Badger said, who had misinterpreted his expression. “In fact, if you sleep and rest properly , I am sure you will be up and about in a couple of days.”
    “Yes, perhaps ,” Milton said , and after watching the other man putting more and more suspicious ingredients into the wooden mort ar, he could not help asking , “What are you doing, by the way?”
    Random herbs seemed fairly reasonable, but soot and salt? What next? Milton wondered. Would he add a piece of iron or lemon to the unholy mixture?
    “It is a potion for you to drink,” Badger answered calmly. “This is figwort and sage leaves. It will stop the wound