Chapter 13
As Ciaran returned to awareness, he noticed the absence of pain before its presence.
Oh, he still hurt. His shoulder, mostly, but the rest of him, too; he’d overworked muscles that had grown weak from his previous convalescence when he had fought off those mercenaries. But the sharp edge of the pain was gone. What remained was dull, present but manageable.
There was a heaviness to his limbs that he recognized as the aftereffects of the poppy, something he knew would not easily be shaken. His eyelids were as weighty as a blacksmith’s hammer as he drew them open…
And he was immediately rewarded for his efforts.
Hell, this was a reward beyond anything he could ever merit, he thought as he looked at where Eilidh was curled up beside him, her face lax with sleep, her golden hair spilling loose all around her.
The sun played lovingly over the planes of her face, throwing her pert features into sharp relief, revealing a little trio of freckles on the underside of her jaw that he immediately longed to kiss.
God above, she was so beautiful. He drank her in like a man dying of thirst at an oasis.
And then, the shame hit him.
How had he ever even considered letting Gordon’s men take her?
Because yes, he had hesitated. For one terrible, terrible moment, when those men had surrounded them, he’d hesitated. He’d wondered if it wasn’t smarter to let them take her.
He sent up a quick prayer of thanks that he hadn’t acted on the wretched impulse, that he’d done what needed to be done before it was too late. No doubt the arrow to the shoulder was no less than he deserved for that moment of indecision.
He sucked in a raggedy breath at the thought of how badly it all could have gone.
This motion caused him to brush right up against Eilidh, who had carefully arranged herself so that she wasn’t touching any part of him that hurt—which was more or less all of him—and she stirred.
She scrunched up her face like she was trying to cling to sleep even as the light in the room made her body unable to ignore that morning had come and gone.
Ciaran Gunn had never once in his life called something adorable, but he had to admit that Eilidh, in this moment, fit the definition perfectly.
She opened one eye, then the other, and for the barest moment, Ciaran let himself imagine that he could have this more than once, that there would be more days waking with her beside him, tousled and sweet and warm.
And then she blinked in alarm and bolted upright, making him wince.
“Oh, no! Oh, Ciaran, was I pressing on your wound? Oh, God, did I disturb your bandages? Let me check, let me check.”
Following this rush of words, she leaned up and over him to look at the wrapping on his far shoulder, which was undisturbed by any of her motions.
Her posture while doing so did put her bosom—which was modest, but this did not stop Ciaran from reacting to it—directly in his line of sight.
He supposed he could have looked away, but he was only a man.
“There’s no blood on the bandages,” she said with a sigh of relief.
“Aye,” Ciaran agreed gruffly.
That would be because every ounce of blood in his body had rapidly traveled below his waist, where he was fortunately obscured enough by the thick woolen blanket that the healer had provided that she wouldn’t be able to see any telltale evidence.
When Eilidh returned to perch on the edge of his bed, there was such a tender look on her face that Ciaran’s lustful thoughts were rapidly replaced with far more sentimental ones—thoughts that were all the more dangerous for their poetic qualities.
“Thank ye for caring for me,” he said gruffly.
He hoped she thought he meant just for acting as a healer during his injuries, but deep inside, he knew he meant more than that. He lifted his good hand and brushed his knuckles against the back of her cheek.
No weapon—no sword or rifle or mighty steed—had ever made him feel as powerful as he did when she leaned into that touch with a quiet, happy hum.
He was going to lean up to steal a kiss, no matter how much it would definitely hurt—he was, he reiterated to himself, only a man—but before his lips could come in contact with hers, she pulled back, an agonized look on her face.
“Good Lord, Ciaran,” she said, pulling his hand down from her face to clasp it between her palms. “I am so sorry.”
He frowned. “Lass, what in the hell are ye on about? What do ye have to be sorry for? As I recall it, ye dragged me half dead back to the Keep—again.”
The words came out harsher than he had intended them, both on account of his wounded pride and in utter rejection of the idea that she might, even for a moment, feel responsible for any of this utter mess.
“But ye were hurt because of me in the first place. If it werenae for me, Gordon’s men wouldnae have ambushed us.”
She looked tortured over the knowledge, and her anguish was like another bloody arrow, this one piercing his chest.
Tell her, some foolish, sentimental voice inside him urged. Just tell her the truth before this goes any further.
He tugged his hand from hers, then rubbed his face. These were the last moments where she would ever look at him like this. He would tell her everything, and then she would be lost to him forever.
He opened his mouth, his chest tightening with preemptive sorrow—
And the door creaked open, drawing both of their attention.
Davina’s red head poked in through the door. She wore a cautious, sympathetic look, and in her caring expression, Ciaran could see the faint resemblance between the sisters.
“Oh, you’re awake,” she said, clearly relieved, even though her green gaze traveled curiously at the scant space between Ciaran and her youngest sister. “Good. Ewan is convening everyone in the war room. He is expecting ye.”
Eillidh had never been in the study that Ewan and James had turned into their war room, though Vaila and Ailsa were both frequent attendees of the meetings that occurred therein.
It wasn’t as though Eilidh had been forbidden from joining them—Davina did from time to time, even though she was neither the Lady of the Keep like Ailsa, nor a professed warrior like Vaila, and even Mairi peeked in her head on occasion—but she’d never wanted to before now.
She didn’t really want to now, actually, but she couldn’t afford to pretend any longer. She couldn’t keep acting like the war would disappear if she closed her eyes and wished for it to be so.
Still, she didn’t like the pallor on Ciaran’s cheeks as he sat, straight-backed and looking down at the map that sprawled across the great table. Tiny carved markers dotted the Highlands, denoting the movements of allies and known enemies alike.
“It doesnae make any sense that Gordon would send a small patrol to try to abduct someone from the Keep,” Arran argued, looking furious and frustrated. “He couldnae have known that Eilidh was likely to ride out—and he didnae send nearly enough men to mount a frontal attack. It’s sheer idiocy.”
“He’s a goddamned madman who doesnae think the lives of his men mean much of anything at all,” Ewan countered.
“It’s easy to be unpredictable when ye dinnae care if ye lose half your army because ye just plan to buy more.
That unpredictability is half of what makes the blackguard so bloody dangerous. ”
“But I dinnae think he is stupid,” Arran returned. “Evil, yes. Mad, certainly. But he is too strategic to waste men on something that will get them killed and get him nothing in return. He’s much like my father in that way,” he added in a bitter aside.
At the end of the table, James’ head was bent over patrol logs, a fierce scowl etched across his face.
“I find myself less concerned with the why than the how,” he said, flipping back to review pages he’d already read thrice over. “How does the blighted scunner keep slipping past our guards?”
“Perhaps,” Ailsa said in a measured tone that suggested she had more than a little practice being the voice of reason, “we should ask Eilidh and Ciaran what they witnessed, since it is why we summoned them here.”
Ewan’s ferocity softened as he looked in his wife’s direction, though James and Arran lost none of their frustration as their gazes remained fixed on their respective documents.
From the way that their hands paused attentively, however, Eilidh could tell that they were listening—they were merely poised to put this new information into the larger context of the war.
Eilidh explained, though every detail she offered felt meaningless,
“We were riding along the forest path, the one away from the distillery,” she offered.
Arran seemed impressed when she was able to offer concrete landmarks that precisely pinpointed their location along the path, which stretched for miles.
“Ye ken the terrain well,” he praised.
“Aye,” Vaila muttered acidly from where she stood at her husband’s side. “It’s almost as though ye have been sneaking out all this time.”
Eilidh did not confirm or deny this, though she did smile when Vaila twitched in frustration.
“Nobody should have been able to slip through there,” James said, almost to himself, rifling through the logs again. “I’ve doubled the bloody patrols. I’ve walked the thrice-damned patrol lines myself!”
He raked a hand through his fair hair, leaving it in disarray. When Vaila laid a soothing hand on his arm, he settled visibly, like a bird finally letting its feathers un-puff.
Ciaran cleared his throat. Half a dozen faces turned sharply in his direction.
“They came from the northwest,” he said.
The words were simple enough, but there was a resignation to him.
And, indeed, Ewan’s suspicion was immediate and palpable.
“How do ye ken that?” he demanded.
Ciaran remained placid. “I was attacked from the same direction—the first time, that is.”
“Ye said those were bandits,” Arran pointed out.
“I thought they were,” Ciaran returned. “They didnae wear identifying marks, and it wasnae until the encounter last night that they aligned themselves with Gordon.”
Eilidh couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but this didn’t sit right with her. He hadn’t seem surprised the evening prior when the men had revealed their allegiance to Gordon, but that didn’t mean anything, did it? Besides, it had all happened so quickly…
The conversation was moving onward, though, with Arran sketching a finger along the northwestern routes that the band of mercenaries might have used to approach Buchanan Keep.
“That’s between McLeod and Finnegan lands,” he said, moving one of the carved figures representing Gordon’s men accordingly. “They have professed themselves against Gordon, but so did my father when he was secretly conspiring with the bastard.”
“Or there could be a traitor among either one of those clans,” Ewan added wearily. “We ken that Gordon isnae afraid to send spies and poisoners to commit misdeeds in his name.”
Ewan’s hand reached out to clasp Ailsa’s as though of its own accord.
“We will follow that lead,” James said determinedly, Vaila nodding with equal conviction at his side. “We will follow every lead. Eventually, we will find him.”
As the men returned to debating the minutiae of planning, Eilidh felt her attention wandering toward the man at her side. Ciaran held himself stiffly, almost as though he was braced for some kind of attack.
Mayhap it is just the pain, Eilidh told herself, hating the idea that he was suffering because of her. She reached out to squeeze his hand, needing some sort of contact between them.
The instant she did it, she feared that it was too forward—too public, when they hadn’t discussed anything of the kisses they’d shared. But something in him eased when her skin touched his, and seeing him relax, however minutely, made her own muscles unclench.
They exchanged a smile. It was brief, but she felt it stretch like a thread between them, holding them together.
“Eilidh.” She jerked up her head at Ewan’s voice. “For now,” the Laird said, giving her a meaningful look, “ye need to stay close to the Keep. Ye will have guards with ye at all times; ye are to go nowhere alone.”
Eilidh wanted to protest, but she knew that it did not matter that the idea of being constantly observed by a guard was stifling, suffocating.
She could not allow herself to fall into Gordon’s hands, not only for her own sake—though being forced to be his bride was one of the worst fates she could imagine—but because he could not be given any further tools to legitimize his claim to the Donaghey legacy.
“I understand,” she said, nodding solemnly to indicate her sincerity.
Ewan’s brow unfurrowed, and Eilidh was reminded of how very burdened her brother by marriage had seemed of late.
“Good,” he said. “We willnae allow anything to happen to ye.”
Ciaran’s fingers briefly squeezed around hers, tight and reassuring, and Eilidh clutched back with all her might.