“Lass,” he whispered. “Are you ever going to tell me your name?”
***
“Cairenn.”
Her name tumbled off her lips and nothing could have stopped it. She was supposed to be finding a way through the walls in his mind, but instead here she sat on the peat-pile with her heart racing in her chest, snared in a trap of her own making.
She glanced away from the blue blade of his gaze and saw that he’d taken a tress of her hair and curled it around his hand, trapping her as sure as if he were about to drag her into the sea.
“Cairenn.”
He gave her name a burr she’d never heard before, a sound that rubbed against her like a cat against her leg.
He whispered, “Does someone own your heart, lass?”
Who could she trust her heart to, when she knew the weaknesses of every man on the island?
“The men on this island must be blind,” he said into the silence, “to leave such a beauty unmarried.”
“It’s a very small island.”
“And your father keeps you close.”
That much was true, even if she couldn’t tell him the reason why. “Doesn’t every father keep his daughters close?”
He narrowed his eyes a bit, as if contemplating her question, and then shifted his weight and changed the subject. “On the day you found me,” he said, “what were you doing upon the shore?”
She huffed a frustrated breath. How maddening it was not to understand why he bounced from one idea to the next.
“Winkles,” she lied. “I was collecting them from the stones.”
She certainly wasn’t going to tell him that she was coercing a young man to row her off shore just so she could imagine what it was like to venture unafraid into the world.
“Your mother must cook a powerful lot of winkles.” He gave her a half-smile that made his eyes laugh.
She shrugged, unnerved. She didn’t know what he was thinking, what he expected of her. It was like finding one’s way along the cliff side blind, when any wrong move would send her reeling into open space.
Her mother’s advice rang in her head. Learn to read this man and maybe you’ll finally master your gift.
She took a deep breath. For years she had lived only among her family and the village folk, whose thoughts tended to drift to the caring of the cows, or the flow of the herring. She knew their troubles and their fantasies, their worries and their wishes. Despite her father’s strictures, she had learned how to keep to the edge of the village and not be overwhelmed by their chatter. Over the years, their collective thoughts had become part of the sounds of the world, as constant as the rumble of the sea.
She had taught herself how to do that. She’d managed to learn it without collapsing under the assault of their minds, as she had outside the teeming city of Galway. Now her mother believed she could teach herself how to read this man, too.
Perhaps, she thought, all she needed to do was get a little closer.
She slid down a fraction on the peat pile. She lifted her hand between them, waiting for him to say something or stop her or do anything except stare at her with increasing intensity. When he didn’t move, she slid her hand across his jaw and felt the bristle of his unshaven cheek rasp against her palm.
Shock registered in those fathomless eyes, but he did not flinch.
“I just…want to check for fever,” she said. “Da has ordered me to look after you for now.”
Lachlan did feel warm, but that was not what seized her attention. When she touched him she felt an associated softening of his mind, a flexing like the pliability of a new pair of calfskin boots. She dared to mentally probe a little deeper, hoping to find a weakness that would let her slip into his thoughts.
Nothing moved, it seemed, not the scuttling white clouds above, not the breeze that had only moments ago been sweeping across the hill, not the birds nesting in the thatch above their heads. Sound thickened, muffled, as if the sea had receded, and the gulls stilled to glide soundlessly on the updrafts, and all she could hear in her ears was the frantic beating of her own heart.
It was strangely soft, this half-beard beneath her hand. Some of those bristles were dark, some reddish in color, all catching the glint of the sun. A pulse by his ear beat against her fingertip. His lips parted and she saw the gleam of his tongue, but no words left his mouth.
Concentrate.
She was close enough to hear his unsteady breathing and see the pulse in his throat throbbing. She knew she had to look into his eyes but she hesitated to lift her gaze from the fascination of his cheek. Finally she did, and oh, how the flood came. A cascade of sensation that had everything to do with the intensity of his stare, the sudden tightness of his lips, and the flexing of a muscle in his cheek as he searched her face with as much unbound curiosity as she used to search his.
There was no mistaking what he was thinking. His mind was as blocked to her now as it had ever been, but she read with different senses than the one she was trying to hone. He was so beautiful, from the divot in his chin, to the sweep of the scar by his eye, and to the strange beauty of his midnight-blue eyes, dark and full of stars. She couldn’t read his mind because she was too busy thinking about what it would feel like if he kissed her.
Suddenly his hand covered hers. He peeled her fingers off his cheek and lowered her hand so it lay, palm up, between them. He scraped one thumb over the tender skin at the inside of her wrist. She felt that touch all through her body.
“Warm,” he said, his voice a rumble. “I can feel the rush of your blood.”
She felt it, too, throbbing through her veins, making her as breathless as if she’d raced the whole length of Inishmaan.
“It seems, Cairenn, that we’re both very human.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The palm of her hand had tasted like pepper.
It seemed right that she would taste of a spice that had been harvested in India, carried by camels across Arabia, and shipped to Venice, so that flecks would end up here, flavoring the palm of a woman who did not look like part of this world.
He watched a pulse jump in her wrist where her hand lay in his lap. He glanced up to see a look in those sea-green eyes that spoke of wanting, yearning.
Then a shadow fell over them and Cairenn yanked her hand away.
“You disobeyed my orders.”
The doctor loomed before them. The man had a sack slung across his shoulder, and his eyes were as cold as glacier ice.
“Yes, I rose from my pallet.” Lachlan kept his voice even because this father, with his anvil of a jaw, looked capable of committing murder. “I thought it would do me good. A man gets soft lying about all the long day.”
“Straining what’s left of your stitches will delay your healing, and your departure.”
“I’ll venture no farther than this peat pile.”
“You’ve ventured too far already.”
The doctor’s nostrils flared. Lachlan realized they weren’t talking about his stitches anymore. It had been a long time since Lachlan had had to deal with an angry father, yet he knew the doctor had reason for his fury. Just a moment ago Lachlan had been thinking about unlacing his daughter’s sleeves. Just a moment ago, he’d been imagining the feel of her long, white throat and the softness of her skin below the neckline of her blue tunic.
“Cairenn,” the doctor commanded, “your mother needs help in the kitchen.”
She was up with a rustle of wool and gone across the courtyard like a bird darting out of cover.
To him, the physician barked, “Inside.”
The doctor pushed open the door to the surgery, not waiting as Lachlan eased himself up from the peat-pile with a wince. Lachlan figured he would get no sympathy today. He wasn’t looking forward to the doctor poking around the sore, itchy wound.
“Sit by the hearth.” The doctor settled the sack on the table and pointed to the two stools by the fireplace. “Pray the stitches didn’t split from your disobedience.”
Using the doorfr
ame and the furniture to brace himself, Lachlan made his way toward the hearth. Moments later the doctor strode up behind him and clattered a tray full of tools on the floor by his feet. They rattled and gleamed. Lachlan felt the cold edge of a knife as the doctor slid a blade under his linen bandages. He flinched from memory rather than pain. He knew this doctor wouldn’t finish the assassin’s work, even if the man was furious that he’d found Lachlan flirting with his daughter. The doctor was just making his fury known by destroying perfectly good, washable linen.
The doctor flung the bloodstained cloth into the fire, peeling down to the layers closest to the skin. Feeling resistance, the healer tugged on a piece that stuck to the scabs with nothing that approached gentleness.
Trickles of warm blood slid down Lachlan’s naked back.
“As I suspected.” The healer grunted. “You’ve split two stitches. And there’s new swelling around the needle-wounds.”
Lachlan stayed silent, figuring that anything he said would only inflame the situation more.
“The stitches have to go.” The doctor leaned down to pick up a tool. “That means that, from here on, nothing will keep the edges of this wound together but the thin skin that’s formed in the gap over the past week. A wise man would stay still if he doesn’t want to wake up in a puddle of his own blood.”
Lachlan tightened his jaw as he felt the tool press against his flesh, tugging a stitch until it burned.
“And now that you deem yourself healthy enough to sit in the sun of my courtyard,” the doctor continued, tugging and pressing and yanking, “we’ll talk about you writing a letter to the father you’ve been worrying about, to send a ship to fetch you home.”
The words were out of Lachlan’s mouth before he even thought of speaking them. “I meant your daughter no harm.”
“We’re not talking about my daughter.”
“She found me on the beach and brought me to you. I am not a man who would repay courtesy with dishonor.”
“Lofty words. Easy to say, hard to live up to when the blood runs hot.”
Lachlan flinched, for already in his mind lingered an image of the gap of Cairenn’s neckline, where he’d seen the soft rise of her white breasts.
“There are a half dozen ships,” the doctor continued, “now anchored in Galway Bay, but they are from Castile, Aragon, and London. There are no galleys from the Western Isles of Scotland, but there are bound to be some soon.”
Lachlan curled his hands into fists under the relentless probing of that iron tool, but he couldn’t avoid noticing that the doctor had pinpointed his homeland. Had he slipped and said something to Cairenn? He didn’t remember doing so. Considering the man’s facility with languages, the physician may have identified his upland accent to within a few roods of Loch Fyfe.
The thought made him uneasy. “My clansmen trade primarily with Ulstermen,” Lachlan said, though this wasn’t completely true. “Ulstermen wouldn’t take kindly to me doing business with the Galway Tribes.”
“So you know Ulstermen?”
“Some.” He had cousins among the O’Neills.
“Then it’ll be quicker to send someone overland rather than to wait for a galley.” The doctor paused to clean blood and fibers from the hooked implement he’d been torturing him with. “You send word to your clansmen, and within a few weeks you’ll reach home, resurrected.”
Lachlan hesitated. “I’ve no coin to pay for a messenger.”
“People pay me however they can—herring, peat, butter, the promise of favors, the labor of their own hands. Because of this, many men owe me favors.” The doctor set to work in Lachlan’s flesh again, twisting and tugging. “I can have a message delivered where it needs to go, the sooner to see you home.”
Lachlan thought of his own father’s distress and worry, but he also thought about the blade plunged in his back, and the three strangers who’d done it. Hired men by the looks of them, but hired by whom?
“So that’s how it is.” The doctor twisted the hook to snare a stitch. “You want to stay dead.”
Lachlan grimaced, sweat popping out on his brow. “If the men who tried to kill me think they’ve succeeded, they may lay low for a time. Until I can swing a sword, staying dead is the wisest course.”
“Death sometimes is. Even if it means great grief for those you love.”
Lachlan puzzled over the comment as the doctor tossed the tool onto the tray and reached for a bowl of some greasy-looking stuff. The doctor slapped some on the wound. The pungency of the salve hit Lachlan’s nose just as its burn seared into his back. Lachlan stiffened, barely hearing the doctor’s sharp words to stay still.
“I take it,” the doctor said, “that you don’t know who wants you dead.”
“Many would profit from my murder.”
“That’s the way of clans and chieftains, Lachlan of the Western Isles. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Lachlan fixed his jaw. The doctor had already guessed that Lachlan wasn’t a common yeoman, but now he was guessing something closer to the truth.
“Am I to believe,” the doctor said, as he slapped more grease on his back, “that there is not a single friend in whom you can put your complete trust?”
“I trust my father,” he said through gritted teeth, “but among those who surround him hides a serpent.”
He’d been thinking about this, over and over, since the moment his mind had cleared from the pain. His most likely enemies were among the Campbells or the Lamonts, neighboring clans who were always starting trouble. But any man in the three septs of his own clan—the MacGilchrists or the Ewings or even someone among his own people, the MacEgans—had a motive to see him dead. Including his own Stuart stepmother, who looked at him with acid in her eyes for standing in line ahead of Fingal, his half-brother, her only son.
The doctor said, “I have men whom I trust. I’ll order that the messenger speak to your father only.”
“Such news can’t be contained. Once it’s delivered, it’ll be a race for who will reach me first, my father or his enemies.” The burn of the salve eased, leaving a stretch of his back throbbing. “Sending word of my survival would only put your family in danger, Conor of Inishmaan.”
The healer clanked the clay bowl of demonic salve back on his tray and fumbled about for something else.
“Once I’m better, I’ll hire onto a ship,” Lachlan said, sensing the healer’s frustration. “I can pass as a common sailor—”
“With this wound?” The doctor tossed the end of the linen across Lachlan’s shoulder. “It’ll be weeks before you have full use of it.”
“Am I to be crippled, then?”
“You’ll be able to wield a dagger eventually. Swinging a claymore will take more time. Pulling hemp ropes? That’ll rip the muscle for sure.”
“I’ll heal faster than you think—”
“I’m counting on that. Until then, you’ll stay here until you’re stronger or until your secrets wash up on my shore.”
“The only secrets I hold, Conor of Inishmaan, are those that will keep you and your family safe—”
“She’s not an ordinary girl.”
Lachlan swallowed his words. Not just because of what the doctor said, but for the rough, raw way in which he said it.
“I’ve kept her safe on this island for a long time,” the doctor continued, “away from the worst of the world.”
He couldn’t blame the man for wanting to hide such a beauty from men’s eyes, but he knew the doctor would not appreciate hearing such words from him.
“Cairenn can’t leave this island,” the doctor said, “without experiencing devastating pain.”
Lachlan frowned. What strange affliction would bind a woman to a place? No doubt, if he asked, the doctor would spit out some Latin name for the condition, but Lachlan’s Latin wasn’t so good that he would be able to determine if the disease was real or just a construct dreamt up by an overprotective parent.
“My eldest daughter, Aileen, is off i
n Wales,” the healer continued, as if he were yanking out each word. “It was she who most often helped me in this surgery.” The doctor stood up and seized the tray of implements. “Now that she is gone, Cairenn has taken her place.” The doctor strode with a heavy tread to his worktable, where he slammed down the instruments with more force than necessary. “I have business on the mainland that will take me away from here for a week or more. When I leave, it will be Cairenn who will see to you. Alone.”
The doctor stopped fussing. He swiveled on his heel and fixed his gaze upon Lachlan. Lachlan forcibly tamped down his excitement at the thought of being alone with the green-eyed beauty. It was unworthy to let his thoughts drift in that direction, and disrespectful to both her and the healer. And considering the many obligations he’d left behind in Loch Fyfe, he should know better.
“When I am back with my father,” Lachlan said, “I assure you that my gratitude will be matched in coin—”
“Don’t speak to me of coin.”
The doctor yanked open a drawer and seized what lay within. He loosed the string of a rawhide sack and, with one violent sweep of his hand, hurled the contents across the floor.
Coins clattered around Lachlan’s feet, coins with the imprint of strange faces upon them, coins of sizes and shapes that he’d never seen, all of them minted of gold finer than much of the jewelry his Stuart stepmother loved to wear.
Suddenly the healer loomed over him. “There are things you are too young to understand, boy. And there are secrets I’m unwilling to share.” The doctor leaned in so that there was no way Lachlan could avoid looking him in the eye. “The only treasure in the world is one’s wife, one’s children, and one’s family. All the gold from Persia to Arabia wouldn’t meet the worth of a single hair on their heads.”
The physician’s blue eyes blazed with a fierce light. Lachlan no longer doubted what he’d come to suspect: This healer had once been a knight, a warrior, perhaps even a chieftain. In all ways, a formidable opponent.
“The last time a foreign warrior came to Inishmaan,” the doctor said, “he stole away my eldest daughter.”
Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3) Page 4