Chapter 3
“Does this hurt?” the healer asked as he poked at Ciaran’s side with none-too-gentle fingers.
“Nay,” Ciaran lied, though he feared that his gritted teeth gave him away.
Indeed, the healer looked unimpressed. He hummed to himself in that annoying way of his, then turned back to his bag of instruments without offering a comment.
Ciaran was a warrior. He knew that it was inadvisable to lie to a healer.
Pain was the body sending messages, and men who ignored those messages ended up dead.
There was a time and place for pushing through those hurts—Ciaran had a flash of blinking blood out of his eyes as he fought against an unending tide of redcoats during the rebellion—but this was not one of those times.
He wasn’t forging courageously on to protect his people from the tyranny of the English.
He was just so bloody tired of being in this bed.
He had been in Buchanan Keep for eight days now, including the one during which he had been completely unconscious, and he’d only been allowed out of bed long enough to attend to bodily necessities and, once, to be given a bath by a junior healer who looked as though he’d lost some sort of bet to end up with the task.
Ciaran hadn’t blamed the man. He, too, had been humiliated and furious that he needed help with something so simple as cleaning himself.
And yet, he’d been unable to deny that he did need the help. The effort of standing for only a few minutes had left him shaky and unsteady, had made his ribs ache and had caused sharp pains to lance through him with each breath. The pain was getting less each day, but it was still there.
No matter how much he wanted to pretend that it wasn’t.
“Ye will need a few more days’ rest,” the stern, old healer said without turning back to look at Ciaran.
Ciaran briefly fantasized about setting this bed on fire and dancing around the ashes.
“Surely I dinnae need days more,” he protested, trying to sound pleading instead of faintly murderous.
He was not effective enough, because the healer turned on him with a forbidding frown. The man looked to be about a thousand years old, and his back was practically curved in two, but none of this served to prevent him from being stubborn as a mule.
“I dinnae ken how ye treat your healers over in Gunn land,” he said severely, “but in these parts, we listen to the healers so that we dinnae end up…” He paused and smiled.
Ciaran’s mouth practically dropped in shock. He hadn’t thought the old corbie capable of such a thing.
“Miss Eilidh, hello,” the man said in a decidedly different tone of voice.
There, at the door, stood the woman that Ciaran had—to his everlasting humiliation—mistaken for an angel when he’d first awoken.
Looking at her now, it was easy to understand how he’d gotten there, however.
Her golden hair was loosely styled in a long plait, but several tendrils had escaped the rope of hair, and they frizzed cheerfully around her face.
She scrunched her nose cheerfully at the healer.
“Och, Master Healer,” she said warmly, and damn it if the old blaggard didn’t blush.
Then she crossed the room and laid a hand on Ciaran’s shoulder.
“Surely a little fresh air would do him good,” she said sweetly.
“The sun on his face, a bit of walking, a crisp breeze—these things have been known to mend a man far more quickly than idling indoors.”
God help him, she was pleading his case. Ciaran wanted to feel stubborn about that, wanted to believe that he could manage his own affairs, but one look at Eilidh’s bright eyes and coaxing smile had the old healer melting in a way that Ciaran hadn’t managed in days.
“Ah, verra well,” the old man said, sounding chuffed, of all the things. “As long as ye ensure that he doesnae overexert himself, Miss Eilidh. Ye ken how these stubborn warriors can be.”
Eilidh gave the healer a conspiratorial look.
“Aye, I do ken. But ye ken me, sir, so ye must trust me to bully him back to his bed at the first sign of weariness.”
And then the healer laughed. Ciaran was starting to wonder if this was a dream. Or, hell, maybe he had died, and this whole endless time in bed was purgatory.
The lass was clearly a witch. She made reality feel not quite real.
“I have nae doubt,” the healer said fondly, packing up his things. “Ye ken where to find me if ye need me.”
“Thank ye, Master Healer!” Eilidh called gaily.
Ciaran could see, however, that there was mischief in her eyes as she turned back to him.
“What?” she asked, laughing herself at his no doubt astounded look.
“Ye… Ye are an enchantress,” he declared. “Able to bend men to your will.”
She laughed, then reached down to help haul him to a seated position. She was surprisingly strong, and his ribs protested only minimally as he shifted his weight.
“The master healer?” she asked, wrapping a warm arm around his back and tucking herself under his arm so that he could lean on her. “He’s sweet as honey, deep down inside.”
“Perhaps deep, deep, deep down,” Ciaran grunted, his doubt evident.
Eilidh laughed again, the sound sending a faint rumble through Ciaran from the places they were pressed together.
Slowly, she guided him to his feet, then waited as he paused to test his balance.
Being injured these past weeks had been bad enough; the only thing worse would be falling on his arse in front of this pretty and strange young woman.
Eilidh had poked her head into his sickroom several times over the past few days, but there had always been someone else in there with him, so he hadn’t had a chance to speak with her since that first day, when he’d been scarcely lucid.
Now that they had a moment alone, though, he didn’t know what he ought to say.
Instead of saying something wrong—he’d always been better with a sword than with his words—he just let himself lean on her as they moved slowly through the Keep.
He was not nearly as humiliated as he ought to have been, using the lass like she was a living crutch.
She felt… surprisingly natural under his arm like this.
If he ignored the aches and pains in his body, he could almost pretend that he was embracing her, not relying upon her.
Except that thought wasn’t necessarily any more comforting, so he turned his attention to his surroundings.
The place was clearly well-maintained. The stones of the walls had been laid with care, and it was clear that such care had never waned.
The banners, resplendent in clan colors, were not faded where they hung neatly on the walls.
Ciaran assumed that dust dared not gather in corners, lest it be swept away by assiduous maids.
He felt a pang, unable to keep from remembering when Gunn Manor had been the kind of place over which he could have such pride. But that was a time long lost to him and his kin.
Eilidh was watching him, he realized, peeking up from under his arm. He worried over what his face might have revealed while he wasn’t paying attention.
“A fine place,” he commented, hoping that this sounded sufficiently mild.
Regardless of whether his tone was successful, the observation proved sufficiently distracting. Eilidh smiled proudly at their surroundings.
“Aye,” she agreed. “The Buchanans were more than kind to take us in.”
Ciaran couldn’t stop himself from scoffing.
“Kind?” he echoed. “I doubt it was mere kindness that led a laird to house four maidens alone in the world.”
No, the late Laird must have been a bloody good strategist. He’d had the daughters of one of the most powerful clans in the Highlands running straight into his arms, and he’d been smart enough to see past the brewing war to the longer benefit of allying with the Donagheys.
And now one of those lasses was married to the current Laird, proving the rippling consequences of that one choice.
Wars passed—every warrior knew that; it was the thing that kept him going. But memories were long, and the Donagheys wouldn’t forget the debt they owed the Buchanans. Maybe it was cynical of him to think so, but Ciaran had long since learned that cynicism so often proved true.
Eilidh, though, was frowning.
“Laird Buchanan was truly kind,” she insisted.
“He took us when we were running for our lives, and he didnae begrudge us when Finlay Gordon came here and quite literally burned down their livelihoods in a single night. They’ve only just got the distillery rebuilt after months, and still, the people here have been naught but welcoming to us. That is true kindness.”
She sounded irritated that he would think anything else, and a strange part of Ciaran was tempted to agree with her, just to soothe that temper. He brushed away that bizarre impulse, though.
He was a man of his word, not some weak-willed bampot who would drip false flattery into a pretty girl’s ear. She was wrong, and thinking that the world was full of kindness for kindness’ sake would get her into trouble.
But that wasn’t his business.
“I would like to see my horse,” he said, his voice tight against all the things he wasn’t saying. “If ye please.”
“Verra well,” she said, guiding them down another corridor and out into the bustling yard that surrounded the main Keep. He tried to ignore the curious looks of any passersby, even though he wished to snap at them to keep their eyes to themselves. He didn't like feeling so observed.
But he didn’t dare lose Eilidh’s goodwill, as it was apparently the only thing that could get him out from under the tyrannical rule of the old healer. And he needed to see Shadowbane to confirm that his mount was unharmed after their latest misadventure.
To his surprise and displeasure, there were two men standing in Shadowbane’s stall when Ciaran and Eilidh entered the stable; one leaning with a causal grace against a post, belying what was clearly a warrior’s form, the other carefully rubbing a curry comb along Shadow’s flank.