Disclaimer: The SKKS-verse belongs to the creators of Sungkyunkwan Scandal.

Technical Notes: According to Wikipedia, an uinyeo is a female physician who specialized in the treatment of women during the Joseon period. During a time when personal modesty and segregation of the sexes was emphasized, women naturally could not be examined by a male physician.

Also, according to a couple of Google searches I did on the matter, certain activities mentioned in the latter part of this chapter are safe for women with normal pregnancies. Besides, I kind of like the $$-backwards way our couple is approaching things :-p

Author's Notes: Thank you, as always, to jinx XD for the review! Hang in there, we only have a few more chapters to go!

Chapter Fifteen

The steward had told her that Jae-shin was working late, which meant that she didn't need to stay up and wait for him, but Ka-hai was unable to sleep. Her husband had worked late before, but never to the point of staying out all night. The dull roar of the rain falling outside, coupled with her father-in-law's absence, compounded her worries.

"He'll be fine," she murmured to herself as she sat in their bedroom, trying to read. The police were on the alert because of the Blue Messenger's latest antics, but what could either they or the Messenger possibly accomplish in such bad weather? Jae-shin was sure to come home to her that night — cold, wet, and irritated, but otherwise safe and sound.

Suddenly, she heard a door bang open and a woman scream. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried to one of the front rooms and was taken aback when she found a couple of maids including Madam Choi, the housekeeper, huddled fearfully before a dark, hulking form standing in the middle of the chamber.

Ka-hai stared at it stupidly for a moment before her body leapt into action. She threw the book that was still in her hand at the intruder, catching him on the side of the head, then snatched up a nearby chair and planted herself between him and her staff. "Get out of here!" she ordered the stranger, baring her teeth in a snarl. "Get out!"

She swung the chair, but he danced aside. Her makeshift weapon was hardly a deadly one, but she still felt a fierce thrill when she caught him in the upper arm on the second try.

"Ouch!" Pain radiated throughout Jae-shin's body, which was already sore from everything he had done so far that night. He almost dropped his burden, but kept his balance and his grip. "Hold! Ka-hai, it's me!"

To his immense relief, Madam Choi recognized his voice and grabbed her mistress' arm urgently. "My lady! It's the young lord!"

Ka-hai frowned and lowered the chair, but didn't let it go. "Jae-shin?"

"Yes! Help me get this mask off!"

She reached out cautiously to remove the mask that shielded the lower half of his face. The maids behind her sighed in relief when they saw that it was indeed her husband under the disguise, but it just made her even more confused. "Why aren't you in uniform?" Her eyes traveled over him, widening with alarm when she noticed that the water puddling on the floor was tinged with red. "What happened?"

"None of that is mine," he assured her quickly, then held out the unconscious person slumped in his arms. "This person has been seriously wounded. Can you help?"

"Who's that?" she asked, stiffening and drawing away from him, as if he expected to make her carry the injured person who, despite the sexless dark clothing, was obviously a woman. What had they been doing together?

"It's the Blue Messenger!" he snapped, urgency giving an edge to his voice. Why wasn't Ka-hai doing anything?

"The Blue Messenger!" she gasped, looking disapprovingly at the wounded woman. "But why are you bringing her here?"

"Because she might die if you don't help her!" Jae-shin shook his burden at her, jostling the Blue Messenger and causing her to groan faintly. "Because I used to do what she does," he went on, his voice shaking as he strove to keep it under control. "Because I know all too well what it's like to be hurt and alone. Would you hesitate if the wounded criminal were me?"

Ka-hai had kept her jaw clenched throughout her husband's tirade, fighting to keep the cold face even as every word her husband spoke clawed at her heart. It was painfully obvious that this meant a lot to him and he had taken the Blue Messenger to their home believing that his wife would help; but at the same time, every fiber of her being rebelled against the idea of helping someone who could very well be her replacement.

What do I do?

Finally, she turned to the women still clustered behind her. "Madam Choi, please prepare one of the spare rooms," she instructed the housekeeper. "Nam-sin, start some water boiling and tell Kwan-sook to fetch my medicines. Seo-hyun, clean up this mess. We should probably hide any evidence that this woman is here."

After leaving the Blue Messenger in his wife's care, Jae-shin stole out again to rejoin the police on the banks of the Han. He sprinted through the downpour, glad that the rain was washing away his tracks. His luck was holding.

There were a couple of officers stationed near his point of re-entry, a crudely constructed dock partway down the river from where the Blue Messenger had fallen in, but the darkness and splatter of raindrops on the leaves overhead helped him escape their notice. He wove through the rough collection of shacks standing next to the dock and slipped back into the water, careful not to jostle the small fishing boats moored there. Taking a deep breath, he dove.

"It's him!" he heard someone shout when he surfaced some distance from the riverbank. "I see him, sir!"

In-soo and Sergeant Ho waded into the water to help him back onto (not very) dry land, where a small group had gathered to greet him. "Are you all right, Detective Moon?" the older man demanded.

"I'm fine, sir," Jae-shin coughed. At least, he thought, he didn't have to pretend that he was tired.

"You're not hurt anywhere?"

"No, sir."

In-soo breathed a gusty sigh of relief. "I guess I shot the right Blue Messenger, after all."

Even though the effort of catching his breath made it painful to laugh, Jae-shin managed a teasing chuckle for his partner. "Awww... you were worried about me?"

"Just be glad that I didn't decide to shoot the both of you to even my chances," the other man retorted with a scowl. "Where's the Blue Messenger?"

"I lost her in the water," he sighed. "Maybe the others were able to catch her?"

Everyone around him shook their heads. "We've been patrolling the banks since you both went down, sir," answered one of the youngest members of the team. "You're the first to come out."

"Why did you go after her, anyway, you idiot?" In-soo demanded.

"He was giving chase, of course," Sergeant Ho said. "To make sure that we truly apprehended the Blue Messenger."

"But I failed," Jae-shin added, bowing his head. "I'm sorry."

"You did your best," the commander consoled him. "Without you, Detective Ha's plan might not have worked as well as it did. Now that you have done your part, let the rest of us take over.

"Split up into groups of three and station yourselves along the riverbanks — here and on the other side," he instructed the assembled men. "Take turns keeping watch. That way, if the Blue Messenger comes out of hiding, or if her body washes up somewhere, we'll be prepared."

Jae-shin was, of course, excused from the patrol and dismissed so that he could go home and get some rest. Sergeant Ho even lent him his own personal mount so that he wouldn't have to walk.

The women, assisted now by Kwan-sook, were still tending to the Blue Messenger when he returned home for the second time that night. "How is she?" he asked as he joined Sang-hun in gawking from the doorway. Ka-hai and her assistants obscured the Messenger from view, but there seemed to be an alarmingly large number of bloody cloths heaped around them.

"We're not done yet," his wife told him shortly. She glanced at him over her shoulder and frowned. "You're tracking water on the floor. Nam-sin, please draw a hot bath for my husband."

"Yes, my lady." The maid rose to her feet and Jae-shin tried to take a peek at the Blue Messenger, but one of the other maids moved to fill the space that was vacated, so he saw nothing.

"You should probably go, my lord," Sang-hun whispered to him. "You don't want to catch a chill or worse, make the lady mad at you."

The lady was already mad at him, but of course he didn't say so. Instead, he smiled and laid his hand briefly on the little boy's head. "No, we definitely don't want that."

Obediently, Jae-shin staggered off to his bedroom, where he sat and dozed, his back against the wall, as Nam-sin prepared his bath. After she was gone, he shucked his clothes, lowered himself into the steaming water with a groan, and fell asleep in the tub.

He roused when he heard the door open. Hearing the familiar sound of his wife's footsteps on the other side of the screen, he dunked his head hurriedly under the water, slapped on a towel and rose to meet her. "Are you done?"

Ka-hai nodded briefly. "There was a bullet in her shoulder, and another in her leg," she reported. "We got them both out. She broke her leg and lost a lot of blood, but she's still alive."

As she spoke, she fetched a basin to hold the wet clothes until they could be disposed of, then shook out a fresh towel and began to help him dry off.

"We did our best to clean the wounds and splint her leg," she went on. "I hope it's enough to avoid infection — usually, when this happens to a horse, we just put it out of its misery."

She chafed his skin roughly, like a mother cleaning up a very dirty child, but it had been so long since he'd had her near that he couldn't help responding to her touch. Jae-shin saw color rush to her cheeks in the lamplight, but other than that she gave no indication that she was aware of his interest until he hiccuped and drew her towards him, fingers fumbling with the ties of her clothing.

It did not occur to Ka-hai to deny her husband. She felt a brief stirring of nervousness in the pit of her stomach at the thought of doing that with him in her condition, but the uinyeo she had visited, an earthy, practical woman, assured her that physical activities like horseback riding and lovemaking were perfectly safe for now. She understood that he needed to take because he was bone-weary and seeking comfort, and she was only too happy to give because she loved him.

As they lay wrapped around each other, she dared to hope that this was a sign that everything was all right again, but the frost seemed to creep back in between them when their heartbeats slowed. She wrapped herself tightly in her blanket after he withdrew from her, physically and emotionally, and closed her eyes tight as if to shut out the notion that he had come to her only because the woman in the other room was too ill to accommodate him.

I won't cry. I won't.

Jae-shin rolled onto his back, beyond exhausted. Dimly, he heard his wife moving about beside him and thought about pulling her to him and burying his nose in the nape of her neck, just like before, but his arms felt like lead. It was all he could do to drag his own blanket to cover his beaten body.

Perhaps later, he thought sleepily, after he rested for a while...

As it happened, Jae-shin slept like a dead man until well after dawn, rousing only when he heard a movement somewhere over his head.

He opened his eyes and craned his neck in time to see his wife emerge from behind the privacy screen that hid their washstand, already dressed and wiping her mouth with a towel. She stopped short when she saw that he was awake, and ducked her head politely. "Good morning."

"Good morning," he replied. Once upon a time, he would have followed such a greeting with a sly suggestion that she return to bed, but instead he asked, "Are you all right? I mean... after last night?"

Ka-hai blushed. She didn't know whether he was referring to her tending the Blue Messenger or what happened after that, but regardless of what it was, there was nothing extraordinary about the way she felt that morning. "I'm fine," she replied quietly.

She glanced at him, one hand falling to cover her belly, and wondered whether her husband had noticed any of the changes that had already begun to appear in her body. Was that his way of remarking on them? "Jae-shin," she began, "you're probably—"

Suddenly, he sat up, his blanket falling to bare his torso. "What time is it?" he demanded. "Is the Blue Messenger awake? Has my father come home?"

The news of her pregnancy died in her throat. "I don't know if the Blue Messenger is awake," she replied evenly, busying herself with settling down before her small vanity case in order to fix her hair. "I've only just risen myself and haven't been to see her yet. And in case you've forgotten, Abeonim is supposed to come home tomorrow."

"Oh, that's right. I got the days mixed up." He sighed and smoothed his hair back from his face, his movements stiff. A large purple bruise decorated his bicep and Ka-hai wondered if she had put it there. "Then I have time to think of an explanation for why we have a surprise guest."

"I thought about it already," she told him as she pulled a brush through her hair. It was true; it had occurred to her last night, while tending to the Blue Messenger's wounds, that her father-in-law would naturally ask questions when he discovered a stranger in the house. "We can tell him that she's a cousin visiting me from the country. She got caught in the rain on the way here and took ill, so she has to stay awhile.

"I'll just pretend that I forgot to ask his permission before inviting her to come," she went on, tugging the brush gently through a tangle. "He won't mind..." In fact, he can't deny me anything now that I'm carrying his grandchild. "So long as I apologize to him properly."

"He spoils you," Jae-shin chuckled, the sound warming her heart, and shot her a crooked smile over his shoulder. His expression cooled when he remembered that they were supposed to be quarreling, but he had definitely smiled at her, even for just a moment.

"Yes, I suppose he does." Ka-hai ducked her head as she wove her hair into a braid. She wanted to ask him about the connection between him and the Blue Messenger, but instead she asked, "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Jae-shin replied, nodding as he turned away.

Her eye fell on his back, which now boasted a number of welts and shallow cuts as well as the scars that had already been there before. "You don't need anything for your back?"

"I'll be all right." He wrapped his blanket around his waist and, grunting with the effort, rose laboriously to his feet. "But if anything starts to bother me, I'll let you know."

"All right." She tied her hair with a ribbon as her husband made his way to the washstand for his own morning ablutions. "Then I suppose I'll go ask the servants for more wash water and check on our guest."

He looked at her before he disappeared behind the privacy screen. "Thank you," he said in a low voice. "For, you know, helping with... everything."

She inclined her head before turning away and heading for the door. "You're welcome."