by Alisa Adams
While she disregarded their opinions of her, Aoide wasn't entirely comfortable seeing their stares.
There was a little grove to the east of the encampment. In its belly lay the gurgling of a little stream that had so far met with the men's needs for drinking water and basic washing—not enough to bathe in but suitable for a cloth or small cup here and there. Best of all, it was overshadowed by a thatch of trees that kept it private from the rest of the camp.
Slipping and sliding her way down the slope, the dead leaves of winter scattering under her feet and crushing into the mud beneath her toes, Aoide came to a slippery halt when she spotted another body down below. Having assumed she would be alone, she was nervous about approaching. But, as she recognized the man's features, her heart rate, calmed a little. It was the boy called Dennis.
Remembering how he had flushed at her thanks over a plate of food and how politely he had spoken with her when she had turned up at the camp, Aoide threw caution to the wind and continued down the embankment.
The noise of her clambering announced her presence before she could do so herself and Dennis jumped up to look over in her direction, a hand on his sword hilt.
Startled, Aoide raised her hands in surrender and stilled her feet. Unfortunately, she did it so suddenly that she lost her balance on the uneven ground and immediately toppled over. The mucky leaves lost her any grip on the earth, and between one moment and the next, her butt hit the ground.
"Oof!" The noise was an exhale she couldn't restrain, and she groaned as she felt a new bruise upon her rear. Her face was already a mottled mess of purple and blue. More would only have her looking like a bog monster.
Not that the bruises on her face seemed to have turned Lachlan off, especially if that kiss had been anything to go by.
"I'm so sorry!"
The cry was accompanied by the crashing of soldier boots marching through the bracken and muddy foliage. Dennis was headed over with a look of contrition on his face and only a little amusement in the corners of his mouth. "I didn't mean to startle you!"
Despite the dull ache setting up in her bottom, Aoide tried to smile all the same. It wasn't his fault that the ground was rocky or that she had no shoes. When he offered a hand, she reached up to take it, heedless of her dirty palms.
Dennis was about her own age and slim but compared to Aoide's tiny frame, he was still large. His weight helped him to pull her to her feet without issue.
Aoide hurried to dust herself down, scattering leaves and twigs from where they had snagged in her clothing and trying not to feel awkward before a man that wore his uniform like it was freshly washed and pressed. His face was clean too. He had bright, clear skin, eyes of pale blue, and hair that was the color of straw but appeared soft to the touch.
As soon as he knew that she was alright and hadn't sustained any serious injuries, Dennis allowed his delight to break free, and his smile widened into a broad grin that created dimples in his cheeks. His teeth were a little uneven but very white.
"Are you sure you're alright?" he asked her. "I'm very sorry. I didn't realize anyone else was coming down from the camp."
His smile seemed to dim a little as he glanced between her, the camp, and then the path that stretched out to the east away from the soldiers.
"You're not...I mean, the captain didn't..." The man blushed awkwardly, clearly afraid that a young woman had apparently been forced onto the open road alone. Into the dark woods, no less.
"He's letting me stay if that's what you mean?" Aoide offered.
Dennis nodded, relief lowering his shoulders from their stiff position of alert.
"Good," he said.
He then seemed unsure how to follow up on that statement.
While nervous about most of the other men in the camp, Aoide found herself more comfortable around this one. Perhaps it was the fact that Dennis seemed to be her age and was short for a man, making him less dominating beside her. Maybe it was the way his eyes sparkled or those dimples. Alternatively, it was the shininess of his person, the way he felt new. It struck Aoide that he might not have been a soldier for that long, and his role as a new interloper on the unit made her feel a sense of kinship—especially now that she was able to walk around without the bindings at her wrists.
At least when she had been a prisoner, she knew the game and how it was to be played. She knew what was expected of her and how those around her would likely behave.
Now, she had no idea.
"It's Dennis, right?" Aoide asked him, attempting to break the quiet. He seemed surprised that she knew his name but nodded good-naturedly all the same. He reached out a hand again, this time in greeting. She took it. "I'm Aoide."
"It's nice to meet you, Aoide," he said, shaking her hand.
It took a moment, but Aoide suddenly recognized that the hem of his uniform was different on each arm. The one she was shaking had a rim of white at the end, a piece of fabric that she realized was a bandage.
"You hurt your arm?" she asked. Aoide could practically feel her mother's ghost settling over her shoulders and embodying her spirit. Regardless of the malcontent she received from the layman—and even from her patients—Fanny Hopley had refused to change how she viewed the world. It was a place to be helped and a place to be fixed. Nothing had ever stopped her when she witnessed someone injured or in pain. She had a tonic for that or a poultice for this. No, no, they had to take it. She would not allow timidity. If there was pain, Fanny was there to help.
Aoide hadn't realized that she had picked up the habit. It had been so long since she was offered the chance to speak with anyone on an even keel, let alone offer them help.
The taking of the soldier's arm, however, seemed to have the opposite effect than she was intending. Instead of feeling cared for, the young man blushed red and seemed horrendously awkward. His free hand went to the back of his head, where his hair was already standing on end, and his eyes wouldn't meet hers. Aoide dropped his hand quickly, feeling as if she had intruded.
This was all Lachlan's fault, she decided uncharitably. If he had just let her go after the failed attempt on the chest, she would be long gone. If he hadn't been kind to her in Scone, she wouldn't have been able to come back. If he had claimed her officially as his lover, perhaps she would know how to behave in front of his soldiers. Instead, she was left to wade through awkward social interaction that she was long out of practice with and could only watch as her tongue made all the wrong decisions.
"Er... I got stabbed," he admitted, still not meeting her gaze. His smile was kind, even if it was still infused with that sense of awkward tension. "With a little stone dagger...wielded by a small redhead."
With a flash of horror, Aoide took a stumbling step backward. In a haze, she remembered the fight when Garrett had attempted to steal Lachlan's chest. She had been caught by someone, a hand that had reached out to grab her instead of to take her head with the swinging of a sword. In a flash of fear, she had struck out, hitting them with her rock blade and freeing herself from their hold. She had never worked out who it had been, her mind more focused on her own survival than that of the man she had injured.
Despite feeling justified in her need for seeing herself safe, Aoide couldn't help the little trickle of disconcertion; the momentary guilt that reminded her that Dennis was a nice boy. He had been kind to her, even when he knew that she was responsible for his injury.
Aoide's smile was brittle and unsure. Her eyes fell upon the little stream.
"Will you let me see it?" she asked him. If it was still hurting enough to be bandaged two weeks later, it might have become infected. Her mother had always called lacerations a gateway to the demons of the earth. That, if wounds were not treated, they were open doorways to evil. "I have a little physician knowledge. I could make sure it's clean, at least?"
It had to be hard to wash a wrist when you only had one hand to use.
Unsure what the appropriate course of action was, Aoide watched as Dennis glanced towards t
he ridge where the other soldiers were no doubt preparing dinner and then at the dimming sunlight. The sky was just barely holding into the day and had faded to a cool grey. Soon, it would be too dark to see by.
"Alright," he told her, before offering that hand again to guide her down to the water's edge.
Lachlan felt his patience worn extra thin. Whether it was due to his latest acquisition to his band of men, in the form of a pretty little redhead, or the new information that those thieves had not stumbled upon them by accident, he wasn't sure. In that moment, sitting across his tent from Harris and watching him process the news that their unit had been infected with a spy, he only knew that he was tired. His muscles hurt, and his bones ached. He wanted to sleep. But more than that, he felt the sense of something missing.
It was an odd sensation. It crept into the corners of his mind, tainting the conversation he had conducted with his lieutenant and turned their plan of attack hastily made. All the same, it was the best they could manage in so small a unit.
Ignoring the way his palms itched for a certain texture and his nose seemed to sense everything around him with a bitter sharpness, Lachlan rose to his feet and left his private quarters with Harris in tow.
It took a half hour of casual integration with the men, helping to prepare the food for the evening and secure the last of the supplies onto the pack mules for the following morning. Only when they had assimilated, their presence no longer the stone that caused the ripple in the pond, did the two of them speak in hushed tones. Away from the campfire and the men that huddled around it like heathens to their fire god, the two of them spoke in worried words of how to deal with “the traitor.” They never mentioned a name but spoke as if the identity of such a man was known already. They decided on a simple plan: to arrest him come the morning when the others were asleep and take him back to the Mackenzie lands in shackles, disgraced. They would see him swing from a rope as soon as they arrived home.
There were no lies in the scheme. This unfolding of events was exactly as Lachlan would implement them—if he knew who had betrayed them. Making it clear from their discussions that Harris knew not who the spy was and Lachlan would not reveal their identity, they set the trap with simple bait: that their captain was the only man to know the truth.
Any spy would seek to silence so single a witness.
Having chosen their location carefully, Lachlan and Harris ensured that their discussion was heard by Jamieson, a man that couldn't stop his tongue wagging if it had been nailed to the ground. Over the next few days, the story would have circulated amongst most of the men, exposure of the spy be damned.
The easiest way to catch a snake was to allow it to make a mistaken strike. The back of their neck became vulnerable and open to attack.
With the trap set, Lachlan could allow his senses to stretch out across the camp. Focused on his duty, he had pushed thoughts of Aoide to the back of his mind. He was always aware that they were there, attempting to peek into the forefront of his consciousness. But, now, he let them run free and searched for the blazing color of her hair amongst the men.
Coming up empty, Lachlan frowned.
Where is she?
His stride became a stalk as Lachlan moved about his unit, stepping around hastily crafted beds and sets of blankets. He moved around the campfire, now being adequately lit for the night, and headed for the eastern perimeter. Pausing upon the ridge, Lachlan took a long and deep inhale, as if he were able to discover the girl by scent alone. All he could smell was the burning of damp leaves beneath the fire's pyramids and the fresh, iron scent of recent hunts being skinned for the evening repast. He felt his palms itch.
Lachlan feared this female might be turning him slowly insane.
His fears were given stronger evidence when his sharp eyes spotted a mark of crimson as he scanned the land to the east. That splash of red and another of blue were his beacons as he marched down the slope. His long legs ate up the distance, finding little difficulty in the way the edge cut sharp and deep. The uneven ground nor the slipperiness of fallen leaves upset the grip of his boots as Lachlan moved down under the canopy of trees and spied the scene below, at the water's edge.
At the bottom of the little gully was a stream. It was thick enough that clear water rested upon its surface, while the dirt and grime of its bed lulled about in its bottom few inches. It was thin enough that a large stride might see one clear across it. In the mud, at its very edge, where water struggled to keep its shape and independence against the thirsty earth, Dennis Moyer was crouched low to the ground. His arms rested on his knees, one of them turned upwards. His army livery had been pushed up to his elbow, and his wrist was being wrapped in white linen.
It was Aoide who was tending to him.
In a wild moment of emotion, Lachlan had the obscene desire to storm over and rip the girl from her squatted position before the soldier. He wanted to take her hands, discard the bandage, and see her on her feet facing him. He would hold her, carry her back to his tent, and find that green scarf. He had liked her wearing it. Now, her hair was left unbound and wild about her face. It was dirty, tangled, and messed by wind and drizzle. Yet, it was still a magnificent mane of color.
What he wouldn't give to see it clean and just a little bit tame. Not much. Just enough to see it shine.
When Dennis cast a smile at Aoide, Lachlan's feet moved on their own. He barked her name as he grew closer to the two of them but only succeeded in making her jump. The startling saw her fall backward onto her bottom, her hands and rear splashing into the stream and its cousinly mud. Lachlan cursed under his breath.
Apparently, he couldn't seem to speak to her without causing her to fall down, burst into tears, or angrily rebuke him.
What does it take to have a normal conversation with this woman?
Not a great chatterer by nature, Lachlan was surprised at his desire to converse with someone, let alone a woman.
"Aoide," he called again. When she spun around to look at him, dirty mud spattered over Dennis’s boots. "Come."
He beckoned with a hand and found the brute within him calmed a little in the way she rose to her feet and moved towards him without hesitation.
He was less pleased when she stopped, turned on her heel, crouched to finish fastening the bandage around Dennis's arm, and then retraced her steps back to him.
His stare piercing Dennis with a look that held him in place, Lachlan reached out to take hold of Aoide by the back of the neck. He felt her gasp, heard her quick intake of breath, and thought he sensed a shiver run down her spine. But he ignored all of it.
He was too busy convincing himself that he wasn't jealous of a kid.
12
Aoide had never had a lover before. Perhaps that was why all of this was so new to her. She had played as an observer to the life her mother had lived—which was not always chaste—and she had witnessed the coupling and unions of those that she had traveled or lived with for any period of time. For an innocent of her age, she knew more about the world of lust and sin than she perhaps should have.
But, never had such things been turned upon her.
After returning to the camp, Lachlan released her neck and refused to touch her for the rest of the evening. She was made to sit, was given food that she barely registered, and then left in the barren emptiness of her situation.
She was a woman in a unit of men, an intruder on their military world. She was also a guest of their captain and yet wasn't entertained by him personally, which left her as the aching, gaping hole of social means. Instead of sitting with her or offering her any connection to the societal bubble around them, Lachlan kept himself to one side. He sat on a log opposite to her seat and ate with an evident distaste for other people's company. He rarely spoke, was rarely addressed, and when he did offer to contribute to a conversation, it was more physical gestures and calm noises than it was real words.
But even though he didn't speak, Aoide still felt as if the man were communicating.
>
Each time she looked up, he was watching her. Whenever she was still hungry, a plate was passed to her at his gesture. If she were thirsty, a cup found its way into her hands. Whenever she spoke, Lachlan ceased chewing so that he might hear her across the crackle of the fire, and when she managed to catch sight of him when he wasn't paying attention, there was a tension to his body that always grew worse when he caught her looking.
Despite sitting several feet away from him, with a barrier of literal fire between them, Aoide felt like her skin was too tight. Her breath never seemed able to truly inflate her chest, always coming short, and that burning hunger had made its appearance yet again.
Shoving her mother's words from her head was easier said than done when every time her gaze rose, it collided with that of Lachlan's—a stare that burned with a desperate need that set her belly quivering.
There was no touching. No speaking. But all the while, Aoide thought herself claimed by a lover. Cast into a dance of intensity that she wasn't prepared for.
When camp was broken, and the men drifted to their beds, Aoide wasn't surprised when Lachlan ordered her to return with him to the tent.
She was tempted to make a stand and insist that she wasn't yet tired and would retire in her own time. She was his guest now, no longer his prisoner.
But, in truth, Aoide had craved returning to the tent with the captain. No matter how much she had drunk, her mouth had remained dry; no matter how much she had eaten, her belly had been hollow. There was something significant missing from her physical makeup, and the hunger that was rumbling in her gut told her that Lachlan possessed it, that he was the one who could make her feel whole.
Apparently, however, despite all of the glances and observant care that had been shown her that evening, there was no such hunger in Lachlan.
