Chapter 11 #3
Setting the ale aside, he faced her. He knew his mother, brothers and her parents were watching them, but he was past the point of caring.
Damn all of them.
And damn anyone who got between him and those stairs...
Nora gasped as Ewan actually tossed her over his shoulder and headed away from the stairs.
“What are you doing?” her father demanded.
“I’m removing the obstacle from my path.” Ewan sat her down in Lochlan’s padded chair by the hearth.
She sat stunned for a moment, unable to believe he had done this.
Granted he had set her down easily, but still.
How dare he!
“You’re bleeding again,” Nora gasped as he moved away from her, and headed back toward his ale.
“Aye, I know and all I want is to lie down and drink.”
She stiffened. “You can’t drink while lying down.”
He cast her a feral glare over his shoulder, grabbed the pitcher and headed for the stairs.
This time it was Lochlan who blocked his way.
Ewan sighed disgustedly. “Will I have to move you one by one?”
“Why are you bleeding?”
“Graham stabbed him,” Nora explained. “He’s refused to let anyone tend the wound for days.”
“I don’t need your coddling,” Ewan snarled.
He shoved Lochlan aside roughly.
Lochlan caught his arm and pulled him away from the stairs.
Ewan swung at him, but the pain from his arm was such that he staggered back from it.
The next thing he knew, Lochlan had his hand on his forehead. “You’re burning with fever.”
Ewan struggled to breathe. He just wanted to lie down and forget the past week with Nora.
He wanted the pain inside him to stop.
All he felt was agony. Bitter and aching, it tore through him. Nora was lost to him.
Honestly, he just wanted to die.
Knocking Lochlan’s hand away, he took a step and felt the room spin out from under him.
Nora gasped as Ewan sank to the floor. The pitcher skittered across the cobblestones as he knelt down, and his mother rushed toward him.
Nora joined them at his side only to find him completely unconscious.
“Ewan!” Lochlan shouted, trying to shake his brother awake.
Ewan didn’t respond at all.
Nora pushed Ewan’s shirt up to see the wound in his side. It was red and swollen with infection.
“You stubborn man,” she snarled at him. “You couldn’t stand to let me help you and now look what you’ve done. I swear Ewan MacAllister, if you don’t die from your stupidity, I shall kill you for it.”
“Out of the way, woman,” Sin MacAllister said rudely, pushing her aside.
He and Lochlan carried Ewan upstairs.
Without thought, Nora followed after them while her parents stayed below.
Sin and Lochlan took Ewan into a room at the top of the stairs and laid him gently on the bed.
Their mother came forward, her brow worried. “Why wasn’t the wound stitched?”
Nora’s throat tightened at the question. “I had nothing to stitch it with the first night and after that, he wouldn’t allow me to even see it, let alone tend it.”
Sin cut Ewan’s shirt off while Lochlan turned toward her. “You need to be leaving now, lass. It’s not proper for you to be here when we disrobe him.”
“But...” Nora caught herself before she told them that she had seen him bare. “I shall wait outside.”
She found herself quickly ousted.
Both her parents were waiting in the hallway.
“How does he?” her father asked.
Nora chewed her fingernail in fearful worry. “I know not. He’s not spoken of the wound since it happened.”
“He didn’t act wounded when he arrived,” her mother said.
“Aye,” Nora agreed. “He handles his pain well.”
Her heart heavy, she looked up at her father. “How could you do this to us, Father? How could you have manipulated me into running to him?”
He opened his mouth, snapped it shut, then sighed. “You’re a lovely lass, Nora. I wanted a good match for you and thought that if I could get the two of you together, Ewan would see what a fine wife you’d make.”
“And Ryan?”
“I thought that once you ran off with another man, Ryan would recant his offer. I had no idea how much he really loved you.”
She duplicated Ewan’s feral growl at that. If she heard those words one more time, she was going to seriously hurt someone.
“Ryan doesn’t love me!”
“Not true,” her mother said. “While you spoke to your father outside, he told me how much he feared for you and that the whole reason he paid the gypsies to abduct Ewan was so that he could return you home before he harmed you. He was worried about you, Nora.”
Nora started to tell them what a liar Ryan was, but she bit the words back. At the end of the day, her parents looked on him as a son. She wouldn’t destroy that for them or for Ryan.
Yet.
But if she were forced to this, she would decry him from the tallest tree.
“I don’t want to marry Ryan.”
Her mother glanced to the door. “Would you rather have Ewan?”
Tears gathered in her eyes as she nodded. “More than anything.”
Her father smiled. “Then I shall see what needs be done.”
“If he’ll have me, you mean.”
Her father looked offended by that. “And why wouldn’t he?”
Nora bit her lip as she thought about Ryan below. Ewan would never agree to marriage with her so long as he believed Ryan loved her.
She knew that.
The question was, could she ever make Ryan tell the truth?