Historical Hearts Romance Collection

by Sophia Wilson

  "If you need me, I'm here." Then with another tender look, she was gone.

  Once she left, he shook himself from the sweet stupor she'd left him in. Although it was a bit strange now that she was gone, he also felt better, stronger from her touch. And his head was clearer, too.

  Poison. The doctor and his woman assistant had said something about poison. Although he didn't want to believe it, Blane had to stretch his limited imagination and look at this from all angles. It would've been different if his father had fallen and broken his neck. That was something that could happen to nearly anyone, though Blane knew his father was such a horseman that unless he was attempting to walk on the beast's back to pick fruit from a high up tree, it was nearly impossible for Alastair to have had such an accident.

  He approached his father's horse and began to look him over. Blane checked the beast from nose to tail then from back to hooves, searching for what exactly, he didn't know. Maybe he'd know when he found it; maybe he would never find it. But he had to search for his peace of mind, and to honor his father. He found nothing.

  At the end of the long search, he sighed and turned away from the calm horse. The effect of whatever it was that had spooked him earlier that morning had long ago worn off.

  Blane frowned as the thought crossed his mind.

  Why would I think of it like that? Did someone poison the horse as well as his father?

  He looked the beast over again. The horse had been with Alastair since he was a foal, an abandoned creature when it was born, immediately disliked by its mother and almost kicked to death by her for its wee trouble. Alastair had taken the horse, fed it like his own child, cared for it. The horse loved Alastair from then on and would never have done anything to harm him.

  Someone or something must have made him bolt like that.

  As Blane left the horse's stall, the rack holding the saddles caught his eye. He went toward it, half convinced he was only giving himself work that would yield him no results, but he did it anyway, found his father's saddle and looked it over from top to bottom.

  He was just about to give up when something green and sharp glinted at him from under the thick leather seat.

  It looked like a shard of glass but it was smooth on the bottom and sharpened to a point where it poked through the leather, just long enough to press into flesh. Blane’s hand hovered over it.

  What if it was poisoned?

  Scowling, he yanked his gloves from his belt and drew them on, pulled out the strange looking shard. He would take it to the doctor, or his assistant who seemed to know about poisons and how to treat them. He left the stables with the possible weapon cradled in his palm like a delicate but dangerous baby bird.

  When he arrived at the sick room, everything was quiet and still. The doctor had his father on his belly, his face turned away so he could breathe while he poked at a wound on his father's backside.

  Blane almost dropped the piece of would-be poison.

  "Have you found what is the matter?" His heart knocked hard against his ribs with fear. Please dinnae let me lose him.

  "Yes." The woman had a bowl steaming with a pale purple liquid on a table nearby. "There are no other marks on him. 'Tis not his heart or other bodily humors. It has to be poison."

  "He's alive but is not responding except for movements of his eyes and hands. I dinnae think he can talk now, or walk. He doesn’t know when I touch his foot or anything below his heart."

  Blane stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn't remembered what he carried. "I may have found the method of the poison." His throat felt rough and he was as close to crying as he'd ever been since he left the schoolroom.

  The woman quickly abandoned her bowl and came to Blane. "This?" She pointed to what he carried.

  "Aye."

  She brought him an empty bowl and Blane dumped the green shard into it.

  "I found it stuck in his saddle." Blane swallowed again. “If this is it, if this is what hurt him, can you find the source of the poison and fix him?” He hated that he sounded like a boy in that moment, but this was his father, the man he’d relied on and looked up to since he was born. This was the man he wanted to be like. This was the man he’d thought was invincible.

  The woman stirred near the bedside, for the first time looking uncomfortable in Blane’s presence. But it was the doctor who answered his question.

  “We can only try, my lord. There are no certainties we can give you. We can try to heal him, and then we wait.”

  That was not what he wanted to hear. But he didn’t want to hear lies either. “Verra well. Do everything you can.”

  “We will, Lord Blane,” the woman spoke up. “We love your father and want only the best for him.”

  Blane knew that was true and that most of those who lived in the castle and the lands ruled by the Laird of Edinburgh felt the same. He nodded once, a jerky movement of his head, and left the healers to their duties before he embarrassed himself further. With his father ill, he had much to do.

  When he left the sick room, he allowed himself to focus on more than his father. And felt the vibration of curiosity, grief, and anger in the castle. From the doctor, he'd found that people had come to see about the Laird but had been turned away. They would come to Blane now.

  "Murdo!" he called out to his man as he walked down the hallway with the smells of the sick room bleeding from his nostrils.

  The man who he'd trusted since he was a very young man, appeared as if by magic. "Lord Blane?"

  "Send a message to the members of the clan, down to the last man. We will hold a meeting tomorrow night." By then, he should know more about his father's illness, and it would give the men and women time to gather themselves and make their way to Campbell Castle. "Arrange for chambers to be prepared, room in the stables for horses, and a camping area for those men who dinnae want to sleep inside."

  "Yes, Lord Blane." Murdo nodded his dark head, his slim features sharp as a fox and twice as cunning. "Shall I ready a tribute to Laird Alastair at this meeting?"

  The words pricked grief in Blane's belly. "No." His father was not dead yet, and he would not act as such. "This will simply be a gathering to let everyone know what has happened and decide a course for the future."

  They both already knew what that course was. Alastair had prepared Blane for it since he was a boy. Ascension to the Lairdship.

  "Very well, Lord Blane." Murdo’s Sassenach accent held a particular touch of both obsequiousness and menace, something his man was frightening good at, highlighting the first to blind others to the second. "It will all be done as you wish."

  "Good." Blane turned away from Murdo and headed toward his father's study, certain that what his man said was the truth. Everything would be done as he asked.

  Now, to deal with his father's duties for the day so the business of Clan Campbell continued to flourish and prosper, even with the Laird in his sick bed.

  Chapter 7

  By the end of the day, Blane was exhausted. He'd seen to tenant disputes, talked for many hours with Fergus, his father's man of business, made sure Campbell business continued as usual, and even spent a few exhausting moments with his mother who seemed as if she had aged overnight with his father's illness. Her maid had quieted her, perhaps with the help of some of the doctor's potions. Even when Blane sat at her bedside though, she would only lie wrapped up in the sheets with her face to the wall. Although he didn’t understand why, every inch of her stank of guilt.

  Blane worried for her, but he could not linger in her room. Her sadness and the strange sense of remorse that hovered around her were suffocating. By the time he walked down the hallway toward his rooms, the castle was in darkness and only candles burning throughout the winding halls kept the night away.

  He lifted a hand to push the door to his bedchamber open when the sound of light footsteps and whisper of cloth reached him. He looked up to see Annabel coming toward him from the stairway, swift and graceful, a tender smile on her face.

&
nbsp; "Blane."

  Happiness filled him, and he wanted to sweep her against his chest and bury his face and his worries in her fragrant hair, in her skin, and in her sweetness. He only smiled at her tiredly, though.

  He opened the door of his chambers and held it open for her to precede him through. Some noise made him look up and away from the delicate line of Annabel's back as she walked into his chambers.

  His uncle stood in the hallway, watching him. Although Blane couldn't see Duff’s remaining eye, the cold and cruelty in it raked icicles down his back. Blane walked in after Annabel and closed the door behind them without acknowledging Duff's presence.

  Even less than in the past, he had little patience for his uncle's machinations and lurking presence.

  His chamber was already glowing with candlelight, and a fire crackled merrily from the fireplace. His bath steamed from the tub, scented with the now familiar spices Annabel added to it each evening. Blane felt himself begin to relax. Annabel was taking care of him in these small ways, and it made him feel capable enough to take on every big responsibility lurking for him on the horizon.

  With a rumbling sigh, Blane unwound the leather tie holding his hair in place and dropped it on the table next to a book his father had given him the week before. Had it only been a week since he visited his father in his study?

  That visit had been short because his father had had much to do. But they’d shared a whiskey and a brief conversation about tenant farmers before Laird Alastair had given him the book, a volume on guerrilla warfare. He’d joked with his father that he’d been long out of the schoolroom. Lord Alastair had smiled and told Blane that learning was a lifelong experience, and he would feel like the luckiest man if he continued to learn into his old age.

  It was an old age that would now never come. Despite his denials to whoever talked to him about his father, in his heart he knew the Laird would never recover.

  The blanket of sadness threatened to smother Blane again.

  “Have you eaten?” Annabel asked.

  For the first time, he noticed that she’d carried a small covered tray in with her.

  Had he eaten? It was hard to think about something so mundane when his mind was occupied with so many larger things, still spinning at the sheer amount of responsibility his father took on each day, wondering if all the key members of the clan would attend the gathering in three days’ time. Wondering if his father would live.

  “No.” Blane had the wild thought that perhaps he would never eat again. His stomach rebelled at the very thought.

  Gently shaking her head, Annabel settled the tray on the table near Blane’s favorite chair. The over-sized, leather monstrosity slouched by the window, and it was there Blane often sat to read or simply think on the events of his day.

  “Come.” Annabel gently guided him to the chair then knelt and pulled off his boots and thick woolen socks.

  Blane was too tired to stop her. He melted into the chair and allowed the softness of her hands and the gentle caring in her to soothe him.

  Annabel pulled up a smaller chair and put the tray on her lap. “You must eat and keep up your strength.”

  Again, the thought of the dinner he smelled earlier that evening coming from the kitchens turned his stomach. Mutton and potatoes. Just the thought of it— the tray clattered against the plate as she took off the cover.

  An apple, sliced into half-moon pieces. A wedge of cheese next to a torn off piece of bread. A fistful of nuts. Nothing that made his stomach want to curl in on itself.

  Instead, it growled. “I might be a little hungry,” he said.

  “Eat.”

  She lifted a slice of apple to his lips. Surprised, Blane looked at her with a tiredly raised eyebrow. "Eat," she repeated. And he did the only thing he could do. Opened his mouth and took the slice of crisp red apple, then a piece of cheese sandwiched in bread, nuts fed between his lips from her slender fingers, until most of the plate was empty. Her caring astounded him.

  While she fed him, Annabel leaned closer to him with each bite until she was practically sitting in his lap. Smiling, she tipped the last piece of apple toward his mouth.

  "Last bite," she said, grinning, knowing he was about to growl at her for treating him like a child.

  Her fingers moved close, and he captured them between his teeth along with the apple slice, tucked the apple under his tongue and sucked on her fingers, one by one, until her ocean green eyes darkened.

  "Oh!" She squirmed on the chair next to him, her own lips fallen open to watch what he was doing.

  Blane released her fingers with a popping sound and contentedly chewed his apple. "I am a man," he said softly. "Not a boy."

  "How well I know it," she said. She put her fingers, damp and slick from his mouth into her own mouth, and sucked. Now it was his turn to squirm.

  "Can I help you with anything else, Lord Blane?" Her tone was saucy, wicked.

  "I'll help myself to something if you don't cease your tempting."

  Still smiling, she slipped her fingers from her mouth, making it quite obvious she had been copying him. God, if she learned so fast now, she would just about kill him once they fell into a bed together. He swallowed.

  Despite his teasing, he was not so far gone in his grief or his selfishness that he would take her maidenhead without the protection of marriage. He wanted to make love to her, yes. God, did he. But he would not risk her honor nor risk making a babe with her when there was no agreement yet between them.

  That agreement, though, was only a matter of time. He wanted her more than any woman he’d ever known. Not just to love her body with his own, but to protect and cherish her. He could easily imagine her tenderness with any child they had together. Just as he could easily imagine them making that child together.

  Blane took the tray from Annabel and put it on the table, and then slid her fully onto his lap. She came easily, snuggling into him with her arms around his neck.

  "My lord." Her gentle smile teased him.

  "My lady," he said in return, but with a seriousness he hoped she did not misunderstand.

  Her smile froze. "Blane?"

  He smoothed a hand down her back. "If I asked you to be mine before God and the church, would you accept me?"

  "But..." Wide eyes blinking, she drew back slightly although she still kept her arms around his neck.

  Her hesitation made Blane swallow. With a dizzying lurch in his belly, he waited for her to say they only just met each other, to ask how could he know so soon that he wanted her to be with him for always.

  "But I am only a chambermaid,” she said instead, shocking him. “My parents are farmers on land your father owns."

  None of that mattered to him, she had to know that. "And you own my heart, Annabel. Which is worth more to you?"

  "'Tis not me, Blane. I only ask for you. Your family. You are destined to marry a real lady, not someone like me."

  His arms tightened briefly around her waist. "Are you trifling with me, then? Have you no intention of seeing this passion between us to its logical conclusion beyond the bed chamber."

  For the first time since he'd known her, uncertainty flared in Annabel’s eyes. "No, no. I've never..." She bit her lip. "I'd love more than anything to be your lady wife and have a family of my own with you.” Annabel’s hands drifted from around his neck to press lightly against his chest. “But I also knew that when I fell in love with you, someone else would likely become your wife and be blessed with your love and your children.”

  His heart thumped eagerly in his chest, leaping like a salmon upstream at her words. She loved him. But hadn't he known it since that night on the moors when they'd talked as if they'd known each other for a lifetime?

  "Nothing else matters more than what we mean to each other," he said. "You are a woman, and I am your man. I would have you be my wife."

  “You daft man!” Annabel gasped as if he'd shocked her. Had they not been talking about this very thing for the last few minutes
? "Are you...are you asking me now?"

  If nothing else, the last day had taught Blane the fleeting nature of life. He'd showed his father he loved him, told him in many ways other than those exact words. He would not allow regret to color his last days when he could enjoy his woman and the life he wanted now.

  "Yes," he said. "I am asking you now to be my wife."

  "Then I will." And she slipped her arms around his shoulders, eyes shining with happiness and kissed him until they were both breathless with love.

  Chapter 8

  The euphoria from Annabel’s kisses did not last. Not after Blane visited his father’s sick room.

  “’Tis sorry I am, Lord Blane, but your father will never again be more than he is now.” The doctor had stopped Blane at the very entrance to the sick room with a look on his face that said he’d rather be anyplace but there. “He breathes. Can move his eyes, his hands only somewhat. But ‘tis likely he will never speak again, nor walk.”

  Behind his own back, Blane clenched his joined fists. His father, reduced to this in just the space of a few hours. Tears burned his eyes but he refused to let them fall.

  "Thank you, doctor." He clapped the man on his shoulder. "I need to be alone with him."

  The doctor nodded. "Just try not to upset him overmuch," he said. "The Laird has endured a hell, surely."

  Then he quickly cleared the room that had only held one of his male assistants and the woman Blane was getting used to seeing many times throughout the day.

  Over the passing day, the room had been cleaned. It still smelled of mints and healing potions, but the various bowls that had overflowed with cleaning clothes and hot water, among other things Blane could not name, were gone. The room was tidy. Neat. A sign that the chaos of healing was over. Now they would simply wait for Laird Alastair to die.