Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Colin caught Elspeth before she struck the ground, and for one terrible moment the whole world narrowed to the weight of her in his arms.
Her head fell briefly against his chest. Her lashes fluttered. Her face, still flushed from battle and pain, had gone too pale beneath the color. One hand remained pressed to her side, and through her fingers blood showed dark and wet against the torn fabric of her gown.
Colin forgot how to breathe.
“Elspeth.”
Her eyes opened at once, though not quite properly. They tried for sharpness and found only a stubborn blur.
“I didnae faint,” she managed to whisper.
His arm tightened beneath her knees. “Nay?”
“I just decided tae sit.”
Breac appeared at his side, with his sword still drawn, and his face grim beneath a streak of blood that was not his. “Me laird, yer shoulder—”
“Elspeth is hurt.”
“Aye, and ye have an arrow in ye.”
Colin looked at him. Breac shut his mouth. It was wise of him.
“Clear the road,” Colin ordered. “Get the women and bairns in first. Double the men at the lower gate. Nay one leaves the castle and nay one enters unless I ken their face.”
Murdoch came from the left, breathing hard. His blade was red. His gaze fell to Elspeth, then to Colin’s shoulder, and his expression tightened in that way of men who had bad news and insufficient courage to offer it.
“Three dead,” Murdoch said. “Five wounded that I have seen. We drove them off before they reached the lower wall.”
“Prisoners?”
“One. Breathing fer now.”
“Keep him that way.”
Elspeth stirred in Colin’s arms. “Dinnae kill him before asking whether Robert teaches manners tae all his guests.”
Murdoch blinked. Breac, despite the blood and smoke, smiled.
Colin looked down at his wife. “Be silent.”
Her brows drew together faintly. “How fond ye are of impossible commands.”
She was speaking. She was aware enough to argue. The cut could not be mortal if she had breath for insolence.
He told himself this. He did not believe it.
The return to the castle passed in fragments of pain and fury.
Colin refused the horse at first and carried her himself from the meadow toward the road, because some savage part of him believed that if he set her down, the world would take another piece of her.
It was only when Elspeth’s hand found the shaft in his shoulder and he nearly dropped to one knee from the white burst of agony that Breac stepped close enough to risk death.
“Give her tae me fer one breath, or ye will fall with her.”
“I willnae.”
“Ye are bleeding down yer sleeve like a slaughtered stag.”
“I said—”
“Colin.” Elspeth’s voice came soft against him.
That stopped him more surely than Breac’s sense. She looked up, her eyes clearer now, though pain tightened her mouth.
“Dinnae be foolish with me in yer arms. It gives me a poor view of the ground I am about tae meet.”
He hated her for making him smile internally. He hated the tremor that went through him harder.
He let Breac help her onto the horse before him, and then he mounted behind her because nothing living would have persuaded him to put distance between them.
The arrow shaft shifted with the movement.
Pain struck deep, hot and blinding. For one second, the castle, meadow, and sky vanished beneath it.
Elspeth felt him go rigid.
“Colin?”
“I am well.”
“That is a lie of such size it requires its own field.”
Her head leaned back against him before she could stop herself. That frightened him more than the blood. Elspeth did not yield, not to weakness, not to fear, and least of all to him. If she leaned against his chest, it was because her body had chosen what pride could not afford.
He held the reins with one hand and kept his other arm around her waist, careful of her side, careless of his shoulder.
The road blurred beneath them. Men rode before and behind.
The wounded were carried in carts and across saddles.
Women walked quickly, clutching children.
The feast had become a procession of torn cloth, ash, and silence broken only by weeping.
By the time the castle gates opened, half the courtyard had gathered.
The healer met them at the inner door with a bag clutched to his chest and two younger women behind him carrying linen and basins.
He was an older man named Fionn, with narrow eyes, steady hands, and the deeply unfortunate habit of speaking sense to lairds who did not want it.
“Me lady first,” Colin said before Fionn could open his mouth.
The healer’s gaze flicked to the arrow. “Me laird—”
“Me lady first.”
Fionn looked at Elspeth, then at Colin’s shoulder. Blood soaked the sleeve and begun to darken the leather near his chest.
“The arrow must come out.”
“It will come out after ye see tae her.”
Elspeth, who was being helped down by Breac, turned sharply enough to wince. “Dinnae be absurd.”
Colin dismounted and nearly staggered. He disguised it as a step toward her. She did not miss it.
“Colin.”
He put his good hand beneath her elbow. “Inside.”
“I have a scratch.”
“Inside.”
“There is an arrow in yer shoulder.”
“And yet I remain charmingly upright.”
“Charming isnae the word I would have chosen.”
“Then save yer strength until ye find one.”
Her eyes flashed, and for one brief, blessed instant she looked like herself again. Then the pain at her side caught her, and the flash dimmed. Colin’s heart struck hard enough to make the arrow tremble. He swept her into his arms again.
She gasped. “Put me down.”
“Nay.”
“I can walk.”
“Aye. And I can carry ye.”
“Ye are injured.”
“Then stop making yerself heavier with complaint.”
A few of the men near the door looked away with the doomed expressions of those trying not to smile. Colin ignored them. Elspeth did not.
“If any of ye laugh,” she announced weakly over his shoulder, “I shall remember it when I have access tae knives again.”
The smiles vanished. Colin carried her into the nearest chamber suitable for tending the wounded, a lower room off the hall where the light was good and the table broad. Someone had already laid blankets there. He set her down with more care than he had ever given anything in his life.
She tried to sit straight at once. He pressed a hand to her shoulder.
“Stay.”
Her eyes narrowed. “If ye speak tae me as if I were a hound, I shall bite ye.”
“Later.”
The word escaped before caution could stop it. Color rose in her cheeks, quick and betraying. Even wounded, even surrounded by blood, servants, and armed men, she remembered the same darkness he did.
The memory struck through him hotter than pain. Then Fionn stepped forward and ruined the moment by being useful.
“Let me see the cut.”
Elspeth’s hand tightened over her ribs. “It is hardly worth so much attention.”
“Then it will be quickly proven,” the healer replied gently.
Skye came to her other side, already glaring at anyone who breathed too near. “Move yer hand, Ellie.”
Colin stood at the table’s edge, looking down at the red stain spreading along Elspeth’s gown.
His own wound pounded in time with it. Men crowded the doorway behind him: Breac, Murdoch, two guards, a messenger waiting for orders, another man with blood on his jaw.
They followed because danger made men gather near command.
Fionn reached for the fabric at Elspeth’s side.
“It is caught,” he muttered, then gripped the torn green cloth and ripped it upward with one firm pull.
White linen appeared beneath. Then pale skin.
Then the long, shallow slice running along her ribs.
Colin’s blood went cold. Not because the wound was deep, because it was not.
Even he could see that. It bled too freely for comfort, but it had not opened her dangerously.
It would hurt, scar perhaps, but it would not take her from him.
No, what chilled him was the sight of her exposed before so many eyes.
They could see her side, the curve beneath her arm and the tender skin his mouth had not yet touched and his enemies had dared mark.
Every man in the room vanished from the category of ally and entered, for one unforgiving second, the category of threat.
“Out.” The word was quiet.
No one moved quickly enough. Colin turned. Every man in the room understood then.
Breac, who stood nearest the door, lifted both hands and began backing out at once. “Aye. Out, all of ye. Yer laird has developed a fondness for privacy and murder.”
Murdoch seized the messenger by the shoulder and shoved him into the corridor. The guards followed so swiftly one nearly struck the doorframe. Even Fionn’s young assistants hesitated until Colin’s eyes cut toward them.
“Women stay,” he ordered. “Men out.”
Fionn cleared his throat. Colin looked at him.
“I am required,” the healer said, with admirable courage and insufficient concern for his life.
“Aye.”
Fionn nodded once and wisely bent to the wound. The door shut behind the last soldier.
Only then did Elspeth speak, her voice low and full of mortification. “Ye cannae threaten the entire castle because me ribs exist.”
“I can.”
Skye made a small sound as if she approved but did not wish to be noticed doing so.
Elspeth looked at Colin, and beneath the embarrassment in her face, something softer flickered. “They werenae looking.”
“They had eyes.”
The healer paused for half a breath, then very deliberately returned to cleaning the cut.
Elspeth’s lips pressed together, but the corner of her mouth trembled. Pain or amusement, Colin could not tell. Perhaps both. He stood close enough that his good hand rested on the table beside her hip, though he did not touch her. If he touched her, he feared he might begin shaking.
Fionn washed the wound with wine. Elspeth hissed and stiffened.
Colin’s hand closed into a fist. “Careful.”
The healer did not look up. “It will sting whether I am careful or nae, me laird.”
“Make it sting less.”
“If me laird has discovered a method, I would welcome instruction.”
Skye gave the healer a warning look, but Elspeth laughed once beneath her breath, then winced because laughing hurt.
The sound nearly undid Colin. A laugh, after the arrow, after the blood. After the man who had tried to cut her open… she was alive. She was alive enough to laugh at him.
Fionn inspected the slice with clean fingers, pressed along the edge, and nodded. “Shallow. Long, but shallow. Nay broken rib. It needs cleaning, binding, and rest.”
“I told ye,” Elspeth smirked.
Colin ignored her because ignoring her was the only alternative to kissing her before a healer and her maid.
Fionn packed the wound with a salve that smelled of honey, yarrow, and bitter herbs, then bound linen around her ribs.
Elspeth sat very still while he worked, though the color left her face twice.
Colin saw each time. He counted each breath.
He had always thought himself patient. Battle had taught him stillness. Strategy had taught him waiting.
This was different. This was torment dressed as care.
When at last Fionn tied the bandage securely and lowered the torn fabric as best he could, Colin released a breath he had not known he was holding.
“She will heal,” the healer announced.
The words entered him slowly.
She will heal.