by Aileen Adams
“If that is what you feel is best.” She was quick to braid her hair, which had hung loose about her head while she’d slept and healed.
He cast a skeptical glance in her direction. “No argument?”
“What is there to argue? You are much better aware of our situation than I. I have barely been awake for days. How long has it been?”
“Nearly three in all,” he grunted, opening the door which led outside to look in both directions.
Her heart began to race, sickeningly so. “What has happened? Are we in greater danger?” To think, she had considered herself fortunate to awaken. What had she awoken to?
“Greater than before?” He looked back over his shoulder, snickering. “We were always in danger, in case you’ve forgotten—or, rather, I was.”
By his own doing. Regardless of his motivation for why he’d taken her, he was the reason for the danger. No one else.
Even the growing affection she held toward him did not blind her to this, though she managed to bite back a tart response.
He turned toward her and closed the door. “No. There is no greater danger than there ever has been. It is merely that we ought to make haste. We’ve lost quite a lot of time, and your Marquis will wonder what has delayed your arrival.”
“And your brother is waiting for you to free him,” she added.
“Aye, that, as well,” he admitted before crouching by her side.
The healer woman was out in the garden, gathering fresh herbs to aid in replenishing what she’d used to treat Ysmaine’s wound.
He spoke in a near-whisper. “I would not wish to take further advantage of her generosity. And if there is chance of discovery, I would not wish to endanger her simply because she was of assistance.”
“Yes, of course.” She allowed him to help her to her feet, the leg which had ached and burned so unthinkably only days earlier was tender, yes, and a bit weak, but she could put weight on it without wanting to scream in agony.
An improvement, to be sure.
“The woman has provided poultice and tincture for you,” he explained as he sheathed his sword.
No, not his sword, not truly. The guard’s sword.
She averted her eyes, once again remembering the vivid images of her nightmare. How the red tunic had turned even darker thanks to his blood. How a sword had sunk into his flesh with a wet, sucking sound she would never forget.
How could she so clearly remember something which had not been real?
“Are ye well, lass?” Quinn asked, coming near. He watched her with an appraising eye. It was clear he would not easily believe her.
“Yes, I am. Truly. I feel much more like myself now.”
“Why do ye appear so fretful, then?”
“What is there not to be fretful over?” she countered, determined to evade his questions. What would he think if he knew what she had dreamt? Likely that she was mad, or at least a daft, silly woman.
“Are ye truly well? You are not lying to me, as before?”
She bristled at his accusatory tone. “I did not mean to lie. I merely wanted—”
“It matters not,” he spat, turning back to where he’d begun packing the small vials and bottles the healer had provided.
“It does matter,” she insisted, following him and standing with her face close to his in order to force his attention. “I thought I was helping you. I admit, I did not wish for you to believe me weak. To become cross with me for slowing us.”
He rolled his eyes, scoffing at her excuses. “As though I would behave so.”
“As though you would not!”
“When have I given ye reason to believe so? When have I been cruel to ye?”
She laughed. “Where shall I begin?”
He drew a deep breath, his chest expanding. “I nearly broke my own neck getting ye here in the midst of a roaring rainstorm, exposed us both to the curiosity of the villages when I asked where to find the healer. I told the woman she might have anything she wished, anything I had, if only she would see to it that ye were healed.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Was this true? She had no memory of their arrival at the healer’s home, no memory of the ride through a storm. Only of waking in the small, modest house with its walls covered in herbs and its hearth blazing with a fire which carried an odor she’d never known.
“You did all of that?” she whispered, taken aback.
His jaw clenched and unclenched in turn, but he nodded. “Aye,” was his grunted reply.
“You did that for me?” Could it be? Could his feelings toward her have begun to warm, as hers had toward him? Had she been unaware of that, too, while she slept?
She held her breath, waiting. Hoping. All he need do was tell her she’d come to mean more to him than a means of obtaining ransom. Certainly, they could find a way together to free his brother without resorting to a ransom demand.
Nothing would be too much if it meant repaying him for saving her life.
He tied a length of rope around the pack, securing the contents before slinging the lot onto his back. “Aye,” he grunted with a careless shrug. “After all, I need ye if I plan to collect my ransom.”
Just like that, he threw her from the heights of hope to the bitter depths of disappointment. How foolish she’d been. Naturally, he’d only been concerned as far as her value in freeing his brother.
There was nothing more between them than that.
“I’m certain he’ll be happy to get his bride in one piece,” he added as he went to the door.
“His bride?” she asked with a frown.
Something in her voice caused him to turn back before he opened the door. “Yes. His bride. You, lass.”
She could not help but laugh. That was what he believed? And thanks to the blow he’d delivered her heart, there was more than a touch of bitterness in her laughter. “I am not traveling to France in order to marry the Marquis. What gave you that idea?”
He blinked rapidly. “You aren’t?”
“No!” It was as though he refused to hear her. “I never told you that was the case. Only that I had business to settle with him there. That business is not marriage.”
18
Quinn felt the breath leave his lungs, as though he had fallen from the saddle and landed on his back. He’d done it more than once and knew all too well that sudden rush of air from his body, and the sickening moment when pulling in another breath had been impossible.
He suffered the same sensation while standing with his hand on the door’s leather latch. Her announcement had sent the world shattering to pieces around him, opening the door seemed beyond his abilities.
All this time, he had acted while under the impression that the lass was to be the Marquis’s bride. A man waiting on his bride would pay any price set on the woman’s head, would he not?
But the Marquis was not awaiting his bride.
This cast everything in a new light, and that light did not favor Quinn’s plan.
“What is your business, then?” he asked, careful to keep his voice low. He wanted nothing more than to shake her, to demand she make things clear. That would merely frighten the lass and make it more difficult than ever to receive an answer.
“It is none of your concern,” she replied, arching her brows. “He is waiting for me, that is all.”
“Are ye important to him in some way?” Quinn demanded.
“He sent two guards to escort me to him,” she reminded him. “As I told you before, the first guard died early into the journey at the hands of a thief.” Her brows all but left her forehead when she said this, an unspoken reminder that he was little better than that unknown man in her eyes.
He would merely have to take a chance and continue on their way. After all, she was important enough to him that he went to the trouble. Perhaps she had a point in that.
Whose fault was it that he’d believed she was his bride-to-be? None but his own, as he had never asked her to explain the nature of her acquaintance with t
he man. He had assumed.
“Come now,” he grumbled, opening the door. “We had best be on our way.”
When he noted her limping gait, guilt tugged at his conscience. “Here.” He offered her his arm on which to lean.
She merely tossed her head. “No, thank you. I can walk on my own.”
“Ye don’t look as though you’re doing a very good job of it,” he observed as she limped from the house and out to the small garden in front. To her credit, she kept her head high. A proud lass, to be certain, even after she had been brought so low by illness.
The healer had just finished her work and was wiping dirty hands on the hem of her kirtle. “You’ll be leaving me, then,” she observed as she stood, a basket over one arm, having worked in a garden filled with plants the likes of which Quinn had never seen.
He would have mistaken most of it for common weeds had he come across it on the side of the road, but she had planted it all in neat, orderly rows and obviously tended to it with some care. It was her livelihood, he reasoned, and thus in her best interest to do so.
“We have already taken advantage of your kindness for far too long,” Quinn reminded her, quick to take the healer’s supplies to the horse and add them to the rest of what he’d already packed. They would leave one of the pair behind, as Ysmaine would ride with him.
A beautiful horse was the least of what he could leave for the woman who had done so much for them, and she agreed, having also accepted a few pence for her troubles.
He grumbled to himself out of impatience as Ysmaine took the woman’s hands. “Thank you,” she whispered in a tremulous voice. “I would have died were it not for you.”
“And for him,” the healer reminded her, raising her voice slightly to be overheard.
Quinn snorted. “I merely rode the horse.”
“Just the same, thank you,” Ysmaine insisted. “I wish there was something more I could give to you. At least a fair price for having spent the days in your home.”
“I took care of it,” Quinn muttered, joining them. “We had best be on our way, or have ye forgotten you’re expected somewhere?” It rankled him terribly that he had been so wrong. How could he have been so foolish? What had in his mind been a sizable ransom dwindled in the harsh, cold light of truth.
“Perhaps we shall meet again,” the woman suggested with a smile. “One never knows.”
“Oh, I hope we do.” Ysmaine looked back over her shoulder at the healer as Quinn all but dragged her to the horse.
“Remember,” the woman called out, “keep the bandage clean and dry. You ought to be able to go without it in another two or three days.”
“I will remember,” Ysmaine promised. Only then did she turn her attention away from the woman and toward the single saddled horse who dug at the ground and snorted with impatience.
Quinn thought he knew how the beast felt.
“Why only a single horse?” Ysmaine whispered, looking about herself, then, with a gasp of horror, “Did something happen to the other? How much did I sleep through?”
“Nay, lass,” Quinn replied. “She didna tell ye, did she?”
“Tell me what?” she asked, eyes wide and unknowing.
“You’ll be riding with me, sideways in the saddle, for ye should not ride astride and open the wound once again.” He did not wait for her to reply or even allow her a minute to absorb the information before taking her by the waist and lifting her onto the horse’s back.
“I’m certain I can manage on my own,” she sputtered, then turned a shade of red which brought to mind her fever. This was not the result of illness, however, and he knew it, what was worse, she knew he knew, which only served to darken her cheeks further.
“We’ve only another day to ride,” he explained, gruff and rather abrupt as he adjusted himself behind her. He had not foreseen how rather pleasant, and therefore unpleasant, it would be to ride so near her warm, soft body.
Knowing she was not to be another man’s bride made her all the more desirable, as though an invisible wall had fallen between them, leaving no further barriers.
Though that did little to erase past betrayal from his memory. Would that it might.
Ysmaine made a fuss of arranging her kirtle, pulling it close to her legs. “I do not approve of this course of action,” she muttered, half to herself. “I find this quite unnecessary.”
“I do not recall asking for your approval,” was Quinn’s sharp reply. “And I have no great desire to wait even longer while ye recover from yet another illness, which means it is a wiser course of action by far for ye to ride in this fashion.”
“I might have been able to ride on my own, seated sideways in the saddle,” she protested.
“I would not take such a risk while you are still not entirely in full health. Ye might fall backward from the saddle, riding sideways.”
She snorted. “You have little confidence in me.”
“That is correct.” He need not look at her to know she fumed with ill-concealed rage. This pleased him, for she had already proven far more troublesome than she was worth.
That worth having decreased in a matter of moments.
He ought to have asked, to have made certain. Rodric would have, or Brice. They would have shown more wisdom, more strategy. They would never have rushed headlong into such a treacherous endeavor, especially one with a questionable result.
With one last nod toward the healer, who waited in the shadow of her door for their departure, he pressed his heels to the horse’s sides, and they were on their way. The sun had barely risen, and the woman had assured him they would reach Burghead by evening if they rode at a stately pace and kept to a minimum their stops along the way.
In light of the storm through which he’d fought to reach the village, the clear, sweet air and bright sunshine which reigned on the morning of their departure seemed akin to nothing less than Heaven itself. It was the sort of morning through which any rider would prefer to travel.
Ysmaine made a point of looking behind them, watching the road. “What are ye looking for?” he asked, his eyes trained on the road ahead.
“I am not looking for anything. I am merely watching to ensure we are not followed.”
“I highly doubt that will be the case, and I would know better,” he reminded her. “You were unaware of the men in the village, with whom I spoke. I believe I would have better understanding of them than ye, seeing as you have no memory of the ride.”
“Be that as it may,” she grumbled, “I would just as soon keep watch to ensure they are not over-curious as to our progress. You are dressed as a guard, carrying a sword which bears the insignia of a great French family. Certainly, they would be entitled to their curiosity.”
“They cannot know I am not who I appear to be,” he insisted, though he felt little of the confidence he attempted to express.
She snorted, sending his confidence to lower depths than ever before. “You could not pretend to be anything other than a Highlander if you tried every day for the entirety of your life. It matters not what you wear. Your brogue gives you away, as does your coloring.”
“I wore a hat,” he reminded her, touching his fingers to the brim.
“Little good it does,” she sighed. “It matters not. You are a Highlander, through and through.”
“You need not sound as though this is a slight against my character.”
“I intend no such thing. After all, my father was a member of Clan Fraser, and I spent my life in the Highlands. I would rather spend such a journey as this in the company of a Highlander than anyone else.”
“Even if the Highlander in question is one who took ye against your will?” he murmured, the sting gone from his words.
She stiffened, surprised, then allowed a brief, breathless chuckle to escape. “You are also someone who saved my life on no fewer than two occasions. You’ve kept me fed and have sat up at night to ensure my safety. I ask myself if one of the two guards assigned to escort me would have ta
ken such pains.”
She turned her attention to the road ahead of them, stirring up the scent from her hair and skin as she moved. Would that she were not so enticing. Would that he were capable of making sense of the conflicting opinions she stirred to life.
He would never have believed it possible to want someone so much while wanting so much to tell them to go to the devil. She set his teeth on edge with her sharp observations, with her way of speaking exactly what was in his mind.
It was hardly fitting for a mere woman to be aware of a man’s misgivings. She ought not know how he questioned himself. How he looked back upon his actions for evidence of what he might have done differently.
The woods thinned to the point of nonexistence, opening to wide, fresh, green countryside. He heard her sigh.
“What is it?” he dared ask, glancing at her to find a frown, a glistening eye.
She shook her head. “Nothing very much. I had only thought of how I will miss this, the land, that is.” As though there were cause to fear he might misunderstand and believe she spoke of their travels.
How she wounded his pride, and how he resented his weakness.
He opened his mouth, prepared to deliver a stinging response, but the tremble of her chin made him think twice. He cursed his thick, clumsy tongue as he stuttered, trying to find something to say.
“I’m certain there are lovely places in France,” he offered. “It cannot be so different from home.”
“Can you truly imagine anything as lovely as this?” she whispered, her head slowly turning from one side to the other as she took in the majesty surrounding them.
He did the same, slowing the horse a bit so he might be better able to see what Ysmaine saw. To the west, a large bay which flowed in from the North Sea. The water would have been calm were it not for the dozens of fishing boats coming in with the morning’s catch, flocks of hungry birds following their progress in hopes of securing a bit to eat from the nets.
The sea seemed to stretch on forever, and the breeze which came off it and traveled over ground until it reached the pair of riders carried the scent of fish and salt. It was a scent Quinn had always loved, having spent much of his life far from the sea—the smell of it meant a voyage, something exciting and new.
