Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They reached Duart with the rosemary crushed between them and blood drying stiff upon Ruaridh’s sleeve.
The yard changed the moment they entered it.
Men looked first to him, then to Isobel, then to the dark stain on his shoulder.
Ruaridh dismounted before his horse had properly settled and handed the reins to a groom.
“Close the lower gate,” he ordered. “Send Brodie tae the cliffs with six men. Torin takes the ridge path. I want every hollow searched before dusk.”
The orders moved faster than fear. Isobel stood beside him, pale but upright.
Ruaridh looked at her. “Inside.”
Her eyes flashed, some portion of pride still alive beneath the shock. “I am nae the one bleeding.”
“And yet ye are the one I am telling tae go inside.”
“Then ye may enjoy being ignored.”
Still, she turned and strode past him toward the keep. For one foolish second, despite the blood on his arm and the fury in his chest, Ruaridh almost smiled. The pride and stubbornness of that woman would be the death of him.
Upon entering the keep, he was informed that the healer was not there. Old Seumas had been called to a croft beyond the mill before dawn, where a woman was laboring too early and badly. He wouldn’t return for hours.
“It is a scratch,” Ruaridh told her dismissively.
Isobel, who had followed him into his study despite three separate orders not to, looked at the blood spreading down his sleeve. “Then yer scratches are ambitious.”
“It can wait.”
“It can rot, if ye are determined tae be foolish.”
One of the maids hovering at the door looked startled. Ruaridh sent her away with a glance before Isobel could recruit her into rebellion.
Then, they were left alone. That became immediately apparent. The chamber was small, warmed by a narrow hearth and smelling of spirits, dried yarrow, linen, and old smoke. A table stood near the window, with a basin, bandages, needles, and a jar of salve set in neat order.
Ruaridh looked toward the door. “I can bind it meself.”
“With one hand?”
“I have managed worse.”
“I dinnae doubt ye have suffered many injuries in defense of yer own stubbornness.”
His mouth tightened.
She set the rosemary down upon the table with rather more force than the poor herb deserved. “Sit.”
He stared at her. She stared back. There were men who had failed to hold his gaze that long with blades in their hands.
At last, because continuing the matter would make the wound bleed longer and because some part of him was too tired to pretend he did not want her hands on him, Ruaridh sat.
Isobel moved to the basin and washed her hands. Her movements were brisk at first, almost severe, but when she turned back with a cloth in one hand, he saw the faint tremor in her fingers. He did not comment.
“Take off yer shirt,” she urged.
Her face changed the moment after she said them, with color rising beneath her composure. Ruaridh watched her gather pride about herself like a cloak.
“Fer the wound,” she added sharply.
“I understood.”
“Then dinnae look amused.”
“I wasnae.”
“Ye were thinking it.”
“I didnae ken ye had authority over me thoughts as well as me shirt.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Take it off, or I will cut it.”
“It is already ruined.”
“Then I shall enjoy meself.”
He should not have liked that answer. He reached for the hem and drew the shirt carefully over his head.
The motion pulled at the torn flesh near his shoulder, and pain cut hot and clean through the upper muscle.
He kept his face still, but Isobel saw. Her irritation vanished for one unguarded moment, replaced by concern so quick and naked that it struck him harder than the wound.
“Let me see.”
Ruaridh turned slightly. The arrow had grazed across the outside of his shoulder, shallow enough not to cripple, deep enough to bleed like a curse. When Isobel stepped close, the scent of rosemary came with her, green and bruised beneath the sharper smell of blood.
She touched the cloth to the wound. He went still.
Her fingers were cool from the water, but the place where they steadied his shoulder burned.
She worked with care, cleaning blood from the torn skin, and every necessary touch became its own private trial.
Her knuckles brushed his collarbone. Her thumb pressed briefly near the edge of the wound.
Her sleeve grazed his bare chest when she leaned closer to see.
Ruaridh fixed his gaze upon the wall. It didn’t help.
“Daes it hurt?” she asked.
“Aye.”
The honesty seemed to surprise her. Her hand paused.
“Good,” she said too late to sound entirely convincing. “Perhaps next time ye will choose nae tae stand before arrows.”
He looked at her then. “Next time, duck quicker.”
Her mouth parted in outrage. “I wasnae given notice.”
“I shall ask the next archer tae announce himself.”
She pressed the cloth to his shoulder a little harder than necessary. He hissed a breath between his teeth.
“Fergive me,” she said at once.
The apology came so swiftly that both of them heard it. Ruaridh looked up. She looked down. The silence grew warm.
Her fingers remained on his shoulder, holding the cloth there, but the pressure had changed. Her hand rested against him with the full awareness of skin, heat, and restraint. He saw the flush still high upon her cheeks. He saw the effort with which she refused to look anywhere but the wound.
He wanted to touch her. Not to seize, or claim or take…
just touch. He wanted to put his hand over hers, to see whether she would pull away, to know whether the breath she held was fear, anger, or the same dangerous want that had made his own blood run hotter than the wound could explain. But he didn’t move.
She lifted the cloth and reached for the salve.
“This may sting.”
She spread the salve with two careful fingers.
Ruaridh closed his hand around the edge of the chair.
It did sting. But beneath it was her touch, circling the torn skin slowly because haste would hurt him more.
He had endured broken ribs, blade cuts, fever, and one arrowhead that had taken two men and half a bottle of whisky to remove.
None had required the discipline demanded by Isobel MacDonald tending a graze upon his shoulder.
Her eyes lifted to his. For one brief, impossible moment, she was not the daughter of Dunnyveg. She was only a woman close enough that he could see the gold-brown flecks in her eyes, close enough that the room seemed to have no air left for anything but the two of them.
Then she stepped back.
“I need a bandage,” she said.
Her voice was not steady.
Neither was his when he replied. “There.”
She turned at once to the table. He gave her the mercy of looking away while she recovered herself, though every instinct in him rebelled against mercy. When she returned, the bandage in her hands, she had regained enough composure to be dangerous.
“Lift yer arm a little.”
He obeyed.
“Nae so much. Ye will open it again.”
He lowered it.
“Fer a man accustomed tae command, ye are remarkably poor at instruction.”
“That is because I am usually giving it.”
“Then this will improve yer character.”
“Many have tried.”
“And failed?”
“Mostly died.”
Her hands paused around his shoulder. It was a jest. A dark one, perhaps, but not uncommon between men who lived as they did. Yet she did not laugh. Her gaze had gone to the wound again, then beyond it, to the torn cloth on the floor.
“Was it Ewen?” she asked.
Ruaridh looked toward the fire. “Most likely.”
“Because of me?”
His head turned at once. “Nay.”
The force of the answer made her still.
He softened nothing else. “Because of himself. Because he wanted what he was denied. Because men like him mistake desire fer right and insult fer injury.”
Her fingers tightened around the bandage.
Then, she resumed binding his shoulder, but slowly now, as though her thoughts had moved far from the task.
The linen passed beneath his arm and over his shoulder, around and around, drawing them into an intimacy that was no longer only of the body.
He could feel her uncertainty in every careful pass of cloth.
“Me faither kent Ewen,” she revealed.
Ruaridh stilled.
“He must have kent enough. Men always dae when they wish tae, and naething at all when knowledge would inconvenience them.” Her mouth tightened. “He left before I could ask him. Before I could even look at him properly and let him see that I understood what he had done.”
Ruaridh said nothing. There were words a man did not interrupt.
Her eyes remained on the bandage. “After me brithers died, he stopped looking at me as if I were his child. I dinnae think he meant tae. Grief makes people cruel in ways they can pretend are accidents.”
The room had gone very quiet.
“Me brithers were everything that mattered,” she continued.
“Heir and spare, pride and promise. They could ride, fight, shout, break things, bleed, and be forgiven because they were boys and then men. When they died, the house died with them. Me maither became a ghost who still wore gowns. Me faither became duty in human shape.”
Her voice did not break. That was worse.
“And I remained,” she scoffed. “That was me great offence. I lived, and they didnae. I wasnae enough tae replace them, and too much a reminder that they were gone.”
Ruaridh felt something inside him go still and deep.
He had known grief. He had carried his father’s death like iron beneath his ribs.
But there was a particular cruelty in what she described, not the sharpness of a blade but the slow deprivation of warmth, a child left standing in the room after love had followed the dead out of it.
“Isobel,” he whispered.
She shook her head once, not to silence him harshly, but because if he said the wrong word just then she might come apart. He understood that, too. So, he remained still.
She tied the bandage with neat, fierce care.
“All me life, I was told MacLeans had taken me brithers from me. That yer name was the reason me faither no longer saw me. It is easier tae hate a clan than tae hate the silence at one’s own table.
” Her fingers tightened on the knot. “It is easier tae curse men across the sea than admit the man who should have protected ye found it convenient tae dae so.”
Ruaridh closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, she was watching him. The vulnerability in her face was brief, proud, and devastating. She seemed almost surprised to have said so much, as though the words had slipped through a door she usually kept barred.
He wanted then, with a force that frightened him, to take her father by the throat.
Instead, he spoke carefully. “Ye ken me faither died because of MacDonald men.”
She flinched, but did not look away.
“Fer years, I thought that was the whole truth of me. Son of a murdered laird. Keeper of debts. Wolf, when men wanted tae flatter themselves fer fearing me.” His voice lowered. “It is a poor thing, when the dead are made tae govern the living. Poorer still when we let them.”
Her eyes shone, though no tears fell.
“I dinnae fergive what was done tae mine,” he told her. “And I willnae ask ye tae forgive what was done tae yers.”
Her breath trembled once.
“But I will tell ye this.” He leaned forward slightly, enough that the words belonged only to them. “Yer faither’s failure was his own, nae yers and nae yer brithers’. His.”
Isobel looked down at the knot she had tied upon his shoulder. Her fingers remained there, resting lightly against the bandage.
“I dinnae ken what tae dae with that,” she whispered.
“Nay,” he said. “I dinnae suppose ye would, nae yet at least.”
She gave a small, broken breath that might have become a laugh in another life. “Ye are very certain fer a man who has caused me a great deal of confusion.”
“Aye,” he smirked. “I am gifted that way.”
Her mouth moved faintly.
Outside, men hunted the cliffs for an enemy who had already slipped away. The island remained unsafe, the feud unhealed, their marriage still a thing neither of them had chosen.
Yet Ruaridh sat with his shoulder bound by her hands, and Isobel stood close enough that he could feel the warmth of her through the quiet.