Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Colin bowed his head, only briefly, but Elspeth saw it.
She had begun, against all sense and better judgment, to understand that the smallest motions in him were often the loudest. He did not tremble.
He did not confess fear. He did not soften where others might see it.
Yet there was something in that bowed head that made her chest tighten more painfully than the cut along her ribs.
Then her gaze moved to his shoulder. The arrow was still there.
It looked monstrous now that she was permitted to notice it properly. The shaft jutted from him with brutal disregard, the torn leather around it dark with blood. His face was pale beneath that iron composure he wore, and Elspeth felt a fresh surge of anger so sharp it steadied her.
“Now him,” she ordered.
Fionn’s expression sharpened with the relief of a man finally permitted to address the more obvious disaster. “Aye. Now him.”
“I am fine,” Colin almost snarled.
Elspeth stared at him. “If I werenae bandaged, I would strike ye.”
“Rest has improved yer temper.”
Fionn pointed to the chair beside the table. “Sit, me laird.”
Colin did not move.
Elspeth’s eyes narrowed. “Sit.”
The room changed. Skye’s gaze flew to the floor.
Fionn suddenly found great interest in sorting his tools.
Even the air seemed to hold itself still, as if the walls themselves wished to see whether Colin MacKenzie, terror of half the Highlands and master of every grim silence he entered, would obey his wife.
He looked at her. Elspeth was painfully aware of herself then: pale, bandaged, half-covered by torn green cloth, still seated because he had carried her there, still aching beneath the healer’s careful work. But command rose in her all the same, clean and bright as a blade.
Colin sat. Her satisfaction was immediate and, she suspected, intolerable to him.
Fionn moved at once, as though fearing the laird might change his mind if given even a moment’s leisure.
The healer cut away the ruined leather and linen at Colin’s shoulder, exposing blood-slicked skin and the ugly place where the arrow had gone in.
Elspeth’s breath caught before she could stop it.
The shaft had not gone clean through. It had buried deep in the flesh above his shoulder blade, missing bone by God’s mercy or the archer’s poor aim. Blood ran warm down Colin’s back, bright and terrible in the firelight.
Elspeth stood at once.
“Sit,” Colin said.
“I shallnae.”
“Yer ribs—”
“Will remain attached whether I sit or stand.”
Fionn glanced between them. “This marriage is very good fer me practice in patience.”
Skye, who returned with a blanket to cover Elspeth’s torn gown, muttered. “It is good fer everyone’s practice in patience.”
Elspeth ignored them both and moved nearer. She had no intention of sitting meekly upon a table while her husband had an arrow dragged out of him.
Husband.
The word still felt strange in her mind, but in that moment it belonged there with a frightening certainty.
Fionn gripped the shaft. “This will hurt.”
Colin looked at Elspeth. “Dinnae watch.”
“Dinnae presume tae command where I put me eyes.”
“Elspeth.”
She came closer instead and set her hand on his uninjured arm.
It was a small touch, a steadying touch.
She meant to offer it as a kindness, perhaps even as defiance.
Yet the instant her fingers closed over him, she felt the violent tension in his body, the strength it took him to sit still, and the suffering he intended to conceal beneath his usual cold endurance.
He hated needing it. Somehow, that made her give it more firmly.
Fionn broke the shaft shorter, worked the head loose, and drew it out. Pain moved through Colin’s body like lightning.
His hand shot to the edge of the chair and gripped hard enough that the wood groaned. His head lowered. His jaw clenched until the muscle jumped. For one dreadful moment, Elspeth thought he might fall. The color drained from him, leaving his face almost grey beneath the dark fall of his hair.
He made no sound. That was worse.
A sound might have frightened her less than his silence. That stubborn, brutal refusal to admit pain made something inside her twist until she could scarcely breathe.
Her fingers tightened on his arm. “Colin.”
He dragged in a breath as if her voice had reached him through deep water. His eyes found hers.
“I am here.”
The words struck too hard. Elspeth had not known until then that she needed him to say them.
Her eyes shone too brightly, and she despised herself for it. “Ye are a very troublesome man.”
“Aye.”
“Dinnae dae that again.”
“Get shot?”
“Aye.”
“I will take it under advisement.”
Fionn pressed cloth hard to the wound. Colin’s breath left through his teeth.
The healer worked quickly after that, cleaning, stitching where needed.
Elspeth remained beside him, her hand still on his arm, because if she let go, she feared he might vanish behind pain, or worse, behind that cold self-command that always seemed determined to deny her any proof that he was flesh.
Colin endured it. Endurance, she was beginning to understand, was the most infuriating of his virtues.
Pain had edges. Fear did not. And Elspeth knew, as she watched blood darken cloth after cloth, that she would rather have borne the cut at her ribs twice over than watch him sit there pale and silent beneath Fionn’s hands.
The potion came last. Fionn handed the cup to Colin with the expression of a man expecting war. “Drink.”
Colin smelled it and pushed it back. “Nay.”
Elspeth leaned over and took the cup from Fionn. “What is it?”
“Fer sleep,” the healer said. “Poppy, willow, a little whisky. He needs it. If he moves too much before the bleeding settles, he will tear the wound open again.”
“I dinnae need sleep,” Colin told them.
Elspeth turned to him slowly. There was a dangerous calm in her now, the sort that came when fear exhausted itself and left anger to keep house.
“Ye have an arrow hole in yer shoulder.”
“Had.”
“Ye refused treatment until me scratch was dressed.”
“It wasnae a scratch.”
“It was very nearly a scratch.”
“It bled.”
“So daes a nose if struck hard enough, and yet one daesnae challenge death over it.”
Fionn looked as if he might be enjoying himself despite the blood.
Colin held out his hand for the cup. “I will drink later.”
Elspeth did not give it to him. “Ye will drink now.”
“I must speak with the prisoner.”
“Breac can speak with the prisoner.”
“I must set the guard rotations.”
“Murdoch can set the guard rotations.”
“I must—”
“Sleep,” she finished.
Their eyes met. For a moment the room, with its bitter scent of herbs and blood and smoke, seemed to fall away.
Colin looked at her as if she had done something far more dangerous than contradict him, as if she had placed a hand not upon his arm, but inside some hidden place he had kept armored for years.
Elspeth knew then that she failed to hide the worst of it.
Her fear.
Her ribs stung, and the bandage pulled when she breathed too deeply, but the pain was a shallow thing compared with the terror of seeing Colin struck, of seeing him bleed, of understanding, with appalling swiftness, that his strength had become something she relied upon and resented needing in equal measure.
At last, Colin took the cup from her hand. Elspeth’s shoulders lowered by the smallest measure.
“If this kills me,” he warned, “I will haunt ye.”
He drank. The potion was bitter enough to make even Colin’s mouth tighten, which gave Elspeth a small, vicious pleasure.
Its strength began to show before Fionn had even finished the final bandage.
Colin tried to remain upright, of course.
He would have attempted to argue with unconsciousness itself if he had thought it challenged his authority.
Elspeth watched him with solemn certainty. His lids grew heavier. His face remained stubbornly severe. He hated being seen in weakness, that much was plain. He hated the weight gathering in his limbs, hated that his body, traitorous from blood loss and herbs, was surrendering without permission.
“I am nae asleep,” he spoke.
“Nay,” Elspeth replied gravely. “Ye are merely reconsidering wakefulness.”
Skye coughed into her hand.
Fionn tied the final bandage and stood. “He must be moved carefully. Nay riding. Nay fighting. Nay questioning prisoners.”
Colin opened one eye. “That last instruction seems personal.”
She stepped closer, her hand returning to his arm. “Come. Bed.”
The word left her mouth before she considered the effect of it. Only after saying it did she remember the room contained Skye, Fionn, bloodied cloths, and a husband who once made her understand that bed was not merely furniture.
Colin’s gaze sharpened faintly despite the potion. Heat rose in Elspeth’s face. He rose too quickly and nearly proved every objection against him correct.
Elspeth caught his good arm. Skye reached for her at once, and Fionn muttered something about married fools being the heaviest burden on any healer’s soul.
Colin allowed himself to be guided, which told Elspeth more about the potion than any explanation could have done.
He leaned only slightly, and perhaps no one else would have called it leaning at all.
But she felt it. She felt the weight he tried not to give her.
She felt the heat of him beside her, the careful way he kept from pressing against her wounded side even while his own steps had grown less certain.
By the time they reached the chamber, Colin’s strength was leaving him in visible degrees, though he still tried to hide each one.
Skye drew the curtains. Fionn gave instructions.
The fire was built high. Elspeth changed only enough for her torn gown to be removed without disturbing her bandage, and she let Skye wrap her in a loose robe because she had no strength left to argue over modesty.
Colin lay upon the bed with an expression of grave suspicion, as if the mattress had been sent by Munro.
“Ye may stop glaring at the ceiling,” Elspeth said, sitting beside him. “It didnae shoot ye.”
His eyes closed despite him. Elspeth watched the hard lines of his face ease by almost nothing, watched the pain remain even under the drag of the potion, watched this impossible man who stood between her and an arrow without hesitation and then argued over a cup meant to save him from tearing himself open again.
A tenderness she had not invited rose in her throat. She reached out before she could stop herself and brushed the hair from his forehead. His hand lay upon the bed near hers.
It was a warrior’s hands, a laird’s hand, and a hand that had covered her mouth, held her steady, protected her, teased her, and taught her things she could not yet think of without blushing.
Elspeth lowered her voice until it was barely more than breath. “Ye frightened me.”
Colin’s lashes stirred. For one moment she thought he might answer. His mouth parted slightly, and something strained beneath the potion’s hold, as if words were trying to fight their way through sleep.
But the draught took him. His breathing deepened. His face turned toward her by the smallest measure.
Elspeth remained beside him, her fingers still near his temple, and told herself she stayed because he might wake in pain, because the healer asked that he be watched, because Skye was tired and the castle was in chaos and someone sensible ought to make certain Colin MacKenzie did not rise from bed to interrogate prisoners while half-unconscious.
All those reasons were excellent. None of them explained why, when his hand shifted in sleep and came to rest beside hers, she did not move away.
Elspeth looked at Colin MacKenzie not as the man who bought her, nor as the laird who commanded her, nor even as the husband who unsettled her body beyond repair. She looked at him as a man who could bleed, a man who could fall, a man she was not at all certain she knew how to lose.
So she stayed, listening to the fire and his breathing, with her hand beside his on the bed and her heart behaving as if it had been struck by an arrow, too.