With that, and the brutal look she leveled upon him, Alec did as requested and returned with the tool, expecting to hand it to her.
She shook her head. “I’ll hold everything out of the way. You pluck it out.”
Bluidy hell. He did grimace now but bent over Malcolm’s chest and stared inside the wound, blood and tissue and torn muscle staring back at him.
“See it? That glint of metal?”
“Aye.”
“Do not yank too hard,” she instructed, “or you’re likely to cause more damage to the muscle and skin. Clutch at the metal and wiggle it back and forth, gently, to cause no other harm.”
Alec nodded and used one hand upon the tool, his head touching hers as they both bent so close over the hole. He managed quite easily to clamp the pliers around the piece of metal, but it was embedded fairly deep, and he was afraid to cause more harm as she’d said, that it took several minutes to wrest it free.
“Very good,” she said when he did. “Now, behind me, fetch the two spoons I dropped into the boiling water.”
He did this and returned to the table, opposite her, holding the hot metal gingerly.
“You’re going to hold open the skin flaps with the spoons while I stitch up the inside.” Without waiting a response, which was yet another twisting of his features, this time indeed for the gore, she retrieved a needle made of bone and threaded it with two strands of string that looked like silk.
She set this down on Malcolm’s chest and took the spoons from him, both their hands and fingers bloodied now. She pressed the spoons inside, taking her time to wedge them against the skin and not the muscle. When they were set to her liking, she inclined her head to Alec that he should take them. He set his hands over hers, and she pulled hers out from underneath when his fingers had control of the spoons.
Straightening that she might be able to lean in further, he stared at the top of her head while she sewed, saw not much more of her face than the thick fringe of lashes and her nose, slim and straight. He hadn’t met many healers in his life, and while all the ones he had were women, he didn’t think he’d ever met one like this. The ones he’d known were ancient and bent crooked with age, their manner abrupt and often surly.
This one was...she was beautiful. Her manner was indeed abrupt, but that might have been wrought by their barging in, and his threatening her life. Might have been, he wouldn’t know. She was certainly not ancient and not at all crooked with age but was young and lean and crowned with a wealth of dark blonde hair that might actually be very blonde outside this dim cottage. Her eyes, when she’d faced him earlier so breathlessly, were true blue, light and dark and brimming with more a show than a reality of fearlessness, he’d understood at the time.
While she worked, he held his hands and the spoons still, even as her fingers so often brushed against or rested upon his. He passed his gaze around the cottage, making judgments about her based on the evidence around him. The meal he’d spied inside the second kettle had been sparse, more broth than anything else; the bed in the corner next to the cupboard was covered in a blanket of coarse wool, the color as drab as the ground beneath his feet; linen curtains, such as they were, hung over the two windows but seemed to serve no purpose but to keep out the light and mayhap the summer flies; a vase of wilted wild flowers sat on the cupboard near the hearth, next to a crude ewer and basin. Alec’s brow lifted and then lowered darkly as his gaze landed on two pairs of boots to the left of the door. He frowned, considering the different sizes of the footwear. The woman was tiny, relatively speaking, but that smallest pair of boots there by the door would likely not fit her. Above that, hung on pegs hammered into the wooden wall, was what Alec assumed to be a cloak of wool, which matched the drab bed covering and next to that, a wee jacket of earthen brown.
Alec sent his gaze around again, studying everything with a fresh eye now. The hound—useless as protection, Alec had already decided—lay sleeping now between the bed and the counter where he’d fetched the pliers, his snout pointed under the raised mattress. On the mantle above the hearth, beyond the woman’s head, were stacked two wooden bowls and two wooden cups.
“You can move your hands now,” she said, standing straight for a moment, while she threaded the needle again.
Alec pulled his hands away and inspected her work. Of course, he had no idea what it should look like at this point, but he was pleased to see that it didn’t bleed so much now.
She bent again over the remaining puncture marks, quiet and efficient, cleaning the other wounds and then sewing, these apparently requiring only external stitching that his assistance was not needed.
Alec sat in the small chair again and when she was done, she surveyed her own work while wiping her bloodied hands on her previously clean apron. She set her palm against Malcolm’s forehead but declared it too soon for a fever if there was to be one. Then she dipped her fingers into a bowl and drew them out, covered in a gooey yellowish substance, which was thicker than liquid and did not drip, and was speckled with bits of whatever seeds and plants she’d ground earlier. She laved this all over the three wounds and applied more to a wide scrape on Malcolm’s forehead. Her fingers were long and thin, her nails short but neatly trimmed, though dirtied now with all this business.
“If that doesn’t become infected, it should cause him no trouble at all. Change the bandage every third day. I’ll send you off with the mixture to smother over the wound to stave off infection.”
So now she stood, her hands on her hips, staring across Malcolm’s inert form with her pretty blue eyes, waiting it seemed, as if she thought he might just scoop up Malcolm and be on his way.
“What is your circumstance here?” Alec asked.
She blinked. “My circumstance?”
“Aye. We were given your direction in a village called Rutherglen.” It hadn’t been given kindly. Aymer had crept up on a lad moving sheep from pasture to meadow and held a knife to the lad’s throat, inquiring of the nearest healer, threatening to come back and carve up the lad if he breathed even one word about Aymer’s visit. Lad said to follow the stream to find the witch’s cottage, Aymer had reported upon his return to where Alec and the others had hidden.
Witch, was she?
“Healing seems to bear no fruit,” he said. “The coffers appear empty—or rather, the kettle.”
She was only befuddled by his questioning, his suppositions.
“I get by,” she said, with some hint of annoyance, “obviously.” She shrugged then. “The poorer I am, the richer they are in health.”
“Who are they? Who do you minister to?”
“To Rutherglen, and sometimes Eastfield, and to the castle, Dalserf.”
Alec frowned. “Dalserf? Is that Thomas de Dalziel?” Alec did not know him personally, but he kept in good memory the names of any Scots’ families in these Highlands who had sworn allegiance to Edward I.
“Aye.” Her frown was deepening.
Holding her nervous gaze, he asked evenly, “And where is your son just now?”
She went completely still, unbreathing again it seemed, as she tried very hard to give nothing away.
“I have no son.”
Ah, the lass was no liar, was torn up inside to denounce her own flesh and blood, even if it had been done to protect him.
“You sure about that, lass? You sure there’s no’ a lad under that bed?”
She whimpered and shook her head, her gaze pleading now.
“Come on out, lad,” Alec instructed, holding her now tortured gaze. No one and nothing moved. “Dinna make me say it twice.”
A shuffling was heard behind him. He thought the hound might have risen as well as the lad crawled out from under the bed.
Her blue eyes watered with her fright, her lips trembled. Her gaze left him, found the boy instead, and told Alec of the lad’s position by the movement of her gaze. And when her eyes widened frantically and the hound barked, he knew a wee attack was coming. He turned his head, saw a scrawny ar
m raised, and caught the hand before any damage was inflicted. He dragged the boy to his side, his skinny arm held firmly in Alec’s hand, the weapon seeming to be only his woeful fist. The hound continued to shout his distress.
Sensing movement over Malcolm, he turned and found that the lass had lifted her hands above the lifeless man, her skinny knife facing downward, her expression fierce.
“Let him go.”
“You dinna want his neck snapped.”
“You dinna want his heart pierced,” she returned, her tone just as dangerous.
Alec pushed the boy away, saw him scramble around the table to his mother, who immediately put him behind her and lowered her knife. The hound followed, whining to his mistress.
“I’ve fixed your man,” she said. “Take him and go.”
Alec sighed, still seated, rubbing his hands up and down his thighs. He gave his regard to the lad, met a now familiar intense blue gaze, narrowed in a fashion remarkably like his mother’s, his blond hair short but unkempt.
“Now, lass, you ken how these things work,” he said, indicating the sewn wounds upon Malcolm. “Fever, infection, all sorts of peril imaginable. We’ll be staying right here until my man is well out of danger.”
Chapter Two
Having been advised that she might simply carry on with her day as if there had been no intrusion—as if that were possible, with these two men taking up so much space in her tiny cottage—Katie sent Henry off to the bed, where he sat with his legs crossed, eyeing the big man suspiciously. They would be required to stay close to the dwelling, she’d been told, would not be allowed to go up to the castle, or into any village or town.
She filled a bowl for him, and one for herself and joined her son, likewise crossing her legs under her, while they supped, their table otherwise occupied.
The man stood and left the cottage, but only briefly, leaving the door open, calling out for someone named Simon, and returning soon enough with several flat pieces of bread, which he tossed onto the end of the bed.
“Of course, there’s coin for you, when Malcolm is well again,” he said, “but we can share our bread until then.”
Two things crossed her mind. First, that she was so rarely paid in coin, she wasn’t sure she would know what to do with it, what to purchase first, their needs many. Next, she wondered if she were expected to offer a share of her pitiful stew to the man. He hadn’t returned with bread for himself, that he seemed not of a mind to sup just now.
To her dismay, he turned the chair a bit, facing her and Henry.
“What’s your name, lad?”
Katie spoke up before Henry might have. “I understand your desire to remain here, in my home, but let’s not pretend we have any desire for conversation. There is no reason that we need to know any more about you than already established. The reverse is true as well: you don’t need to know anything about us.”
He flexed his lips a bit, looked as if he might be torn between good humor and anger. “Lass, you keep acting irritable toward me, I’m going to lose all my charity and kindness.”
More than once, she’d been scolded that too often, she spoke before she thought better of it. “I am no more a lass, and I have seen no evidence of the latter.” She would not denounce the sharing of bread, however.
“You’re both still breathing, so there’s that kindness,” he retorted smoothly, lifting a brow at her, a challenge.
Every word uttered, every smug look that crossed his face, she only hated him more.
He tried again, “Your name, lad?”
Henry consulted his mother first, and at Katie’s tight-lipped nod, he answered, “Henry Oliver.”
“Where is your father?”
“Heaven.”
“And what is your mother’s name?”
“Katie.”
“How old are you?”
“Seven.”
“Is your mam a good cook?”
Henry giggled, surprised by the question. He shrugged. “I dinna ken. I guess so.”
“Is she always so fierce?”
“What’s that?”
The man raised his gaze from Henry to consider her. Let him have his fun, she thought. He must think I don’t know scorn or ridicule or haven’t been interrogated like this before. Must think as well that no other man had ever befriended her son, thinking somehow Henry’s attitude affected her own toward a person, as if a seven year old could see duplicity or an ugly soul or nefarious intentions.
This one seemed only to want to rile her. She would do well, she decided, to make sure that going forward, he was regularly disappointed.
“Fierce, with that scowling brow and those wary eyes, like someone just trod upon her foot for no reason.”
Henry grinned again, turning to consider Katie. “She’s nice to me.”
Katie smiled at Henry, letting all her features soften for his benefit.
“Which way is Dalserf Keep?”
Henry pointed to the wall across from them, north. “Through the trees and over the small hill, no’ the big one.”
“How far?” The man asked of Katie.
Likely he expected some reply measured in distance, but she had no idea about such things. “Three quarters of an hour, by foot.”
“Do people come to you, call on this house?”
She nodded. “If their need is urgent, otherwise I—we—go into the village or over to Rutherglen two or three times a week, to see the long-suffering or bed-ridden.”
He nodded at this and left the cottage once again but stayed close that Katie could see half of him through the open door. He spoke to someone for several minutes, maybe two or three persons, Katie decided, hearing different but muffled voices reply, and when he returned, he left the door open.
He sat again and Katie was aware of movement outside, in front of her cottage. She stared through the opening, horrified as she watched so many people move past. Possibly there were forty or fifty of them, all mounted, one bigger than the next, riding away. They didn’t want to be found, she surmised, sensing by the noise that the entire horde had moved to the rear of the cottage, where the woods beyond the stream would afford them little chance of detection if anyone should come calling.
“Dalserf has an army of hundreds,” she said, pleased to deliver this news. “They train daily, always outside the walls of the castle. And they hunt often, in all of these woods.” She hoped this might hurry along his departure.
He was unperturbed and unimpressed, mayhap saw through her motivations for saying as much. With a lift of his huge shoulders, he said evenly, while his gaze fixed on her with some taunting, “Better hope they dinna come ‘round, lass. That’ll be one hell of a clash, with your snug little cottage smack in the middle.”
The man on the table moaned then, drawing all attention.
Katie jumped up, taking her empty bowl with her. She approached the wounded man just as the other man stood and leaned over him as well.
“Malcolm,” prodded the one at her side.
The man spoke, or tried to, but nothing intelligible was ascertained. He had no fever still, she determined and went to the hearth once again, filling her bowl with just broth. To this she added a bit of powdered mandrake root and cloves, hoping to fight off fever from the inside.
“Lift him to drink,” she instructed when she neared the table again, standing opposite the big man once more.
He eyed her and the bowl suspiciously. Katie rolled her eyes and sipped from the bowl herself, letting him see her swallow. Only then did he nod and move to the end of the table and Malcolm’s head, lifting him by the shoulders. The red-haired man groaned again but did sip at the bowl when it was pressed to his lips. But not much before he seemed to sleep again or lose consciousness. She slapped softly at his cheek, forcing more down his throat when he opened his mouth at the disturbance. They did this for several minutes, slowly, until the bowl was empty, and thankfully not more than a quarter of it dribbled down his chin and into his darker orange and bro
wn beard.
Katie was encouraged that he had roused at all, truly having no idea if he would wake, having no sense of exactly how much blood he might have lost. He was huge and appeared fit, and likely his age, not more than forty she guessed, would assist in his recovery. She wanted him mended and well, and soon, that they might exit her life as quickly as they’d entered it.
When she sat again with Henry, her son asked of the big man sitting in his chair, “Are you giants then?”
Katie grinned before she might have held it back.
The man was amused as well, though he kept it in check. His eyes shone a bit, but he allowed no grin. “Aye, lad. Giants we are, from the northernmost reaches of the Highlands, where you ken all giants are bred.”
“I dinna ken that,” Henry said, holding the empty bowl between his crossed legs. “You’ve come from a battle then?”
“Aye, but only a wee one,” said the man, not adverse to entertaining Henry, it seemed.
“Guess you dinna win.”
The man shook his head, chewed the inside of his cheek for a moment. “We dinna. But we will. One day, all the English will be driven from Scotland.”
“Farquhar says any Scots who fight the English are traitors,” Henry repeated.
The man’s countenance turned harsh once more as he narrowed his eyes at Henry. Katie expected some retaliation just now, even if only verbally.
“And who is this Farquhar?”
“The captain of the Dalserf army,” Katie supplied.
The man addressed her son again, “You’d do well, lad, to ken that Scotland bows to none. She’s her own, belongs to no king but a Scot’s king.”
Unmoved by this, Henry asked, “What’s your name?”
“Alec MacBriar.”
“How old are you?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. The man answered, “Saw my thirtieth year this past spring.”
“Is your mam a good cook?”
“She might be, but I dinna ken she does. Her cook makes all the meals.”
“Do you have a hound?”
“Several,” the man—Alec—answered. He met Katie’s gaze. “And they’re a wee bit better at protecting the valuables.”
The Love of Her Life (Highlander Heroes Book 6) Page 2
