by Jackie Ivie
“What?”
“Carrick. The younger. He was handling himself well, and then you had to go and force yourself into the midst of battle, wearing little more than a whiff of cloth. Such a thing did na’ go unnoted. By anyone. You nearly got him killed. Me, as well.”
“How many…died?” Sybil asked.
“Four. Of the unlucky ones. None of mine.”
“Sir Ian?”
“The runt was unlucky. Dead. He’ll na’ bother us again. The rest of his men are trussed up, awaiting my decision on their fate.”
“None of Clan Danzel died?” Sybil knew it was shock filling her. There had been too much battling with real weapons for none to have perished.
“’Tis a good thing, too. We’ve wounded, though. Although I will na’ say much for Carrick’s if you canna’ assist.”
“Take me to him.”
“Na’ without some clothing on you first.”
Sybil frowned. Swallowed. That made the lump in her throat twinge, as well as sent the thrumming tempo of her heartbeat in her temples to painful thuds. The lout who’d hit her had done a fine job of it. She reached up to touch her fingertips to the large lump just above her left eye and winced as she connected with the size of it.
“Does it pain overmuch?” Vincent asked. His voice was gruff and off-sounding again. “Looks powerfully painful. Na’ so much as the lout that gave it. He will na’ awaken.” Vincent flexed his fist several times and looked slantwise at her from beneath his lashes. “For some time, anyway. I saw to that.”
“You?”
“Any man hits my lady, he pays. Fully. With a pound of flesh.”
The swell of warmth that hit her was thunderous in intensity and depth. Sybil sat there and experienced all of it.
“Do you have a potion for it?”
“For a blow to his head?”
“Nae.” He was smiling as he reached out and lifted her chin, making her face him. Since she was on her knees and he was sitting, they were the exact height, making it more intense for some reason. “A potion for your bump. ’Tis all swelled up and a nice shade of black and blue. ’Twill match your cloak. When you don it.”
“What?”
“I need you to see to my clansman, Carrick the Younger. We gave him whiskey. All it did was make him a drunkard who is in pain. He needs a stronger will.”
“Where is he?” Sybil shoved the blanket folds apart and went onto her hands and knees, ignoring the pounding beat in her head in order to get to her trunk of medicines. And then he opened his mouth and changed everything.
“Oh, nae. Na’ yet. I will na’ allow you from this tent again without your cloak. And a new little pink-colored shift thing that is na’ torn at the neckline. As well as one of your sackcloth dresses. Mayhap two. That might work.”
“Work at what?” Sybil’s voice held no inflection. She didn’t know if he’d recognize it for what it was or not. He’d spent all this time talking when there were wounded to attend to?
“I may have you don a head covering as well. It will na’ do to have jealousy in my camp.”
Sybil was speechless. She was having trouble moving, too. She felt locked in place on her hands and knees with her back to him. Her position wasn’t going unnoticed by any part of her as ripples of sensation went over every pore, tightening her nipples and making the filmy fabric of her chemise feel exotic and sensual. It must be due to her medication of him. That’s the reason he craved her still. It had to be.
“I doona’ ken what will happen with the men next, and I’ve tired of acting the part of jealous spouse. Aside from which my hands smart.”
“Wh—at? Where?” Jealous. He’d just called himself jealous. Her head couldn’t contain the realization as her heartbeat rose to a such a vicious tempo it filled her ears, overriding everything else. Strangely, though, the thudding had nothing to do with pain and everything to do with light and joy and an ecstasy approaching bliss. Sybil turned toward him, clasping her jar close to her as she did so.
“Here.” He held out both fisted hands toward her, showing the angry red-colored knuckles where he’d lost skin. The trunk lid fell. Her eyes were wide as they locked with his.
“What have you done to them?”
“I just told you. I’ve been playing the part of jealous husband.”
“This requires hitting?” Jealous. He said it again, she told herself.
“I dinna’ have any other weapon handy.”
“Why doona’ you wear gloves?”
“I dinna’ have time. I had men chasing my barely clad wife and more than enough to do with stopping them and keeping my head. Will you please don some clothing? I am na’ immune,” he said.
“Now?”
He smiled slightly, and then sobered. “Carrick the Younger awaits,” he replied.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Carrick the Younger was little older than she was. He had a thatch of thick black hair, red-rimmed eyes of a light brown color, and a winsome face that was going to get him far with the pursuit of lasses. That was easy to spot even if he had it scrunched in agony as she approached. He was lying atop one of their pallets and leaning against a fallen log, showing a lean physique that should have helped him in dodging the blow that looked to have broken his ankle and the skin. He didn’t look a thing like his sire, Carrick the Elder, although she already had him pegged before Vincent spoke to him. That man’s worry was as large as he was.
The elder Carrick hadn’t a bit of pleasantness attached to a face that looked to have broken a nose at least once, big puffy lips, and overhanging eyelids that shadowed any hint of light brown color they might have. He’d never had hair the midnight shade of his son. Although he was balding, his hair was instead a dark red color, resembling a deep sunset.
Sybil assumed this meant one of two things. Either Carrick the Younger took after his mother, or he had been sired by someone else than Carrick the Elder. She put the immediate observation aside. She didn’t truly care, and she had enough to handle with Vincent’s closeness, combined with what he’d just admitted.
Jealous. Her husband was jealous…of her? Was such a thing possible?
The elder Carrick approached her, looking even more immense. Although not as tall as Vincent, he was easily as broad, with hands resembling loaves of bread that had just been pounded down from their first rise, and they were about as lumpy. Sybil eyed the hands he held out to her the moment she got there and heard his name but wasn’t given any option to greet him, as he simply reached for her, plucked her up, and walked over the four kneeling comrades of Carrick the Younger that had all imbibed too freely. That was probably the reason for the lad’s continued distress. He’d shared the whiskey.
“My lady, you can heal my son?” The man holding her boomed the query into her ear with a voice as loud as he was large. And as discordant.
“Only the Lord can do such a thing,” she replied and fought the urge to scrunch up a shoulder. It wouldn’t have been possible anyway. The way his hands clenched made any movement hopeless.
“Carrick, unhand the wife,” Vincent said at her other side in a growl of sound.
Sybil gasped at the intent behind those few words. She knew the man holding her heard it, too. He lowered her to her feet and opened his fingers.
“She’ll heal the lad,” he said.
“She already said it,” Vincent announced. “The Lord heals. She’ll assist. ’Tis all I ask of her.”
“She heals my son or we finish this, Danzel. Here. Now. I’ll na’ lose another son to your foolishness. Na’ again.”
Sybil sucked in the shock at such a challenge. She was almost as terrified as when Sir Ian had lifted a sword over her.
“Can you argue words later, Da?” The lad at her feet said it in a complaining whine of a voice. “It pains something fierce.”
Sybil went to her haunches beside him. The lads about him scuttled out of the way. She’d never given the toad sweat to a man who was already stewed in spirits. She wasn
’t certain what would happen. She reached into the folds of her cloak and brought out the bottle. She watched as he eyed it and then her, running a glance all over her. The lad was not only handsome. He was arrogant.
“Open your mouth,” she said, putting two fingers into her jar in order to fish out a square of soaked cloth.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Something to take away pain.”
He opened his mouth. Sybil held out the cloth to him and had to look aside or she’d be giggling. He resembled a grasping baby bird. “You suck on it. You dinna’ swallow it. You ken?”
He nodded, shoved the square of fabric through his lips, made a face at the sour taste, and then started sucking. Moments later his face started relaxing. So did the men all about her. Sybil looked up at Vincent for reassurance and guidance and didn’t know why she’d think such a thing possible. He didn’t have any qualms about her ability. He nodded.
“What will you need?” he asked.
“A length of cloth, loosely woven. Clean. As long as a feile-breacan but thinner. In strips if possible. To bind the foot once the bone is back in its proper position. Two straight boards sawn from logs, perhaps a hand-length shorter than his leg. Then twine and strong arms to secure it. And some more whiskey.”
“You heard her. See to it.” Vincent was speaking to Carrick the Elder. The man seemed to have shrunk. But that was ridiculous.
Items materialized beside her, and she could hear the sound of woodcutting as they went about fashioning the splints for her. Sybil calmed the tremor overtaking her with force of will. She couldn’t afford a mistake now even if the threat to Vincent wasn’t there. The younger Carrick was still sucking on the rag. She had to ease his lips open in order to take it out before he choked on it. The lad was acting like a bairn. The thought made her smile. Most of her patients were newly birthed bairns, not men who acted like them.
“Vincent?” Sybil had a hand to her head as she whispered it and was surprised when he dropped into the space beside her. He hadn’t been far, or he’d never have heard it.
“Sybil?”
“I’m na…strong enough.” The blow she’d taken to the head was going to make her too clumsy as well. It was also making the ground swim strangely before she put a hand out to stabilize it. She didn’t speak of that.
“Tell us what to do. We’ll do it. Sinclair?”
The other man with the scarred back dropped to the other side of her.
“We’ll need torchlight.” Sybil squinted her eyes toward what sunlight they had. “And a bit of shelter.”
“Should we take him to the wagon tent?”
“Nae. At least, na’ yet. ’Tis about to rain again. Massively. We’ll need shelter from that.”
The men about her looked to the darkening sky. She watched them exchange glances with each other; even the young lads that were hovering about the young Carrick did it. She ignored them. She’d ever been known as odd. If they’d take a moment to sniff at the air, they’d have noticed the fresh smell of wet coming with the slight whiffs of wind that were stirring the forest about them, bringing them the smell of roasting venison, among other odors.
“You need to take the captives far from here and cut them loose, too, my laird,” she turned and told Vincent.
“I do?”
“Aye. Afore they soil themselves. And you need to remind them on the stupidity of battling your clan again. Tell them that today was but a warning.”
Vincent looked at her levelly.
“You should have Carrick the Elder do it in your stead. He’s large and frightening. And he should na’ be here to oversee what we are about to do.”
He nodded, then looked at Sinclair, who also nodded. It was Sinclair who rose to give the order to the lad’s father. Sybil looked her patient over. He was sleeping peacefully, breathing evenly, and had a slight smile on his handsome features. There wasn’t a sign of suffering anywhere.
She looked at Vincent. “You have to put it back in position and get it straight,” she said.
“Where? How?”
“One hand to the leg bone. One hand to the foot. Twist it. And then you have to hold it in place while it’s bound.”
Vincent swallowed, nodded, and then shimmied forward in a crouched position until he was at Carrick the Younger’s ankle.
“Have your man, Sinclair, assist. He has the cloth?” Nobody answered, but after a moment Sinclair squatted down beside Vincent, a bundle of cloth pooled into the apron of his kilt.
“Now…move the foot. You have to put it back straight so he’ll na’ have much of a limp. You have to make it near perfect. And then you have to bind it so he canna’ move it. It’s na’ as easy as it sounds. There’s been swelling. Such a thing makes a natural support, which is right and good. Except when the ankle is broken away. Like this one is. The foot will na’ move well. You will have to force it.”
Sinclair helped. Vincent had to use both hands to secure the lad’s leg, while Sinclair manipulated the foot until it was in the proper position. And then Vincent took over holding everything while Sinclair wrapped the binding cloth all about the ankle before tying the ends off.
She could hear the sound of at least one of the others retching somewhere out of sight. That wasn’t an issue for her. She didn’t have time for weak bellies and faintness. She was having enough struggle with her own. Aside from which, it was their own fault. Such was the result of overimbibing the whiskey and then watching what they just had.
The smell of roasting venison from behind them warred with the smell of rain-washed grass as the storm she’d forecast slit the sky, misting everything with rain. It was held off their heads by the thatched roof someone had pieced together and strung up. She guessed they’d drafted clansmen to hold it in place while they watched but didn’t bother to check.
The toad sweat didn’t have enough power to overcome the pain of what she’d just ordered them to do. The lad went stiff and moans came from him, although he didn’t waken.
“Get the whiskey. For the lad. He needs it.” Sybil was looking at their handiwork as she said it.
“I need it more,” the man called Sinclair offered, but he knelt beside the patient and dribbled some of the liquid into Carrick the Younger’s mouth.
Sybil leaned forward and looked close, ignoring the pounding in her head. “We need the boards now. Place one on either side of his leg. To keep him from moving it. Place one on the outside. The other one goes up against his…uh…Under his plaide.”
“I ken where,” Vincent interrupted, and then he was fishing beneath the lad’s kilt for the top of his thigh in order to place one of the boards there. “Get me the twine, Sinclair.”
Sybil rocked back onto her buttocks and watched. “Strap it so it does na’ move, but na’ too tightly. You did well. Both of you.”
Vincent grunted without looking up. He and Sinclair spent the next moments threading twine beneath Carrick’s leg and back across it over and over as they wrapped his leg into immobility, working in tandem. It looked like something they’d done often and well.
“You…should forgive each other,” Sybil remarked when they’d finished and were tying the twine ends off. Her words had both men turning into such stiff beings they might as well have been carved from stone. Sybil didn’t even think they were breathing. Yet the vibrations she felt were frightening in their intensity and sent a shiver rapidly over her neck and into her back. She swallowed and spoke again without waiting. “You work well together. Without speaking. Without issue. ’Tis something you’ve done afore. And well. Often.”
“Sybil,” Vincent said in a low voice. He was looking over at her as he said it, and then he was frowning.
“Something happened.” She said it softly and didn’t move her eyes from them as she did so. “It was…deep. Dark. Horrid. It has to do with the other son of Carrick the Elder.”
“Sybil,” Vincent repeated, and then he was moving toward her, taking over her entire sphere with the massive am
ount of importance he had in her world now. She blinked him back into focus.
“Aye?” she whispered just before he got there. And then she was wrapped in his arms and lifted as he stood.
“You’re in need of a cool bath. Then some sup. Mayhap a sip of whiskey. And anything else I can find for your mouth other than these senseless words.”
“Senseless?” she asked.
“I should na’ have brought you out here. I forgot the lad’s penchant for weaknesses. I believed him over it.”
“’Tis something he couldn’t outgrow,” Sybil replied.
“Nae?” he asked.
“The sire would na’ let him.”
“The Elder Carrick?” Vincent continued.
She nodded.
“But why? What man wishes a whining wretch for a son?”
“A man fearful of losing another one.”
He went stiff again. His arms tightened, as did the muscle in his lower jaw. Sybil looked from it to his eyes.
“I need to make a special potion for him. Mayhap two of them,” she said.
“Who?”
“The Carrick lad.”
“What for?”
“One for the scarring he’ll have. Such a thing affects his beauty. He’ll na’ take that well, which will na’ set well with the sire. You ken?”
She heard Sinclair snort. Vincent didn’t respond at all, so Sybil spoke again. “I have a tea that will work on the fever he’ll suffer. He’ll need my tea. The one with dandelion and rosehips. I have it in the wagon.”
“’Tis luck I let you bring them, then.”
He was teasing her. Sybil turned her head into Vincent’s neck. She had to look away from his eyes. It was too heady an experience.
“Your lady did well.” It was a different voice speaking this time. “Carrick may let you keep your head yet.”
Vincent groaned deep in his throat. It vibrated against where her nose was pressed. That was a new experience, and one she could grow used to.
Vincent moved her more securely against him. She could grow used to how that felt, too, she decided.
“I leave the lad with you, Sinclair. See that he’s kept quiet.”
