by Aileen Adams
“What did ye think about while ye were out there?”
“Many things.” He chuckled at himself, at the memory. When he recalled how unhappy he’d been, how lonely, the idea of wasting even a moment in anger while this woman was at his side was utterly daft. “Most nights, I thought about how my life would never be what I’d once wished for it.”
She moved closer, a bit at a time, until she was near enough to cup his scarred cheek. He closed his eyes as he had the first time, at Padraig’s, allowing himself to simply feel her touch.
“I wish I had been there with ye,” she whispered. “Would that I might have eased some of that loneliness for ye.”
“Ye have now.” He turned his head to the side, touching his lips to her palm. “That is all that matters. And back then, I preferred being alone. No one to stare at me or be frightened by me.”
“Being alone and feeling lonely are not the same,” she informed him, and he asked himself how she sounded so certain about that of which she spoke.
He might have asked were it not for their arrival at the Duncan manor house.
Fenella’s mouth fell open as she took in the size of the place. From where he lay, he could make out the crenelated roof, the towers from which guards watched with torches in hand.
A man’s voice carried to the cart. “Here ye are. I was beginning to fear you’d had trouble.” Jake Duncan appeared beside him.
“As if you never made such a ride, Jake.” A woman’s head bobbed up beside Jake’s, one whose brow furrowed in deep frown lines. “I’m certain they could not put on speed for fear of tossing him about in the cart; as I told you throughout the day.”
Then, she smiled. “I am Sarah Duncan, and I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Minutes later, Jake and one of his men—Maccay, Donnan thought the name was—carried him inside on a sheet, one man taking two corners at a time.
“I can walk,” he grumbled, feeling like a fool. What man wished to be carried by two other men?
Maccay merely laughed. “Would ye like to tell Sarah ye can walk? I am in no mood to hear her shouting the house down.”
Jake chuckled. “Shh. Ye know how well she can hear.” Then, he looked down at Donnan. “Tis best ye do not try to walk. We both know you cannot yet—or should not, rather. Remember, I sewed the wound shut. I know how large and how deep it is. And between the two of us, I am not certain of my sewing skills.”
“Where is Fenella?” he asked as they carried him up the stairs, with Sarah calling out instruction to unseen helpers, requesting all manner of items.
Suddenly, there came a cry. Jake, who walked back up the stairs with one end of Donnan’s sheet in his hands, winced as he looked down onto the entry hall.
“What was that?” Donnan asked, almost certain he knew without being told.
“Fenella. She is all right. I expect she is simply tired.” Jake’s voice betrayed something far more grim.
“What happened?” He struggled to sit up.
“Do not!” Jake barked, reminding Donnan of a commander on the battlefield. “She fell. That is all. Someone will help her to a bed, where she can rest.”
It was at least an hour before Sarah paid a visit to him in the bedchamber where Jake and Maccay had delivered him. In that time, a fire had been lit, extra pillows brought in, steaming broth and strong tea left by his bedside.
There was more activity outside the door, and all he could do was curse the fact that he was unable to rise and see what caused the commotion.
When Sarah arrived, she looked disheveled and fatigued.
“Ye ought to be the one in this bed,” he muttered, the effects of the tincture which had been added to the broth loosening his tongue. Rarely did he have the courage to speak so openly to a woman, and a strange one, at that.
“Would that I were.” She pressed her hands to the small of her back with a groan, albeit a happy one. “My third. One would imagine I would be better able to take the strain.”
“Our presence canna help ye,” he observed by way of apology.
“Nonsense. If it weren’t for you, the Camerons might have done much worse. You could have easily taken Fenella home to her father and gone on about your life, but you did not.” She patted the back of his hand. “You did a good thing. We all owe you a debt of gratitude.”
“Fenella. Where is she? What happened to her?”
Sarah merely clucked her tongue as she rolled him onto his side and cut away the bandages. “Jake did not do as clumsy a job as he thought,” she murmured, the pressure as she wiped away the poultice making him wince. “As for Fenella, a long sleep and hot food ought to do her a world of good.”
“I told her to rest,” he growled.
“Yes, well, Highlanders rarely do as told,” Sarah chuckled as she continued to work.
27
When Fenella first opened her eyes, she did not remember where she was nor anything about why she would be in a strange bed, a strange room.
The heavy bedcurtains above her head and hanging along the bed’s four wooden posters were a deep shade of green, matching the green of the blanket someone had tucked carefully around her body.
A fire burned across the room in a small fireplace, alongside which sat a chair, and a woman with blond curls whose chin rested on her chest as she slept.
Who was that?
Where was she?
Think, think. Fenella closed her eyes, willing herself to breathe slowly and think clearly.
She’d been with… Donnan.
Eyes open again, she sat upright. “Where is Donnan?”
The woman in the chair nearly fell to the floor. “What? Who?” She looked about herself and finally saw Fenella. “Och, you nearly killed me,” she whispered.
“Who are you? Where is Donnan?”
“Do not fear.” The woman rose. “My name is Heather Duncan. Jake is my husband.”
Fenella’s heartbeat slowed a bit at this. “Jake saved Donnan’s life.”
“You saved Donnan’s life,” Heather smiled as she sat on the bed. “Donnan is well, better every day. There was no infection. He ought to be up and around today, perhaps tomorrow.”
The relief washing over Fenella all but knocked her down onto the pillows again. Donnan was well. No illness, no infection. He was going to be out of bed—
“Today?” she whispered with a frown. “So soon?”
Heather winced. “It isn’t so very soon.”
“It is! He was wounded… yesterday? Nay, the day before.”
“Fenella.” Heather shook her head. “I know this will shock you, but you have been ill for eight days. Sleeping most of the time.”
Fenella blinked hard, rapidly. “Eight days?”
“You were quite ill,” Heather explained, her voice low. “Even Sarah did not see it on your arrival.”
“What happened to me?” She put a hand to her throat, which was quite dry.
Heather handed her a small cup from the bedside table, and she drank greedily. “You had a fever for several days, quite high. We bathed you, changed you, even poured fluids down your throat when we could not keep you awake long enough for you to drink or take broth.”
“Och, I am sorry to have been such a trouble to ye all.”
“It was no trouble,” Heather smiled. “You must have been weakened and exhausted from everything you went through. But what you did? You might have been the savior of our clans. There is no thanking you enough—you or Donnan.”
“He must have worried over me,” she murmured.
“He demanded to see you more than once, but Sarah would not hear of it,” Heather explained with a wry smile. “They had quite a row over it.”
“Which of them won?”
“Sarah. Which is why Donnan has not been out of bed yet. She threatened to bring in the men and tie his wrists and ankles to the bed if he did not stop fighting her.”
The idea of it made Fenella laugh, along with making her wish she had been there to see Donnan sp
utter in surprise and embarrassment.
For he would never cease reminding her he was in the right when he’d insisted she rest.
Heather sent for food before helping Fenella out of bed that she might walk about the room. Was this her normally strong body, so weak and trembling like a newborn foal? She stumbled more than once and needed to lean against the bed and rest before long.
“Forgive me,” she breathed, cheeks flaming in embarrassment.
Heather waved off her apology with a shake of her blond curls before getting to the work of combing out Fenella’s hair and braiding it. “You’ve been abed for many days. You will need time to strengthen. It is nothing to forgive. I am merely pleased to find you awake, and I am certain everyone else will be. You are regarded as a very important person here.”
“No one has ever called me important before,” Fenella confessed, closing her eyes as the comb moved through her hair. It was lovely to be taken care of.
“I would wager Donnan has.”
“You may lose that wager!”
They laughed together.
“If there is one thing I’ve learned, it is of the stubbornness of the Highland man,” Heather explained as Fenella dressed.
Again, she would borrow the clean kirtle of some other woman. It would be a treat to wear something of her own. Though she had left everything she owned in the world at Angus’s home. Not much, but it was all she had.
This reminded her. “Do ye know anything of the Camerons? What happened to them since Angus died?”
Heather’s brow furrowed as her sister’s did when she frowned. “You will wish to speak to Phillip and Jake over the matter. Riders come in two, three times a day to report. Whenever I’ve heard of a report, chances are there has already been a new report with other information.”
She would do just that, after a heavy meal which she ate as though it were her first ever. Days with only broth to live on had left her thinner than normal. Heather sat in her chair near the hearth, answering questions and asking many of her own. What made her decide to live among the Camerons? Was it frightening to be with them, knowing they might learn her secret? How long had she been in the stables before Donnan freed her?
These events seemed to have happened to another person, many years ago. She would rather not have spoken of it, but felt it was the least she could do after the care she’d received.
“Now,” Heather announced, rubbing her hands together once the platters were cleared of the cold roast, bread, cheese and stewed fruit the kitchen had generously sent up, “I suppose we ought to make your man’s life easier by showing you to him. I jested earlier over the row he had with Sarah, but my heart truly ached for him. He loves you so.”
A joyous buzzing filled Fenella’s head and seemed to move through her body. He loved her. What would her twelve-year-old self think if she knew this day would come? That the one person she loved truly and deeply, with all the strength and devotion of a young lass, loved her in return?
It was still slow going down the corridor, lined on both sides by door after door. She recalled dimly, as though through a haze in her mind, how imposing the house was from outside.
Otherwise, the memory of her arrival was broken at best. She must have already been ill at the time and had either refused to notice it or had been too taken with Donnan’s wound to care.
His door was well down the corridor from hers, leaving her no choice but to lean against the wall for a moment’s rest before entering his bedchamber. Would that he not know she still felt so weak.
Heather wore a knowing smile as she touched a finger to her lips and opened the door. “Might I enter?” she asked in a whisper.
“For once, one of ye asks if ye might enter the room before ye walk in,” Donnan grumbled, out of sight.
Fenella clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle her laughter, more out of relief than humor. He sounded like himself—strong, energetic, and brusque.
Heather waved Fenella in, then stepped aside to allow her to enter.
Donnan’s expression was what she might have guessed from his tone of voice, frowning, eyes narrowed to slits.
Until he saw her.
And he held out his arms from where he sat in bed, pillows behind his back. He looked worlds better than he had; he’d been so gray, his voice barely more than a whisper.
She went to him, falling into his arms before remembering the care she needed to take. He merely shook his head as he held her fast, close to his chest.
“Dinna ever feel as though ye need to apologize for allowing me to hold ye,” he murmured against her ear. “Besides, t’was my back that was wounded.”
As though she could ever forget.
“Are ye well?” she asked, somehow able to speak over the lump in her throat.
“Better every day. Sarah believes I ought to be allowed out of bed today, perhaps tomorrow. I believe I ought to have been out of bed days ago.”
She laughed. “Heather told me of how difficult you made things.”
“Difficult? Because I wished to see ye?” He held her face in his hands, stroking her cheeks. “What of ye? They didna tell me of your waking.”
“I only woke this morning. To hear I missed so many days…”
“Och, remember, I know of it,” he reminded her as he stroked her hair, her shoulders, her back. As though he could not help the need to touch her, to prove she was there.
She did the same, running her hands over his hair, down to his neck, over his shoulders. “When you were wounded.”
“Aye, waking in Bronwen’s cottage without any memory of how I came to be there. Being told of that which I could not remember. ‘Tis a strange thing, indeed.”
“I caused ye grief,” she whispered. “Forgive me.”
“There is nothing to forgive,” he replied with an easy smile. “I will not even tell ye I was right, that ye ought to have taken care of yourself.”
“Ye waited all this time before bringing that up,” she observed, biting back a smile. “Longer than I thought ye would have.”
“I didna wish to mention it right away.” They shared a quiet laugh, gazing into the other’s eyes.
She’d never felt such a sense of complete peace. It was still difficult to believe that he loved her, and that he would allow her to love him.
“I never had the chance to ask whether ye meant what ye said that day,” he murmured, winding the end of her braid around his finger.
“What I said?”
“That…” He cleared his throat. “That ye would have me, if I asked ye to marry me.”
Her heart swelled. “I did say that, did I not?”
“Aye. Ye did.”
There was no sense making light of things any longer. “I meant it with all my heart,” she whispered, her eyes filling with tears.
“Even now?” he asked with a grimace.
“What does that mean?”
“Now that we aren’t in danger. Now that it doesn’t appear as though I’m in danger of dying—today, at any rate,” he added. “In moments such as that, when I told ye I loved ye and wished to be your husband, it appeared as though I was about to die. Ye might have thought the same and accepted me—”
Anything he wished to say after that died when she sealed his mouth with her own. He groaned, sinking his hands into her hair, gently nibbling her lips until her head spun and her breath came in shallow gasps.
It would take time, she decided when the kiss ended, and they were both flustered and breathless, flushed and disheveled. Time to heal him. Like the scars on his face, those on his heart went deep.
She had all the time in the world, so long as it meant he would belong to her, and she to him. Piece by piece, she would help him put himself back together.
“I meant it,” she gasped, utterly undone by him. “I wish to be your wife as I always have.”
“I did climb the tree that day to impress ye,” he admitted with a sheepish smile, and then, at that moment, he was the lad she’d loved
so desperately in those days. All the years of hardening fell away for a brief, shining moment and he was himself again.
“I knew ye did, even at the time.” She giggled.
“I had forgotten that, perhaps because the memory of what Da did to me afterward was much stronger.” He sighed, stroking her hair again. “How could I forget ye?”
“Do not let it worry ye,” she whispered with a smile. “I never forgot.”
28
“By all reports, the encampment around the Cameron house is no more,” Jake announced, sounding satisfied. “From what I’ve been told, those who left their clans to join with Cameron either give the excuse that they had no other choice, or that they truly believed what Angus told them about wishing to unite us.”
Phillip scoffed. “A likely story.”
“If I may,” Donnan replied, careful not to insult his generous host, “I believe them. What their lairds to do them is another matter, but I believe they are sincere.”
Phillip was a fair man, and seemed to take no offense to his guest’s dissent. “What makes you say this?” he asked, sitting back in the chair behind his work table.
The surface was covered in parchment—records of the clan’s land holdings, ledgers, lists of what each house in the village produced. Phillip Duncan was a busy man. It was no wonder, then, that he left the training and use of the clan’s men to his brother.
“I spoke with some of the men,” Donnan explained. “Only a few, but I observed many of the rest. They appeared overwhelmed, ye could say. As though they’d not been aware of what they were agreeing to do before leaving home. The camp reminded me of what I saw during the war. Men preparing their weapons, discussing strategy. When these lads, and they were lads, the outsiders, all young men—saw what was around us, they looked as though they’d much rather have never come.”
He thought back to that night in Angus’s study. “And the man had a way with words,” Donnan admitted. He could afford to be generous to the man he’d killed, now that he was dead and no longer a threat. “He could convince someone he meant what he said if they were young enough to not question him. Ye know how young men can be. They have ideals. They wish to see things better than the way they are. Whoever the Camerons managed to lure away from home and onto their lands, they did so by appealing to those ideals. Let us unite, let us rule ourselves for the good of all rather than simply the good of a clan.”
