CHAPTER SIX
Once inside his cabin, she gathered her senses and set a hand against the arm of the chair, intending to push herself up.
“I am quite well,” she said, though no one had asked her.
Malcolm, who was standing near the table with his attention turned toward the small window, looked back at once. His gaze sharpened. That was intolerable. She could bear anger from him, mockery, command, even suspicion. She did not know how to bear such immediate notice.
“I only need…” she began, but the rest of the sentence escaped her.
Her breath shortened, then vanished altogether. A cold weakness ran through her limbs, hollowing them from within. She tried to stand because sitting suddenly felt like surrender, but the floor rose in a dark rush to meet her.
It did not reach her, because an arm caught her before she struck the planks.
For one bewildered instant she knew only the force of him: the sudden iron security at her waist, the hard warmth of his body as he took her weight, the scent of salt, leather, cold air, and something smoke-dark that seemed to belong to him alone.
Her cheek brushed rough cloth. Her hand, treacherous and useless, closed against his sleeve.
She ought to have pulled away. She ought to have said something sharp enough to restore dignity. But her body, cowardly creature that it was, knew safety before her pride could argue.
“Grizel.” He used her given name as though decorum had been struck from him.
That unsettled her more than the faintness. She tried to answer, but the cabin had narrowed to the dull crash of water against the hull and Malcolm’s breathing near her ear. Then even those things slipped from her.
The last thing she knew was that he lifted her, not dragged, nor seized. He lifted her, as if she weighed no more than the cloak tangled around her. Then darkness took her with a mercy she was too proud to have requested.
When sense returned, it came slowly, not as a candle being lit, but as dawn creeping beneath a door. Grizel opened her eyes, not realizing how much time had passed. Memory returned in a tidal wave of anguish, followed by physical pain.
It flared through her injured leg, hot and deep enough to tear a small sound from her before she could stop it. The cabin tipped sharply. Her stomach lurched in protest at the ship’s motion, and the light from the window fractured into silver threads.
“Dinnae.” The voice came from the shadows beside the bed.
Grizel went still. Malcolm was sitting there.
He occupied a chair near the bed as though he had placed himself there for a purpose and had not moved because movement had not yet become necessary.
One forearm rested on his knee. His other hand held a cup, untouched.
His dark hair had dried poorly from the mist, falling in rougher order than before.
His coat was gone, leaving him in shirt and waistcoat, with the sleeves rolled slightly at the wrists.
He had been there long enough to remove his coat. He had remained by her side while she was unconscious.
The thought entered her gently and then struck hard.
Grizel shifted, then regretted it. The weakness that had taken her before still lingered in her bones, though now it had become an embarrassment rather than a threat.
“What happened?” she asked, though she remembered enough.
“Ye fainted.”
But I didnae reach the floor, she thought to herself, then blushed.
She looked away and found the window instead. All she could see was open water, grey beneath a paling sky, lifting and falling behind them in a long, restless wake. The sight tightened her chest.
She had fled. She had truly fled. One step had led to the next, each too urgent to permit reflection.
But now, lying in a stranger’s bed buffeted by the motion of the sea, the truth swallowed her with terrible clarity.
She had left her father. She had left her home.
She had placed herself in the hands of a man she had known less than a day.
“How long was I insensible?” she asked.
“Long enough for water tae be brought and for half me crew tae pretend they were nae listening at the door.”
Despite herself, she looked toward it.
“They are gone,” he said.
“Ye dismissed them?”
“Aye.”
Something in her chest tightened, but it wasn’t fear. Being alone with him should have frightened her more than it did. She wished it did. Fear would have been sensible. Fear was appropriate. Fear had rules.
This other thing had none. She became too aware of the bed beneath her, and the fact that he had carried her there. She had no memory of being laid down, but her body seemed to accept it without question.
In an effort to banish this thought, she tried to push herself upright. Malcolm rose before she had managed more than an elbow.
“I said dinnae,” he repeated.
“I heard ye,” she retorted. “I am nae one of yer sailors to be ordered about.”
“Nae,” he said, coming nearer. “Me sailors obey better.”
He reached for the cup on the small table beside the bed and held it out.
“Drink.”
“I dinnae require nursing,” she told him.
He frowned. “I did nae offer it.”
“What would ye call this?”
“Preventing death by stubbornness.”
She took the cup because refusal would have required more strength than obedience. The water was cool and tasted faintly of wood. She drank slowly, aware of his hand near hers, aware that he did not touch her fingers though he could have. That restraint, too, unsettled her.
Drummond would have used any excuse to touch her. Malcolm seemed to avoid the privilege of it unless necessity forced him.
That should not have mattered, and yet, it mattered very much.
She handed the cup back. “Where are we going?”
“Me lands.”
She pushed herself higher, ignoring the warning pull in her leg and the wave of faintness that swept through her. “Ye cannae simply carry me off tae yer island without telling me whether ye’ve agreed tae me proposition.”
“I can dae many things when men shout upon me docks.”
“Laird MacAulay.”
The use of his title made him still. She used the moment to gather herself fully upright, though her vision blurred at the edges.
“If ye dinnae mean tae marry me, then ye must put me ashore where I may find another suitor.”
His silence might have been carved from the same dark wood as the beams above them.
Grizel forced herself onward, though some wiser creature in her blood urged caution. “There are other lairds who must obey the king’s decree. I came tae ye because ye were the most practical choice, nae the only one.”
That last part was not entirely true.
There might be others… in theory. Men with names, ships, clans, and need. But she had not reached them. She had reached him. And somewhere between the deck and this cabin, the idea of seeking another man had begun to feel less like a plan and more like stepping backward into darkness.
She despised herself for it.
“Another suitor,” he said at last.
Grizel’s pride, never wise when wounded, rose to meet the threat she heard in it. “Aye. Dinnae flatter yerself that desperation has made me sentimental. I require an alliance, nae a hero.”
“I never offered tae be a hero.”
“Nae. Ye have been very careful nae tae offer anything.”
His eyes narrowed faintly. “Ye think that wise?”
“I think indecision is a luxury enjoyed by men who are nae being hunted.”
That struck him. She saw it, had she gone too far?.
Nae, she thought at once. I’ve gone exactly far enough.
She had asked him to command her future, now she had to make him claim the choice.
“I will nae be carried from one man’s certainty intae another man’s hesitation,” she said, controlling the heat in her cheeks. “If ye dinnae intend tae stand between me and Drummond, then I must find someone who will.”
He came closer slowly. Speed would have been less frightening. His movements were controlled, measured, and all the more forceful for it. He stopped beside the bed, near enough that she had to lift her chin to hold his gaze.
“There will be nae one else for ye.”
The words fell softly, yet they struck hard.
Grizel could not speak. She had expected argument. Mockery, perhaps, or a cold reminder that she was aboard his ship by his mercy and could not mistake temporary shelter for sanctuary. She had expected him to call her reckless or foolish or inconvenient.
She had not expected that.
There will be nae one else for ye.
It should have angered her. It did anger her.
Somewhere, beneath the sudden wild beating of her heart, anger flared with proper force.
Who was he to speak so? Who was he to cut away all other roads as if she had not come to him with her own mind and terms?
Had she not fled one man’s claim only to hear another spoken in a quieter voice?
Yet it was not the same.
That was the trouble.
Drummond’s claim had been possession, greasy with entitlement and public certainty.
Malcolm’s words were something else. They were not gentle, and certainly not permissible.
But there was no smugness in them, no assumption that she had been made for his convenience.
Instead, there was a force in him that seemed to surprise even himself, a dark, immediate refusal not of her will, but of the thought of her turning toward another danger… or another man.
The possibility entered her mind and set heat beneath her skin.
She gathered herself. “That sounds very like an order.”
“It is.”
“Then ye mistake me for someone already under yer command.”
“Nae,” he told her. “I ken exactly who ye are.”
The answer stilled her.
He looked down at her for another moment, and in that gaze she felt herself measured again, but not as before, not as a bargain, not as land, route, alliance, and inconvenience. He was looking at her as a man looked at a woman. And the thought sent a million little goosebumps down her spine.
“Ye are injured,” he said. “Exhausted. Hunted. And still arrogant enough tae threaten me with imaginary suitors from me own sickbed.”
“It is nae yer sickbed.”
“It is me bed.”
The words lingered around them. Grizel became very aware that she sat beneath his coverlet, in his cabin, aboard his ship, while his body stood close enough to cast warmth into the narrow air between them.
Color rose into her cheeks before she could prevent it and he saw. Of course he saw. His expression did not soften, but something in his eyes changed. The awareness was brief, inhibited at once, yet unmistakable.
“I did not mean—” she began.
“I ken.”
“Stop saying that.”
“Nae.”
Her mouth parted in outrage. He looked almost amused, which only worsened the matter.
“Ye are impossible,” she frowned.
“So I have been told.”
“By women ye abducted?”
“By men I didnae throw overboard quickly enough.”
Despite every misery of the morning, a laugh nearly escaped her. She caught it in time and transformed it into a breath of disdain, though she doubted he was deceived.
Her body betrayed her then. The small exertion, the sitting upright, the argument, the motion of the ship beneath her, all of it surged together. Her vision darkened again at the edges, and one hand went to the bedclothes.
Malcolm’s amusement vanished. He reached for her, then stopped before touching her. There it was, that restraint, again.
“Lie down,” he ordered.
“I am?—”
“Grizel.” Her name, once again without the artifice of convention, was spoken quietly, but with such command that her protests scattered before she could assemble them.
Worse, beneath the command lay something that might have been seen as concern, if concern wore armor and refused confession.
She lowered herself back with as much dignity as she could salvage, too grateful for the pillow that received herHer limbs felt heavy, her head light, and her pride bruised in several places.
Malcolm drew the coverlet up, then stopped as if he had realized what he was doing. His hand hovered near her shoulder for the smallest fraction of a moment before withdrawing. She pretended not to notice. He pretended there had been nothing to notice.
They were, she thought, both very good at pretending.
“Rest,” he urged as he moved toward the door. “Dinnae rise. Dinnae attempt tae prove ye are made of iron. And dinnae speak of other suitors where I can hear it.”
Her breath caught. There it was again, that darker note, not quite possession, not quite protection.
“Why?” she asked, though she should not have.
His eyes held hers. “For both our sakes.”
Then he left and the door shut behind him.
The cabin seemed larger once he was gone, and emptier in a way she disliked at once.
She turned her face toward the window. The ship pressed onward, carrying her farther from Drummond, farther from Calder, farther from every life in which she had known how to stand.
Her leg throbbed. Her head ached. Her heart, most inconvenient organ, had not yet returned to its proper rhythm.
There will be nae one else for ye.
The words returned without permission.
She had to remind herself that she was not a foolish girl dreaming over a rescuer. She was a woman bargaining for her survival.