Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cian hardly noticed the bite of the wind and ice against his skin, he was that grateful for relief. But once his bladder was empty, the throbbing in his face and head became unbearable. He scooped snow into his hands and pressed it to the bridge of his nose…
And howled.
He repeated the process until he couldn’t feel anything but the drips on his chin turning to ice.
He blinked carefully, worried he might have frozen his very eyeballs, but they moved fine.
The snow had stopped, as if it took pity on him, but the wind continued, nudging him back toward the house door and the fire within.
But what to do with the woman?
In the moment, he wanted to hold her against him to warm himself. More than that, he couldn’t say. Their tentative truce would at least allow them both to live. For the moment, he reckoned that was enough.
Oh, but there was one wee detail that must immediately be dealt with…
He slipped through the door and closed it at his back. Thankfully, the fickle lass hadn’t changed her mind yet again, so there was no attack coming, though he’d half expected it.
She sat on the bed, legs crossed, with her teeth worrying her lip.
“I’ve a wee predicament,” he admitted.
She smiled. “Me too. You go first.”
“I am frozen through. And ye?”
“I’m starving.”
“Right, then. If ye’ll help me with mine. I’ll tend to yers.”
Her eyes widened. “You want me to help you get warm?”
“Nay. I need ye to put m’ nose back where it came from afore my face thaws again.”
“Oh.” She jumped to her feet. “I don’t know how to do that. You might need a doctor to—”
“A simple thing. Ye put yer hands to either side and shove it back to the mids. To rectify it later would require violence and a stronger stomach than ye might possess.”
She nodded. “You might want to sit on the bed, then, in case you pass out.”
“Just promise that, if I do, ye willnae tie me to the bed again.”
She laughed lightly, and the sound of it eased his pain a wee bit. “Okay. I promise.”
He sat carefully so as not to change the pressure in his head. She grabbed one of the pots, slipped into her boots, and stepped outside for only a moment, then returned with a heaping supply of the clean white stuff.
“Grand,” he said, though the sight of it brought a shiver. “Be quick about it, so I can warm myself again.”
She nodded and stepped between his knees. He looked up into her face and rested his hands on her hips to steady them both. She looked down, ignored his swollen eyes, and nudged his chin from side to side while studying his nose.
“Wow. It really is off bubble.” She pressed her three long fingers against the sides of his bridge, which hurt like the devil, even through the cold.
“Off bubble, ye said?”
“A carpenter’s term.” She shoved with a great deal of strength and relocated his nose for the second time that morning.
“My dad was a carpenter,” she said, though Cian barely heard a word due to pealing bells and prickly stars attacking his face and brain.
“Easy now. Just lie back and close your eyes. I’m going to cover you up, then I’ll ice it again. ”
“Take this.” He found his collar, fumbled beneath it, and pulled out the key he kept on a tether around his neck. “To the trunk.”
Just before he allowed his consciousness to slip, he heard her poor attempt at consolation as she lay the heavy-laden cloth onto his face once more.
“Don’t worry, Mr. MacInnis. It might not all be centered, but I think it’s close.”
With his nose twice the size it was, his eyes still quite swollen, and his mouth hanging open, Kee-un MacInnis snored. It wasn’t loud and abrasive, like Nick’s sometimes was. More like, even in his sleep, the man was being careful not to wake himself.
I tried to ignore the guilt, but I couldn’t ignore a heavy kettle of water sitting on my chest, and it felt a lot like that.
I found a few Tylenol in my little first aid kit, but I chose not to wake him up for it.
Instead, I took the key and went exploring.
In the night, I’d looked for that key in every box, in the vegetable baskets, and on every shelf and inside the dishes.
I worried about the logs remaining in the wood basket and knew I would have to go gather more before dark. But after I learned all I could about this man who lived so far off the grid. Maybe something in the trunk would tell me why.
He was definitely paranoid and thought some man he called The Traveler was after him. But with his strong Scottish brogue and the fact that he threw in words I assume were Gaelic, I couldn’t be sure about anything I’d heard, especially when he’d been upset.
He hadn’t liked me joking about time travel, even though he lived like he was from another century. But anyone who had grown up in that tiny valley would have been a little backwards too, wouldn’t they? Maybe he’d assumed I’d been making fun of him.
The key fit into the lock just fine, as if it was used often. It took a little muscle to turn it, but the lock popped open on the second try. The hinge complained when I lifted the metal plate, and the wood of the arched lid creaked and popped like an old woman’s knees when I lifted it.
At four feet long and three feet tall, this was as close to a treasure chest as I was going to get. I even imagined gold coins spilling out, but nothing sparkled and nothing shifted in the shadows.
The smell of wood might have been coming from the logs in the stove.
You couldn’t burn pine logs without the place smelling like a campfire.
But I also smelled leather and tasted some sort of oil, and a lingering odor I could best describe as old newspapers.
It wasn’t ink. Just age. And it might have come from the trunk itself.
If the wood planks weren’t so thick, it could have fallen into a pile of dust without surprising me much.
Lying on top of the contents was a small round shield I might have seen in a Viking movie. Reddish brown leather was stretched across it and held in place by evenly spaced metal rivets, some of which had little metal points on them.
Something you wouldn’t want to get smacked with, for sure.
It was heavier than expected when I lifted it out. And not as small as it looked. The chest was just larger than it seemed on the outside. I propped the shield against the end of the box and dove back in.
I gasped lightly when I found a huge, deadly-looking sword with no protective sheath.
It sat diagonally with its dangerous end buried in one corner.
The other end had a fancy steal cage around the cross-section, and the handle was wrapped in leather that was so stained and worn that it had to have been used in real battle.
Probably worth a fortune. Or maybe they weren’t so hard to find in a place as historied as Scotland.
The weapon was triple the weight I expected.
I lifted it carefully, by the handle and with my forearm under the flat side to lay it on the table.
The light from the window glinted along the edge as I lowered it, and I’d worked with enough professional kitchen knives to know the massive blade was sharp enough to be lethal.
Maybe he used it to chop wood. Or maybe his paranoia was so serious that he kept it sharp to defend himself.
I glanced at the bed and couldn’t imagine this man being that messed up. But then I remembered him bursting through the door, covered in hair and furs and I thought, yeah. Yeti-man could be delusional enough to keep a sharp sword around for his enemies.
Thank goodness he no longer thinks I’m one of them.
Piled along the left end of the trunk were more than a dozen knife handles of various sizes, all made from horn or maybe bone, and carved into works of art that I planned to ask him about later.
At the top of the center pile was a cloth that matched the plaid one hanging in the barn, but this one was worn so thin I could see the layers.
There were short rows of fat stitches where holes had been repaired, then torn again.
It was sentimental then. Maybe it was one of those kilts made in the colors of his clan.
If Tara was there, she would know. She was a big fan of Scottish books and movies.
I had only heard bagpipes in parades or on TV, and it seemed like being a fan of the country required a passionate commitment that I didn’t have time for.
That I hadn’t had time for. Now I had all the time in the world. I just didn’t get to choose where I spent it. At least, not for another day or two.
But would it be so bad to spend it in a warm bothy, away from the world, stuck inside with an interesting, well-built, once-handsome man who no longer wanted to tie me up?
No. Not so bad. Especially when the alternative was being frozen like a popsicle inside a snow cave that no one would find until summer.
My stomach rumbled and reminded me that Kee-un MacInnis still needed to fulfil his side of our little bargain.
But I could eat a carrot to tide me over until he was lucid enough to tell me how he planned to feed me, or at least tell me where to find his wheat grinder, so I could bake some bread for us both.
Poor guy. He probably felt like I’d broken his nose all over again. And it looked like sleep was the only break from the pain he was liable to get.