Chapter 3
Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.
Sunny contemplated the truth of that as she held on to Robert Francis Cameron mac Cameron and rode through the dark and the rain toward what she could only assume was his ancestral home.
His medieval ancestral home.
Maybe she should have put her foot down about that monthly appeasement meal Jamie insisted she attend.
She’d tried to argue, but apparently since Jamie was her laird and she was his healer, that relationship necessitated the observation of certain formalities and traditions.
He’d made that quite clear when she’d knelt in front of him, put her hands in his, and pledged him her fealty in a particularly medieval way.
She’d never dreamed it would lead to her answering an unremarkable knock and finding herself pulled back into the past.
She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised.
Rumors of spooky happenings on MacLeod lands were standard fare down at the pub in the village.
She herself believed in all sorts of Highland magic.
She had seen ghosts. She was almost sure she’d seen a fairy or two peeping out from the bunches of herbs she had had hanging from her ceiling.
She was also a firm believer in time travel—along with everyone else in Jamie’s family.
And why not, when Jamie had a map in his office that showed all the places on his thousands of acres where one might step and suddenly find himself in a century not his own?
She certainly didn’t remember seeing her threshold on that particular map, or any of the copies of the master map Jamie made by hand for anyone who stayed any time at all on his land. Obviously, an update needed to be made. She would tell him about that, just as soon as she saw him again.
Assuming she saw him again.
She shook her head in disbelief. How was it she had gone across Moraig’s threshold literally thousands of times over the past year and never had it be anything but ordinary, yet tonight a Cameron—and she could only assume he was the Cameron—had reached into her house and pulled her back to 1375?
She hadn’t felt anything odd until she’d touched his hand.
That was the second time in as many days that she’d touched a man’s hand and gotten zinged for it.
She decided that thinking about it any further at the moment was probably a little unproductive.
Her kidnapper, or borrower as he could perhaps more properly have been termed, was patting her hands, so perhaps she was sounding a little more panicked than she realized.
She rested her forehead against the scabbard of that six-foot broadsword strapped to his back and tried to relax.
Not even her all-purpose stress-relieving mantra was going to touch an event of this magnitude, apparently.
She would just have to make do with a few deep breaths.
They rode like bats out of hell, but she was certain at least a couple of hours passed before she saw the faint outline of Cameron Hall in the gloom.
She knew what it looked like in the twenty-first century because she and Madelyn had driven all the way there one day the summer before.
It had been spectacular, retaining much of its medieval character but obviously having been added to and modernized with a very careful, thorough hand.
The medieval version was smaller, but no less sturdy.
She looked at it by moonlight breaking through the clouds as they rode through the village and under the castle’s outer gate.
Her host jumped down off his horse in front of the hall door, then held up his arms for her.
She let him help her down because she wasn’t sure she could manage it with any grace by herself.
She was immediately towed after him into the great hall, across to the stairs, and up to the floor above.
He led her into a large chamber with an enormous hearth.
A fire burned brightly in it, which was nice because she was absolutely freezing.
A man was lying motionless in front of the hearth with a woman kneeling next to him, rocking back and forth and keening.
Cameron looked at her. “Well?”
Sunny swallowed. “That’s your brother?”
“Aye. What will you have me do?”
“Get rid of the woman,” Sunny said without hesitation, “then bring me all the herbs you have and whatever you have to drink that’s strong. I’ll also need a knife.”
“Can you save him?”
“I don’t know yet,” Sunny said.
Cameron pulled a knife out of his boot, handed it to her haft first, then strode over and hauled the red-haired woman up and into his arms. He said nothing, not even when she scratched him and cursed him and beat on him with her fists. He merely carried her out of the room without comment.
Sunny walked over to the fire and knelt next to Cameron’s brother lying there on a plaid, his arms crossed over himself.
He looked a great deal like Cameron, with dark hair and exceptionally handsome features.
There were no lines of pain on his face, so perhaps he was past feeling anything.
That was a blessing, no doubt. She set the knife down on the floor, then set to work.
She placed his arms down by his sides, then gingerly pulled away the cloth that covered his belly.
There was a gaping hole in his abdomen, as if someone had skewered him with a sword, then twisted the blade several times.
Even if by some miracle he lived, he would probably never walk again.
Her knowledge of anatomy was excellent, her experience with herbal medicine was extensive, and her theoretical familiarity with dressing field wounds was as complete as Patrick MacLeod had been able to make it, but none of it was going to save the man lying before her.
But she would do what she could anyway.
Cameron burst back into the room, carrying several small cloth sacks in his hands and a leather skin full of liquid under each arm. He set everything down next to her on the floor.
“What else?” he asked.
“Boil water in a pot,” she said. “Bring me needle and thread. Put more wood on the fire.”
“What do you plan?” he asked.
“I’ll sew him back together and pray he lives,” she said in frustration, then she remembered whom she was talking to. She looked up at him. “I’m sorry. I was too frank.”
He shook his head. “I prefer frank. I’ll see to the water and the rest.”
Sunny nodded, then set to sniffing the sacks of herbs he’d brought her.
The herbs weren’t fresh, but in all honesty, she just didn’t think it would matter.
She set aside several things that would be useful, made another pile of things that wouldn’t be, then got up and tended the fire herself.
She paced impatiently until Cameron came running back into the chamber.
He had shoved things into her hands, then barked at a serving lad to place the pot in the middle of the flames.
Sunny waited until the boy had gone before she looked at Cameron.
“I’m going to do what I can,” she said. “Help me when I need it. Stay out of my way when I don’t.”
He nodded grimly.
Sunny took a needle that looked more suited to mending saddles than flesh, held it into the fire, then wiped off the blackened end.
She set it aside, then cut her skirt and worked several long threads out of it.
They would be stronger than what Cameron had and marginally more sterile.
She braided her hair, then tied the end of it with a strip she also cut from the hem of her skirt.
She waited until the water was very hot before she dipped a cup into it.
She singed her fingers on the fire licking the sides of the cauldron, but she didn’t complain.
She dropped herbs into the cup to steep, then washed her hands in the rest of the hot water.
Not sanitary, but the best she could do. She took the needle and threaded it.
“Wash your hands,” she said to Cameron, “then rip up clean cloths and soak them in the hot water.”
He washed his hands in the water as she had, though he cursed as it burned his fingers. He then pulled up the hem of his long saffron shirt and started to rip it into strips.
“I said clean,” she said sharply.
“This is all I have.”
She closed her eyes briefly. Of course. “I’m sorry. Just use the cleanest part, then.” She paused. “What’s your brother’s name?”
“Breac.”
She shot him a faint smile. “Only one name for him?”
“My father had better control of my dam the second time around.”
She smiled, then looked down at Breac and felt her smile fade. She put her fingers to his throat and couldn’t believe he still had a pulse. It was a testament to either his strength or his stubbornness.
Cameron handed her the dampened cloths she’d asked for.
She took one, sponged out some of the gore in Breac’s gut, then set to work.
She first sewed his intestines back together, then she turned to his belly muscles.
She paused at one point and dragged her sleeve across her forehead. She picked up a bag of dried plantain.
“Make tea from that,” she said wearily.
Cameron did so without question.
By the time she’d finished sewing muscle to muscle and closing the belly skin, Breac’s pulse was very, very weak. She put her bloody hand on his forehead and bowed her head. Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
There hadn’t been any hope, of course. Maybe there would have been if he’d been in a modern emergency room where the docs could have given him bag after bag of his proper blood type, put him on life support until he regained his strength, then pumped him full of antibiotics to kill the massive infection she knew he would have if he managed to survive the wound.
But he was in fourteenth-century Scotland and his life was ebbing away.
“Sunshine? The tea is ready.”
She put her fingers to Breac’s neck, then looked at Cameron.
“We won’t need it,” she said very quietly.