Chapter Four
He woke to quiet and to pain.
The two arrived together, the first thing known.
The ache in his ribs was sharp, a tight, insistent reminder that breathing wasn’t going to come easy right away, but the pain in his thigh announced itself a moment later with a deeper, heavier throb that made him lie still and take stock before he tried to move. He didn’t feel well, didn’t feel whole.
But then, he wasn’t dead and decided that should count for something.
The air was cool, faintly smoky, and close.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a low, dark ceiling of soot-stained timber and thatch.
The only noise aside from his own labored breathing was a slow and steady dripping sound, but a quick glance around the ceiling didn’t reveal the location of the source of the drip, only advised that it must have rained sometime overnight.
He turned his head carefully and took in the rest of the dwelling in stages.
It was a single space, not much larger than a wealthy knight’s tent.
The walls were stone up to a man’s knee and raw timber above, darkened with years of smoke.
Shelves ran along one side, holding clay jars, a few bundles tied with cord, a scattering of small, practical things set where a hand could find them without looking.
Memory flooded him, the debacle of a fight, the sloppy and desperate retreat, the mac Ruaidhrí scattering to the wind.
He’d been unseated from his wounded horse, had been discovered half-dead in the forest by a lass, and not the enemy.
Other snippets returned: the litter she’d brought, the way her speech had startled him, the piercing blue of her eyes....
At present, while he assumed the hovel belonged to the blue-eyed lass, he was alone inside, the lass gone.
He lay near the fire in the center of the hut, upon a fur laid over hard-packed ground that was cool but not cold, and he wondered if he’d been purposefully and generously given the space close to the hearth or if she’d dragged him only as far as she could inside the door.
His gaze shifted to the far side of the room, and there he found the signs of her.
A narrow bed, raised on four short legs, sat against the wall, with furs folded at one end instead of left in a heap.
They were worn but clean, patched in more than one place, and set out with care.
At the head of the small bed sat a pillow that did not match anything else in the vicinity, a bulky, awkward thing wrapped in faded cloth.
The fabric was unlike any he had seen before—smooth, too tightly woven for wool or linen—and though the color had been dulled by smoke and use, it still held the ghost of something brighter, a washed-out pink that looked like it didn’t belong to this place.
He studied it for a moment, then let his gaze move on, taking in the rest of the room. Air and sound moved faintly near the door. Something stirred somewhere outside and then went quiet again.
Along one wall, partly hidden beneath a stack of baskets and a coil of rope, he caught the edge of leather—tooled, darkened with use.
A saddle, or most of one, from what he could see.
The shape was familiar enough that he frowned at it, and then frowned harder, because the curve of it and the wear along the edge looked strikingly like his own.
There was no sign that she shared the bothy with another—no second pallet, the raised bed too narrow to hold two persons, only a few garments hanging on pegs to the left of the door, no extra set of footwear, no bow or sword to suggest a man occupied this space with her.
More sound arrived at the closed door, and he recalled that she’d been accompanied by a gangly hound, hearing now a faint huff of breath and the sound of a nose working impatiently at the crack beneath the door.
Morggán heard no footsteps accompanying the dog, but in the next moment the door was pushed open and the young woman entered, a bucket in one hand, the light from outside catching in her hair as she crossed the threshold.
She looked much as he remembered her—slight, watchful, as if she were never entirely at rest—and he realized at that moment that he’d almost wondered if he’d only dreamed her.
She met his gaze but briefly, her bright blue eyes dulled by the gray light of the house even as they widened at finding him watching her.
“You are awake,” she murmured, and there again was that unusual accent of hers, and her stilted speech, Scots apparently not being her first language.
Morggán nodded, swallowing down the dryness in his throat.
The hound came straight at him, sniffing at his feet at the edge of the pallet, uncertain but curious.
Without looking away from her, Morggán lifted a hand from where it lay, the small, habitual motion of a man long used to dogs, letting the animal see and scent him.
The hound paused, and then moved closer, extending his nose to Morggán’s hand, sniffing now in quick bursts, louder.
Morggán paid him no mind. In fact, so busy was he studying her face, the awkward lowering of her eyes, the swift blush rising in her cheeks, that it took him a moment longer to realize that draped around her shoulders was a mac Ruaidhrí plaid, the muted blue, dark forest green, and brown tartan as familiar to him as was his own hand.
He’d not been wearing it when he fought and fell in that luckless skirmish; it had been strapped down with the rest of his gear, attached to his horse and not his person.
Understanding dawned as he wrenched his gaze from the young woman and peered into the darkened corner where he’d spied what had looked like a saddle just a moment ago.
“Ye found my horse,” he deduced, not quite sure why he’d spoken English, save that he seemed to recall that she’d used it more comfortably at one point.
His voice startled her, or it must have.
She jerked a bit and went rigid, her back to him now since she’d moved, and was pouring water from the bucket into a wooden bowl.
Only a fraction of a second passed before she resumed pouring and then turned and faced him.
She stepped forward and set the half-filled bucket down on the opposite side of the fire.
“I found a horse,” she said when she straightened and met his gaze. “Three days ago. He was dead, and...he wasn’t close to where you were.”
Morggán let out a slow breath and stared up at the darkened rafters.
He had lost horses before—every man who rode to war did—but that did not make it easier, and this one had carried him through more than only a few hard miles.
He’d lost more than only a mount, but a partner in battle as well, and as it was, if his men did not find him, he would be walking.
“Aye,” he said at last, and let the word stand as acknowledgment of the news she’d shared and that she hadn’t stolen, but had taken what she’d found, as he might expect anyone to do, anyone who’d stumbled upon a dead steed and the treasures it carried.
He wasn’t about to insist the items belonged to him, certainly not when her own existence seemed so much poorer than even his life while on march.
But mayhap his silence translated to displeasure in her mind—when he opened his eyes he saw her begin to pull the heavy plaid away from her shoulders.
“Nae, keep it,” he said, shaking his head.
“I’ve another,” he said, not quite a lie.
Other braecans were available to him, but he’d not meet one he might call his own until he returned to Ard Cael.
When she paused, indecision written plainly on her bonny face, Morggán spoke with less indifference. “Please, make guid use of it.”
Morggán had more pressing needs than her rigid disquiet.
“How long have I lain here?”
“Two days.”
Two days! Plus those lost while he lay mostly insensible in the forest before she’d found him. Jesu. He needed to move, to find his men since they obviously hadn’t found him.
With a grimace of anticipated discomfort, he put an elbow on the ground and pulled himself up to a sitting position.
He did it, and mayhap it looked about as painful as it felt, his ribs clearly rebelling against any movement at all, for when he next sent a glance to the lass, her brow was drawn tight and her lower lip was caught between her teeth, as if she had felt the same sharp pull of pain.
“Cracked ribs, if I had t’ guess,” he said, shamed by how little it had taken to leave him breathless.
He stayed still for a moment, leaning on one hand and waiting for his breathing to steady before attempting to rise further. The fur draped over him slipped slowly from his shoulders in the process, gathering around his waist, and it was only then that he realized he was bare-chested.
His brows drew together faintly, more surprised than alarmed. He glanced down briefly at himself, then lifted his gaze back to her where she stood several paces away watching him with obvious caution.
Understanding came quickly enough. He recalled enough in fragments, her dragging him through the trees with grim determination despite his weight and her size.
Given that, it should not have surprised him that she had undressed him, and yet the realization lingered in his mind, a distraction he couldn’t categorize at the moment.
Across the room, color began creeping into her cheeks.
And suddenly, she seemed very intent on the kettle hanging over the fire, though her eyes flicked toward him once and then away again almost immediately, as if she regretted having looked at all.
The flush deepened when she realized he’d noticed it.
A strange sort of awareness settled over him then—not embarrassment precisely, but a sharpened consciousness of her presence and of the fact that her hands had been upon him while fever and helplessness had kept him senseless to it.