Chapter 4
Chapter
Four
A lix carefully peeled away the linen bandage, as she had each day the past eight days, gently loosening the bandage with warm herbal water so not to cause more damage.
"Let me do it," Lady Brynna had gently offered. "You canna do this with no sleep or food. You will be no good if you are taken ill."
She heard her mistress' concern, saw it in the worried frown. She was exhausted and knew it showed. She caught her reflection in the polished looking plate the day before. The sleepless nights showed in the circles under her eyes, like the bruises at her neck. But she had refused.
Her worst fear that Ruari might die, was an ever-present spirit that hovered at the edge of the chamber, that if she left him it would take him and in truth those first days he seemed more dead than alive, tormented by fever and the dreams that came with them, so that he was not of a right mind, the Ruari she had once known a pale ghost to the emaciated, wounded man who lay before her.
"I will not let that devil have you, Ruari Fraser," she had whispered over him the night before.
"Do ye hear me? He canna have ye! Ye are mine!"
In the days since he first returned, she had cleaned the chamber, opened the shutters to the healing energy of the sun each morn, forced broth down his throat when he was barely able to swallow, laid cool cloths at his burning body, and bandaged his left arm.
She had seen worse, bandaged worse from an accident or careless blade, or an encounter with raiders, for the warriors of Clan Fraser and for their chieftain after he led his clansmen against those who had attacked Clan Munro.
But this was as if the wound was her own, something that cut deep, and might yet take this life that was precious to her. And so she refused to let another care for him. She must do it, as she did now, and had several times since his return, working silently, gently, washing away the dried blood and poison, until the skin at what was left of his arm lost that grayish pallor.
Alix felt that gaze on her even before she looked up, afraid of what she might see there. For days, he had lain silent, except for those fevered spells, lost somewhere between the living and the dead. Now he looked back at her from sunken eyes, but they were eyes she knew--as blue as the summer sky beyond the windows of the tower--crystal clear, intense.
Ruari stared at her--no dark-skinned woman who offered her body for silver coin in some distant place her touch burning through him--but a fair-skinned lass with eyes as dark as the deep waters of a loch, her touch like the cool mist of the highlands instead of the fires of faraway desert sands.
Was she real? He reached out to touch her, and felt something...
And nothing!
She saw the confusion at his face, the reality of his injury as he stared at the bandage that began just below the elbow and wrapped his severed arm. He cried out and swore, then swung his arm at her as if to strike out.
Her hands wrapped around his arm, holding on as he fought her, with amazing strength she would not have thought him capable of. When he could not loosen her grip, he fell back exhausted, a cold sweat glistening his body. Eyes closed, he fought for every word.
"Let me... die."
"No," she replied as she gently eased his injured arm back down onto the bed.
"I've no time for it today."
No time for it?
Ruari glared at her, a memory stirring of an unruly, impudent child with red-gold hair and dark blue eyes, who used to follow him about, and then stood just outside the gates of Lechlede all those years ago when he left for France.
So many years, a lifetime it seemed, spent on distant battlefields fighting for other men's causes, in service to the Pope, then the king of France.
"Go away with you, then." He had no use for an impudent child telling him no when he was certain he was dying, wanted it with what he had just seen-- a useless stomp that was all that remained of his left arm.
"I should go," Alix replied. "God knows there are others who would be thankful for my care, and not looking like a beggar and smelling like a dung heap!"
He had half a mind to take hold of her and thrash the sass out of the child, except the young woman who glared back at him didn't look much like a child, and he didn't have the strength for it."
"You have the manners of a goat and the tongue of an adder," he told her, still struggling with that memory.
"Who is yer father to let ye run about tormenting people?"
She finished tying off the bandage that he'd very nearly removed with his wild thrashing.
"My father and mother are dead, as well you know, Ruari Fraser. There is only my grandmother."
Another piece of memory shifted into place--of a young lass with her hair streaming down her back, tossing a stick for one of the hounds at Lechlede, mud up to her ankles, and fire in those blue eyes.
"Alix?"
A child no more, but a beautiful young woman who, at the moment, looked as if she would gladly remove his other arm, or his head, by the look she gave him--a look that was the same.
Her hair was pulled back into a long braid that lay over her shoulder, stray wisps escaping to frame her face. Where there had once been freckles, color spread across pale skin at high cheekbones. Her jaw was slender but hinted at stubbornness, her neck long and slender. He frowned as another memory surfaced, and he frowned.
"The marks at your neck--how did you come by them?"
"Yerself," she informed him. "When ye were taken with the fevers. Ye thought me the enemy. And for that, I'll no let ye die Ruari Fraser. There's a score to settle for that."
He let out a shaky breath. Christ! But she had a sharp tongue. He smiled to himself. The apology was there, but he barely had the strength for it.
"Serves ye right," he replied instead. "Bother a man when he's dying."
"I told ye, yer not dying. Saint Peter wouldna have ye, nor the devil either, so ye best set yer mind to it."
She went to the table and poured a flagon of water from the bucket to hide her shaking hands, then brought it back to the bed. She slipped an arm beneath his shoulders.
"Slowly, " she held the flagon to his lips. He took several swallows, most of it dribbling down onto the thick beard at his chin, dark red and thick, when there had only been the lightest dusting of beard at his cheeks the last time she had seen him.
She felt that piercing gaze on her, with long dark lashes to make a woman envious. There was no mischievous smile that she remembered, but a frown as he reached up with his right hand, his fingers gently brushing the bruises at her throat.
"I'm sorry," he finally managed. "Yer man wilna be pleased."
"I've no man," she bluntly informed him.
No one but you, Ruari Fraser.
And the thought almost brought tears, that she had loved him for as long as she could remember, and loved him still not knowing the man he was now, wounded, broken, wanting to die.
He smiled faintly. "Drove him away with that sharp tongue, aye?"
But it wasn't sharp, he thought. She merely spoke her mind as she always had, without guile or subtleties of other women he'd known at the French court, her voice softening when she spoke the Gaelic, the sound of it the sound of home that moved through him.
Home.
Familiar sounds that soothed the pain and dulled the truth of what he'd lost--of men working the horses nearby at the yard, shouted insults and curses, then the sudden bark of laughter, the chatter of women and children that drifted through the window opening, and the sweet smell...
She saw the confusion, the struggle to remember, then his eyes closed with a shadow of a smile at his lips and he was asleep.
He didn't move, didn't so much as flinch as she bathed his arm later. More than once she cursed herself for the tears that came too easily when she had sworn she wouldn't cry any over Ruari Fraser. But to see him like that, wasted by fever, with so thin that bones stuck out all over him, it brought the tears so that she had to turn away, afraid that he would wake and see them.
When she had cleaned the wound, she applied the salve she'd made, and then bound it with strips of clean linen. She looked up at a sound in the chamber, Lady Brynna setting a platter of food at the table.
"He canna eat just yet, but the fever is gone."
"You were not at hall last night." Brynna stepped closer, frowning as she stared down at the man who lay there, her frown deepening as she turned to the girl.
"You must eat. It will do him no good if you waste away from lack of food."
Alix tied off the bandage. She started to tell her mistress that he had spoken, but then decided against it. For now, she wanted to keep that for herself.
"What will happen when he is fully healed?" she asked.
Brynna frowned as she sat at the bedside and laid a hand at his forehead. "That will be up to him." She frowned. "But it will be no easy task."
She had seen others, injured and maimed, who returned to Lechlede, their lives forever changed. They found a purpose within the clan, raised their families, built new lives. Her own husband, their chieftain had been forced to accept the consequences of the last wounds he had received. Still, he was a strong and respected leader of the clan.
There were none who would have challenged him. But there were others, she knew, who never recovered from those wounds, never rebuilt their lives, a handful who simply disappeared or found a way to end the misery their lives had become when a man must make his way with both hands and legs.
"But for certain something must be done about the smell of him, now that the fever has broken."
"He canna be moved,"Alix pointed out. "I will see it done here."
Brynna's dark brows lifted slightly, but she said nothing. She knew this young woman, and to challenge her would only have ended badly. She had a fierce loyalty to Ruari Fraser. But that was the young man she had once known, who tugged at her braid and had teased her unmercifully.
"Take care," she said gently touching Alix's hand. "He is changed, and will not be the one you remember. "
"I know."
She had seen it in his eyes, those first moments when the horrifying truth of his loss was there, the way he had turned from her.
"Are you prepared to accept the man he has become?" Brynna asked.
She thought of the changes for her own husband, the weight of responsibilities, the ever-present threats to the clan, those who had been lost--friends, men he had known most of his life, the people of the village and beyond. But in other ways, in his heart, he was unchanged, in his trust of her, in the strength of his love, more dear to her than life itself.
Alix nodded. She did not know the man he had become, and in her heart lay the fear that the young man she had loved since a child might be lost to her. But she would not turn from him, not when he needed her.
And when he did not?
"What are ye doin?" A pair of dark eyes widened as young Alexander Fraser peeked around the edge of the door.
At nine years he had the manner of his father--quiet, cautious in his words, intelligent, but with the curiosity of a child at this uncle who had returned from France; an outlaw it was said among the men at the stables, before Gabhran had silenced their gossiping.
"I'm giving him a bath," Alix announced as she soaked a cloth in the warm water then spread soapwort across Ruari's shoulders and chest.
"A woman giving a mon a bath?" he replied incredulously, inwardly cringing at the thought of a girl bathing him, or a bath at all for that matter.
It was bad enough that his mother scrubbed behind his ears and his neck, and his arms and face if he didna see it done proper before sitting down to evening meal. But she was his mother. That was different.
"Is he alive?"
He had heard rumors that the man they called his uncle had died. Gabhran had cuffed his ears for listening to gossip.
"Well, and alive enough," Alix replied as she gently turned him onto his side and washed his back, then stood back with the next challenge before her.
He'd been too weak to visit the privy chamber when he first arrived. The bucket had come in handy then, Gabhran or one of the other men seeing to his needs. Weak as a kitten, he had hung between the two men, and Gabhran had ordered her from the chamber. She hadn't left but turned her back as they helped him.
"I've seen a man relieve himself before," she had argued.
In the days since, he'd leaned weakly on one or the other, struggling to hold on with his right arm and what was left of the other.
He looked like the crow one of the hounds had pounced on, with a broken wing that flapped about, more than making up for the loss of the wing as it hopped about, using its other wing to soundly thrash anything that came near at the same time it efficiently skewered a cake or piece of bread from the meal of one of the stable-boys when they weren't looking.
She would have laughed if the sight of him struggling to stand when he had always been so strong and self-assured hadn't instead reduced her to tears that she hid from everyone, but especially from him. He would have resented her tears just as he seemed to resent her presence.
Now, she carefully cut away the linen hose he wore. The sight of a man was nothing new to her, bare arse or no. More than once she had come upon a Fraser kinsman, or one of the chieftain's sons, bathing in the chamber next to the kitchen where a barrel was always kept filled with steaming water.
In the past when Alexander and young Connor were small, she had helped Lady Brynna with their baths, young lads were forever getting into mischief, muck, and scrapes. But Ruari Fraser was no young lad. She was reminded of that as she cut away the linen hose, a barely healed scar at his thigh.
The chamber was cold in spite of the early morning sun and he came up out of sleep to stare into her equally stunned gaze. That icy blue gaze pinned her, the fever gone, but no less stunned to find her at the side of the bed, the linen blankets pulled back, cold air against bare flesh.
"Que diable se passe-t-il!" Ruari swore, coming up out of the fog of sleep like a crazed fiend, instinctively striking out at the shadowy image that bent over him.
The blow caught her at the shoulder. It might have been worse, a glancing blow with the lower part of his left arm gone.
Alexander's eyes were wide at the sight of this crazed man, all but naked, with wild hair and beard, his eyes like blue fire as he screamed strange sounding words.
Alix needed no translation, even though she had no knowledge of the French language. Alexander looked at her wide-eyed as the curses took on a different accent in the broad Scots Gaelic.
"Go away!"
"I was only trying... "
The man who came at her then was clear-eyed after so many potion-induced days where he had lain barely conscious. And he was furious, and weak, dragging deep breaths in between the words.
"I don't need ye!"
Ruari Fraser, weak, thin, the linen coming unbound from his wounded arm, was a fearsome sight to see, eyes blazing blue fire, his mouth curled in a snarl.
"I can bloody well do it myself!"
"Then, bloody well do it yerself!" She threw the linen cloth that she'd used to wash him into the bucket.
"Ye smell like swine!"
He swore again, coming up off the edge of the bed. Alexander fled the chamber, calling for help as he ran down the steps to the hall below.
She didn't need help. What she needed was a rope to tie him to the bed before he did himself more damage.
"Then get away, with ye!" Ruari waved his arm through the air.
The sudden movement, the strength it took just for that feeble gesture, was more than he had. He fought to stand, naked as the day he was born, staggered against the side of the bed, grabbed for the edge of the table with the hand that was no longer there and would have gone down if Alix hadn't moved quickly.
She wrapped an arm around his waist, taking his weight against her shoulder.
"Amadan !" she hissed. "Bloody fool!"
"What is this about?" Gabhran and two other kinsmen came up the stairs and into the chamber.
A hand-span shorter than Ruari, he draped the younger man's right arm around his shoulder, holding onto him as one of the other men moved her aside and slipped an arm under his shoulders.
"Are ye all right, lass?" Gabhran asked when they finally had him back on the bed.
She nodded. "I didna think he had that much strength in him."
"Aye, well, it seems he may live after all."
"If the stench doesna kill him."
Or herself, she thought, rubbing her shoulder.
"Tis no place for a young girl," the old warrior reminded her. "He's no a lad, but a man full grown and ye best remember it. The lad who left near ten years ago is no more, aye? There are wounds that need to heal." He shook his head.
"But there are some wounds," he angled a glance toward the bed, "that never heal, and they cripple a man for the rest of his life. I have seen it. Then a man is dead inside. He is walking around, but he is dead in here." He thumped his chest.
Her anger eased. The past days she had been terrified that Ruari would die. Now it seemed he would live, but what kind of life would that be?
"I don't think he is one to be a cripple," she replied.
"No, he is not. He is a force unto himself and he must find his way, or be lost." His gaze met hers, like that of a stern father.
"And you must take care, lass. That you are not hurt in this. One of the others should see to him now that he is awake."
Was it so obvious, what she felt for Ruari Fraser... ? Had always felt for him?
"No!" she said fiercely. "I will do it, whether he wants it or no. I will see it done!"
Gabhran shook his head. "He will grow stronger, and ye must be prepared to deal with the man he has become."
Her chin notched up slightly. She nodded. "I will carry a stout stick to beat him over the head when he gets his red up."
Gabhran shook his head. He knew the girl well, knew her strength and her stubbornness.
"That would be a battle I would like to see."
When he had gone, she picked up the wash basin and filled it from the iron pot over the fire, then picked up the washing cloth from the stone floor. She righted the small table that had gone over and set the basin on it, then set the cloth to soak.
That fierce blue gaze glared at her from the shadows at the bed. "I told you, I would do it myself!"
He sat up at the end of the bed, back braced against the head board, that wild mane of hair about his head. The beard was a matted mass from the broth that had spilled when he had first been too weak to eat.
One of the men had scraped it away. Now only a bronze bristle covered his chin and upper lip, that sensuous mouth curved in a frown, a fierce look where there had always been a smile in the young man she had waved farewell to as a child.
She was a child no more and took a deep breath against what she would like to have said to him. Instead she threw the washing cloth at him, hitting him square in the face.
"Then do it, man, or I will have the men hold you down and see it done. The lady of the house is not one to bide stinking pigs in the hall!"
She never saw it coming, so quick, his right hand shot out and grabbed her arm that made a lie of the weakness that had plagued him the past days.
"Who the devil are ye?" he demanded, his fingers bruising at her arm as he pulled her toward him.
Gabhran's warning flashed through her thoughts. The young man who left Lechlede all those years before would have simply laughed at her. This was not the same young man, but a glimpse of the man he had become--wounded, changed forever. She looked for a glimpse of the Ruari she had known, but saw nothing of him in the fierce gaze that burned through her. And she realized in that moment that he still had no idea who she was.
"My name is Alix!" she informed him, fighting back her own anger, then twisting her arm free of his fingers.
"If ye raise yer hand to me again, I'll cut that one off! Then where will ye be? A man who can't even wipe his own arse!"
Red-gold hair, eyes the color of a loch in summer--deep blue with those dark shadows, that sassy expression at the beautiful face, and the even sassier reply, mingled with other images of the past days and a memory shifted of a young lass standing just outside the gates of Lechlede, a breeze stirring waist-length hair. It was braided now, falling over one shoulder, but the deep blue gaze that met his was fierce, unafraid, and one that he recognized--real, flesh and blood, and not something he had imagined.
Alix. A spit of a child no more, but a beautiful young woman .
Cut off his other arm?
He almost believed she would do it. He lifted what was left of his one arm, his hand gone below the elbow, a parting token from Sir John Blackwood and a score to settle. His head went back against the headboard.
"Not even wipe my own arse?" he replied.
By God, the girl had a temper. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen, once one got past the temper. If he had the strength, he would have laughed. He had just enough strength to take hold of the washing cloth where it had fallen among the bed clothes. He looked at her then, the cold fury of before replaced with a weary expression.
"I'll see to it."
"Fine," she replied, pushing the table with the basin closer to the edge of the bed.
"I'll come back for that later, with yer supper. There's a clean shirt at the end of the bed." She stalked out of the chamber, yanking the stout door closed behind her.
Once outside the chamber, she leaned back against the stone wall and the tears came. Only there, where he could not see, did she give into the doubt and fear, and the pity that she knew from long ago he would never abide. That much had not changed.