Chapter 1 #2
And of course the war was more important than anything else, so no doubt it would take a while.
But after the war was settled and Graham was secure in his rulership over Donaghey lands, when things were calm and they were all having supper together, someone would look at her and say, “You know, Eilidh, it’s really good that you tended to that man so well.
I shudder to think what might have happened if he had died. ”
Of course, Eilidh told herself as she turned her gentle dabbing to the man’s scraped and battered hands, it wouldn’t be about her. She didn’t need praise. But it would be nice to contribute something to her family. And it would be nice to have people know that she had helped the family.
To have them know that she was more than just the young one, more than just the silly one.
She smiled to herself as she continued the careful, painstaking work of cleaning the man without injuring him more.
“Ye’re going to be fine,” she murmured to him whenever he shifted in obvious discomfort, though he never once woke from her ministrations. “I’m nae going to hurt ye. I’m here to help ye.”
And even though he didn’t wake, Eilidh felt a sense of satisfaction when the blood was finally cleaned from his skin. She sat back in a nearby chair with a sigh of relief and watched over him as he slept, a strange softness consuming her.
“I won’t leave,” she promised him, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her. She just needed him to know. “I’ll stay right here until ye wake.”
Everything hurt. His head hurt, his back hurt, his legs hurt. Briefly, he thought his fingers didn’t hurt, but then he tried to move them, and no, they hurt, too.
“Och, ye moved! Are ye awake?”
Ciaran struggled to pry open his eyes at the sound of the voice—a surprisingly non-confrontational voice, given the last thing he remembered.
Violence. Violence and pain. Then, a blur. And now a soft, melodic voice.
He blinked a few times and…
An angel came into focus.
Oh. He was dead. That made sense.
Except, no. No, it didn’t. Because if he was looking at an angel, then he’d gone to heaven. And he was not a man who was destined for heaven.
He blinked a few more times and the angel frowned. She reached up a hand to tuck a strand of golden hair behind her ear.
“Ye can hear me, right?” she demanded. Then, she closed one gleaming green eye like she was considering something, then extended a slow finger and—
Poked him in the cheek.
“Oi,” he said.
She leaned back in satisfaction.
“Apologies,” she said. “But I think that might be the only place you haven’t got any bruises. And ye werenae answering me.”
He cleared his throat. That also hurt.
“I was… trying to decide if I was dead,” he admitted.
He assumed this turn toward honesty was also a result of being battered within an inch of his life, but it was one thing he needed to get under control before he got himself in even more trouble. Focusing made even his brain hurt, though.
Fortunately, the girl who wasn’t an angel seemed understanding. Her delicate features dropped into a sympathetic frown, and she nodded.
“Aye, I thought ye might die, too,” she said. “For hours and hours. But then ye got a bit of your color back, and I convinced ye to drink some water—though ye were mighty stubborn about that, I have to say. Ye took forever to wake, though.”
She looked at him as though she was enormously put out by his tardiness. But her disappointment in his extended unconsciousness would have to wait. Because if he’d been here for a long time…
“Wait,” he said, the words feeling like rocks in his throat. However much water she’d convinced him to drink, it wasn’t enough. “How long have I been here?”
She glanced out the window, where warm sunlight was filtering into the room.
“A day?” She shrugged, as though this very, very important information didn’t actually matter very much at all. “A bit less, I suppose.”
“A day,” he echoed. If he’d made it a full day without anyone coming after him to finish what they’d started, he was probably actually safe—at least for the time being.
“I’m… alive.”
“Aye, of course,” she said. “And if ye listen to me, do as I say, ye shall recover just fine.”
She tilted her head at him. She really was quite pretty, with her pert little nose and a faint smattering of freckles across the tops of her cheeks. Her hair was an utter wreck, and her frock was hopelessly wrinkled, which made Ciaran wonder if she had spent the entire night at his side.
The idea made him feel… Well, it was hard to detect anything beneath the consuming pain, but it definitely made him feel something.
“I do reckon that the healers will have some questions for ye,” she said. “Ye were rather dreadfully battered. Do ye recall what happened?”
The images came to him in flashes. Flying fists, blows that were meant to send a message rather than to kill.
Then the moment where he’d felt them go a little too far, where he had started to believe that a hunger for violence would outweigh the attackers’ good sense, and they would kill him without meaning to.
It was more fractured after that. He recalled trying to pull himself up into a saddle and finding it so difficult that it bordered on the impossible. Then, clinging to the saddle with all of his might and hoping, praying, that he’d get to somewhere safe.
And he had. He’d gotten here, to this angel. Only where was here?
“Aye,” he said, his mind racing despite the effort it took. “I was attacked by bandits. I barely managed to make it back to my horse before they killed me. I got away. But where am I?”
The lass looked at him in an assessing manner before smiling again and patting him very gently on the back of his hand. It still hurt, despite her caution.
“This is Buchanan Keep,” she said. “I’m Eilidh Donaghey.”
He startled at that, sending lancing pain throughout his body.
Somehow, despite the dizziness and the agony, he’d managed to reach his destination. He’d managed to get to the one place he needed to be.
And this lass… She was one of the Donaghey sisters. One of the old Laird’s daughters.
This was good. Or possibly very bad. He was still struggling with putting things together.
He had taken at least a few blows to the head during his beating. That was probably why he introduced himself in turn; or maybe it was just because Eilidh was so lovely, and she was smiling at him, and she was kind when she’d had no reason to be kind to a stranger.
“Ciaran Gunn,” he said in return.
Something flickered across her face—recognition, perhaps, or trepidation. He couldn’t tell for sure, not when he felt his eyes going blurry. The effort of this conversation had been too much for him, and darkness began to creep in around the edges.
He was seized by a sudden, irrational panic.
He needed to know what the angel—what Eilidh—was thinking.
He told himself that this was about his own safety, but another voice inside him, one that he’d suppressed for a long time, told him that it wasn’t about survival—that, for once, this wasn’t about just surviving. It was about her.
He reached up to touch her cheek, no matter the burning that coursed through his muscles with the effort. She didn’t shy away from the touch, but before he could make contact, the darkness overtook him.
The last thing he felt before he succumbed to sleep again was the thump of his hand back against the soft blanket that had been so carefully tucked around him.