She shrugged without making eye contact, an artfully careless gesture he saw right through. Quickly, she moved past him to press her hand down into the mattress, her nose wrinkling in a most attractive manner as she turned to sit on the edge of the bed.
“I guess this whole pretending to be married thing, sharing a room and all, it’s not actually so different from sharing a campfire with you. I mean, we were alone together there, too. And the bed is better than sleeping on the ground. I’ll give it that much.”
“That it is,” he agreed, tossing his bag to the floor in front of the little fire. She might aspire to brave and bold, but he could read her easily now that he knew the signs to watch for. “Not so bad at all.” For a fact he’d slept in worse places, though he knew from experience the cold stone floor would only add to the aching in his leg.
He dropped to sit, glancing back to see her staring at the door, the bauble she wore around her neck clutched between her thumb and forefinger.
“What else troubles you, Leah?”
“Nothing,” she replied hastily.
Too hastily, to his way of thinking.
“I don’t suppose these doors have any bolts or locks or anything like that, do they?”
He doubted very much it was the monks she wanted to bar from entry.
“Dinna spare a worrisome thought to the English soldiers down below. You’ll no come to any harm at their hands, no so long as yer under my protection. They search for a maiden, no a married woman. Now try to get some rest. We’ve two long days on the road ahead of us yet.”
Rather than reassuring, his words seemed only to agitate her more.
“What makes you think I have any concerns about those men? I’m not worried about them. I don’t care who they’re looking for. I never even saw any of them before tonight.”
She might well not have seen any of the soldiers before this night, but what she’d told him about her uncle made it clear she wanted to avoid any contact with English soldiers. He just wished she’d tell him the whole of the reason why.
The only piece that didn’t quite add up was that while her uncle might well send his own men in search of a runaway niece, it wasn’t likely soldiers such as those they’d met downstairs would be distracted from their mission on the king’s behalf for such a task.
Not unless the task was somehow personal. Personal as in the side quest Moreland had described his men undertaking—to find his own uncle’s missing bride. A missing bride whose description fit the woman he’d just publicly claimed as wife.
One look at Leah, her lips clamped tightly together and her arms crossed protectively in front of her, and he knew she’d be sharing no more of her story with him this night.
“Suit yerself, my lady.” He turned his back to her, pounding at his saddle bag in preparation for lying down. “Just remember that’s it no ever a good idea to stray too far from the truth in the stories you tell. No more than it is to keep yer traveling companions in the dark about what dangers they might expect to encounter.”
Whether she was willing to admit it or not, something in what the knight had said downstairs had made her uncomfortable. He’d seen her reaction to the man’s words and, though he’d known her only a short time, he realized it was more than her weariness from a day on the road that had hastened her desire to depart from the dining hall.
“Here. Take this.” Leah had moved close, his plaid she’d worn all evening cradled in her arms. “I’ve got the blankets on the cot so you’ll need this.”
As he reached for the woolen, his fingertips brushed against hers and the resulting tingle reminded him of her injury from the night before.
“When did you lose yer bandage?” He caught up her wrist and pulled her hand down toward him for a closer look.
“I didn’t lose it,” she denied. “I just didn’t need it anymore.”
He ignored her attempt to resist him because he had no intention of being thwarted in his inspection of her injury. Silly woman. The cut on her thumb had been deep and he wanted to make sure there was no redness or swelling.
It was bad enough that she’d likely been sent by the Fae and needed to avoid the English for some reason she didn’t choose to share. The very last thing he wanted to add to all that would be his having to care for her if she were brought low by a fever.
He turned her hand over, drawing it closer to the meager firelight even as she pulled against him.
Nothing. No redness, no swelling, not even a hint of her thumb ever having been marred with an injury.
He rubbed the pad of his thumb over the now unblemished spot and looked up. Immediately her gaze darted away, toward the ceiling, toward the door, anywhere but at him.
“I told you it wasn’t that bad to start with,” she muttered.
When she pulled against his hold again, he released her. She stumbled in her haste, sitting down heavily on her cot before she blew out the candle and quickly curled up under the blanket, her head on the pillow.
He studied her unmoving form for several minutes before settling down on his side to stare into the flames.
It wasn’t that bad to start with?
Of all the poor character accusations Drew might fully deserve, he could not be rightly accused of being a fool. He’d seen the cut on her thumb with his own two eyes. Her blood stained the hem of his plaid where he’d stanched the flow from the wound.
And now, with barely a day passed since the injury? It might as well never have happened.
Though he knew there could be only one explanation for such a thing, he simply didn’t like the explanation presenting itself.
She wasn’t merely sent by the Fae for purposes of their own. She likely was one of the Fae.
Ten
She was lost, hiding in a small dark hole, just seconds away from being found. Panic burned its way into her throat like a hot acid, bubbling up from her chest until she’d thought she’d drown in it. Still the echo of footsteps came closer and closer. She huddled in the dark, taking a backward step that sent her hurtling down into a black void. Falling. Helpless.
Leah awoke with a start, beads of perspiration dotting her forehead as she tried to remember where she was.
A dream. It was only a dream.
Unlike the ones her sister used to have, Leah’s dreams were nothing more than her unconscious mind trying to assimilate all her stress and worries. Still, her heart pounded against her chest like an animal trying to escape her body.
So much for rationalization.
She’d only just managed to recapture some small measure of normal calm when she heard the noise.
A rustling sound, soft and quiet, like something dragging over stone.
Her muscles tensed, freezing her in place, terror washing over her as though she were a child caught in a nightmare. Except that the noise she’d heard was real, not a part of the nightmare she’d awakened from.
Barely daring to breathe, she forced open her eyes and slowly shifted the woolen blanket away from her face. An ambient flickering light filtered through the room, cast by the flames burning in the little fireplace.
Straight ahead of her she could see a plain wooden door. Closed. Okay. She knew where she was. This was the room in the monastery. The room she shared with Andrew.
Somewhat reassured, she filled her lungs with a great gulp of air. That had to be it. He must have made the noise. She twisted a little more, peering down toward the fire where he should be sleeping.
Not sleeping.
She shifted to get a better view, pushing the blanket off her head.
What the hell?
If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he was practicing yoga poses.
Half-naked yoga poses.
Oh my.
Unable to take her eyes off him, she swallowed, her throat as dry as if she’d been stranded in the desert. If he wasn’t the most gorgeous thing she’d ever seen, she didn’t know what was. Her heart pounded in her chest again, but it wasn’t fear that set it to
racing this time.
It was Andrew.
Shirtless, with only his plaid wrapped low around his hips, he stood in perfect profile. The fire sent patterns of light and dark flickering over his back as he slid one foot behind him and lowered his body into the controlled lunge of the Warrior.
If she’d had him demonstrating those poses for her years ago, she might have ended up with a higher grade in that gym class. Or flunked entirely.
After a few moments, he returned to his original position. When he once again stretched out his arms, muscles rippled and she shivered, feeling as if a wave of heat flowed the length of her body.
It was only as he extended the other leg that she heard the noise again, as if his limb wouldn’t quite cooperate in the operation. His body shook, like he was off-balance, and she realized his face had contorted in a grimace as he pushed down into the lunge again.
“What are you doing?” The words were out before she could stop them.
His concentration broken, he collapsed to his knee, head bent as if in prayer.
“Go back to sleep, Leah. I dinna mean to awaken you.” He sounded winded when he spoke, as if he’d been at this for a long time.
“You didn’t wake me. I had a nightmare.” She pushed herself up to sit, letting the blanket fall off her shoulders. She was much too warm to need it at the moment anyway. “What were you doing? Was that yoga?”
He didn’t answer right away and for a moment she wondered if he’d even heard her question. Instead, he pushed himself to stand and, keeping his back to her, he clasped his hands behind him while staring into the fire.
“I doona ken the name of what I do. Many years ago, I took wounds in battle. My muscles stiffen if I doona work to keep them active.”
A logical explanation. Of course anyone at any time could figure out how to bend and stretch their bodies. Her brain must have been deprived of more oxygen in that river than she’d thought to come up with something so ridiculous as to assume he was practicing yoga poses.
And yet, his movements had seemed so fluid, so structured, so . . . classically eastern.
As she mulled over his explanation, he turned to face her, the firelight glinting off his bare chest, highlighting the contours of sheer muscled beauty. Perfection if not for the silvery scar jaggedly cutting a path that began at his shoulder and disappeared beneath the low-hanging waist of his plaid.
She wondered briefly that she hadn’t noticed the scar night before last when his shirt had been draped across a bush to dry. Of course, he’d kept his plaid secured over that side of his body, or certainly she would have. It wasn’t the sort of thing she could easily miss.
“That must have been some battle.” And he must have been one lucky guy to have survived it.
“This?” His hand traced the path the scar took down his left side. “Different battle.”
He’d been wounded in battle more than once. Hello? Fourteenth century, she reminded herself. The history books wouldn’t call it a brutal time for nothing.
“You should try to go back to sleep. The sun will be up soon and we’ll need to be on our way.” He pulled on his boots as he spoke without looking in her direction.
She nodded her understanding, still unable to drag her eyes from his bare chest as if she’d never been taught the first thing about manners.
He waited for a moment more and then caught up his shirt from the little stool where it lay. With a flick and a flutter, the linen closed down over the sight Leah found so fascinating and, at last, the spell was broken. She leaned her head back against the wall and stared up at the ceiling, eyes closed, still envisioning him shirtless as if the image had been burned into her eyelids.
Good thing he’d had his plaid on or she might have been tempted to . . .
The sound of the door opening wiped the vision from her mind.
“Where are you going?”
Andrew smiled at her from the doorway.
“The monks rise well before the sun and I’ve arrangements to make before we leave. You should try to go back to sleep for a little longer.” With that, he was gone.
Right. Sleep. Like there was any chance she could sleep now, with all those totally inappropriate thoughts about Andrew and his chiseled naked chest dancing through her head.
Even if she could manage to put that out of her thoughts, there were plenty of other worries to keep her eyes wide open, from how many days of travel remained before they arrived at Dun Ard all the way up to and including what sort of reception she might find when she reached her destination. And to top it all off? English soldiers running around somewhere here in the monastery. Not just any English soldiers, mind you, but ones who had traveled from England with the man Richard had decided she should marry. English soldiers who were looking for her, whether they knew it or not.
Maybe even searching right this minute. Searching for a woman who matched her description. And if they discovered her? They’d drag her butt back to MacQuarrie Keep before she had the chance to find the help her family so desperately awaited, and Grandpa Hugh would have absolutely zero chance of survival locked away in the auld tower.
No, there’d be no more sleep for her this morning.
Tossing away the woolen blanket, she clambered off the bed and looked around the little room, her gaze settling on the only piece of furniture other than the bed.
The desk, obviously made from solid wood, turned out to be considerably heavier than it looked.
It took some effort to drag it in front of the door, but once it was done, she felt better. Granted, if the soldiers did come and demand entrance, it wouldn’t slow them down them for long. Still, it was the best she could do right now.
She stood a few moments longer, staring at her handiwork, as she rubbed the pendant she wore between her thumb and forefinger. If only Andrew were at her side.
“Well, this is stupid,” she muttered, pushing her hair out of her face. It was irrational to wish for Andrew. If the soldiers actually came for her, his being there couldn’t very well stop them.
For a fact there would be no going back to sleep, but simply standing in the middle of the room stressing over what was to come was absolutely crazy-making.
She whipped the blanket off the bed and folded it neatly before gathering Andrew’s things off the floor and doing the same with them.
If nothing else, she could see to it that everything was in readiness to leave as soon as he returned.
Drew strode the length of the hallway and took the winding steps down to the main level, regret pounding in his head.
The only bright spot in his life at the moment was that his sister-in-law had been right. The stretching poses she’d shown him had helped his leg a little.
Now if he could only find a stretch to soothe his wounded pride.
He would give anything not to have woken Leah. Anything to take back her having seen him.
Though, if she’d had a nightmare as she claimed, it might have been equally upsetting for her to have awakened to find herself alone.
Equally upsetting? Hardly. He was fooling himself to even attempt that rationalization. He hadn’t missed her staring at the hideous scars on his chest. She hadn’t been able to tear her eyes away from the marks, her mouth hanging open as if there were no words to account for his disfigurement.
And she hadn’t even seen the worst of it, not by any stretch. If the woman thought his chest wounds distasteful, the one stretching from his thigh to his hip would send her screaming from the—
Stop it!
He paused in midstep, struggling to clear his thoughts and relax his fisted hands.
What Leah thought was of no consequence to him. He might be hideous but she might well be Fae, and given a choice between the two? There was no question which he found more distasteful.
Resolved, he continued to the great hall, stopping in front of a small wooden box that sat near the door. The silver coins he pulled from his sporran landed with a dull thud when he dropped them thro
ugh the slot into the coffer. Either the priory hadn’t seen many guests of late or their guests hadn’t felt obliged to contribute to the brothers’ good work.
“Blessings on you for your continued generosity, Andrew.”
Drew spun around to find Brother John standing behind him. How the old monk could move so silently was beyond his reason, but it wasn’t the first time the prior had managed to surprise him.
“You’ll be on yer way soon?”
Drew nodded his answer. The sooner they were away from the priory, the better.
“Do you think I might trouble yer kitchens for victuals to carry with us this day?” While he could easily go a full day without stopping to eat, he wasn’t so sure about his traveling companion. A simple fare of bread and cheese would enable them to keep moving without the need for a break to prepare a meal.
“It’s no trouble. I’ll see to it myself. Is there anything else we might do to assist you and yer lady?”
Actually, there was something else.
“I would be grateful for the loan of a mount for my wife.” Not having to ride double should increase the ground they could cover each day. “I’ll have it returned to you as soon as possible.”
In answer, the prior clapped his hands twice and the young novice Drew had seen last night came running down the hall as if he’d been waiting behind a nearby door for exactly such a summons.
“Have the stables make ready our guest’s horse and tell the stable master to choose one of our gentler mounts for Lady MacAlister. Hurry now, Rufus. Our guests have a long day ahead of them and are anxious to be on their way.”
“My thanks, Brother John.”
“No trouble at all, lad. I’ll see to it that the kitchens make ready a light repast to carry along with you. It’ll be waiting with yer mounts when you and yer lady are ready to depart.”
Drew bobbed his head respectfully before taking his leave of the prior and heading back upstairs to the room he shared with Leah.
Other than Brother John and young Rufus, no one appeared to be up and about yet, a fact Drew took as a positive sign. If he could just get Leah up and moving quickly, they might be fortunate enough to be on their way without encountering Moreland or his men again.
Healing the Highlander Page 8
