A smile bloomed across her mouth, making her lips look incredibly inviting. “But your fever took three days to break.”
Keir’s brows lowered. “I’ve been asleep for three days?”
“Going on your fourth, really. I’ve nearly lost track of time trying to force liquid into you and keeping us warm.”
“Where is Cogadh?”
“Little Warrior is doing better than you. He’s snug and comfortable in a little barn out back. He has a blanket and fresh water and hay to munch. Unlike us.” She gestured toward some sticks and rope near the hearth. “I tried to rig some traps, but I have no idea what I’m doing. Anytime I tried to get you to help me, you’d mumble names.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “I assume of people those crosses represent, because you also would say how they died. Spear to heart. Slashed throat and so on. I stopped asking you about the traps.”
Grace turned and shucked her fur-lined cape. “You mentioned two women,” she said. “Margaret and Bradana.”
He didn’t say anything, and she turned to look at him. “Is one your wife?”
“Nay,” he answered. “Margaret was my mother, and Bradana was my brother’s wife.”
“Was?”
“They are both dead,” he said, his voice going flat.
“I…I am sorry, Keir. Are they marked on your skin, too?”
“Aye, the crosses over my heart.”
Her gaze moved to his bare chest, but Keir grabbed his shirt that lay folded to one side and threw it on. “Did ye put the table and chairs out with Cogadh?” he asked, changing the subject.
She glanced around the bare room. “I had to break apart the furniture to feed the fire.”
“Quite resourceful and clever. Ye’ve done a valiant job at keeping us alive.”
Her features lightened, and she smiled, as if his praise was as valuable as firewood and food. “One twitch of you growing fur and fangs, and I’d have been forced to kill you, though. I’d have had to put one of those little crosses somewhere on me.” She placed another slat of wood on the fire.
“Ye’ve done well to heal me, but I thought the healer of Aros was Mairi Maclean,” he said, watching her closely.
She brushed her hands and shrugged, standing. “There are several healers at Aros, myself included. Mairi’s mother is much more talented at working cures than she.” She looked at him, her lovely face bright. “And Mairi’s not at Aros anymore. I am actually on my way to help her birth her first child on the Isle of Barra.”
“Barra?” he asked, his brows lowering. “Where Kisimul Castle sits in the bay?”
“Yes. She’s married to the chief of the MacNeils, the Wolf of Barra.” She laughed quietly. “Down in England titles like Earl, Duke and Baron are given to people. Up here, titles like Wolf and Beast and”— she indicated him—“Devil are much more common.”
“The Scots are fiercer,” he murmured, his mind chewing on this new information. Was Grace misleading him about Mairi? Why would she? She had no reason to guess his urgent mission or the lengths to which he would go to complete it. He’d been tasked to find the talented healer, Mairi Maclean, but she was about ready to have a bairn, and she was wed to the chief of Kisimul, a castle that had never been breached. To retrieve the woman, he’d have to sail all the way to Barra, find a way into the castle, and take her without harming the bairn. And if she wasn’t a talented healer, the risk and time required warranted a change in strategy.
“How is Cogadh?” he asked as he considered the timing.
“Little Warrior is nearly healed, and he’s too sweet to be called War in any language.” She brought over a hot cup of brewed feverfew and half a tart she’d saved, which he took greedily. The bitter taste of the hot drink was familiar, bringing back snatches of warped memory. Grace wiping his chest with a rag. Grace forcing him to drink the brew. Grace praying over him.
Praying? Not even the priest on Skye prayed for Keir. He swallowed the last drop, his mind latching onto a new mission, and handed the cup back. She smiled broadly without a hint of disgust or fear. The lass didn’t know his past sins and wicked reputation. And she surely didn’t know what he had planned for her, or she’d have left him to die, frozen to the ground.
Chapter Five
“There are more wolf tracks in the snow,” Grace said, pushing into the cottage, her heart beating in her throat. “They’ve been around the cabin since the storm stopped.” Which was why she had delayed attempting to find Kilchoan, for fear of getting lost again and eaten. She swallowed and looked to Keir, frowning. “Why are you standing?”
“I’m going to see my horse.”
She’d managed to keep him in bed for another day, but he was obviously not accustomed to resting. “You shouldn’t put pressure on your leg. I sewed in a few stitches to keep the puncture wounds closed. Strain could open them.”
Grace watched Keir check his thick thigh, which did seem to be healing with her poultice. She’d been watching him for a week, mostly alone with her thoughts as she washed his chest, legs, amazing arms. There wasn’t an inch of fat on his lean, muscled body. The marks, swirling up his arm, only accented the curves of his biceps.
“I must insist—” she started.
“It’s healing well, thanks to ye.” He grabbed the cloak he’d worn when he’d rescued her, and brushed past her on the way to the door. “I will come back.”
Grace’s breath stuttered at his nearness and kind words. Her whole body thrummed with the possibility of… Of what? Asking him to kiss her again? Seducing him? She felt her cheeks warm and watched the man step out into the deep snow. Such things didn’t happen to her. She was the woman who smiled politely while a handsome man asked the lady next to her to dance. She was the friend or sister or assistant to the woman people wanted to meet. But then again, she’d never been on an adventure by herself before.
Grace threw her cape back on and grabbed her scarf, following him out the door. “I will accompany you to make sure you don’t fall,” she called, running to catch up to him.
The snow lay in two-foot drifts, and they walked the path that she and Little Warrior had blazed the morning after the storm when she’d spotted the barn. Grace pointed to the tracks that circled both the cabin and the barn. “Those are wolf tracks, aren’t they?”
“Aye,” Keir said. He walked beside her without the aid of a crutch. His face was set in a hard line, but he didn’t grimace. Despite his display, Grace knew he must be in pain. When they stopped at the barn door, she could see the line of sweat on his forehead, but he didn’t hesitate and pushed inside.
His horse turned toward them, ears twitching. He snorted, bobbing his large head. Grace laughed lightly. “I think he’s smiling.”
Keir walked up and stroked Little Warrior’s nose. Leaning in, he rested his forehead there. Grace stayed back, feeling a bit like she was interrupting a private reunion.
“He is well?” Keir asked, still pressed to Little Warrior’s face, his fingers scratching around his ears.
“I’ve changed the bandage daily. His injuries were not too deep, and I cleaned them as soon as we arrived before any taint could set in. We will need to wait until he can accept your weight before we leave with your leg still healing.”
“I can walk.”
“No,” she said, her chin and voice rising with determination. “You will ride or you will re-injure all the good I’ve done.”
Keir moved to the horse’s right hock wrapped with her smock. Grace came around to lift the leg so Keir didn’t have to bend his knee. The obedient horse didn’t move as she unwrapped the binding. “See, he’s healing well. Another week and he’ll be able to carry you.”
“A week is too long,” he said, frowning. “A day or two at most.” He stroked the horse’s side.
Grace propped her hands on her hips, something she’d never have done down in England as the Earl of Somerset’s daughter. But now she was a wild Scotswoman, free and knowledgeable about healing. “If you are better.�
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She rewrapped the horse’s leg. “I will leave you two to your visit,” she said, cooling her voice to seem disinterested instead of being slightly jealous of a horse being stroked. “If you are strong enough, we can check on the snares when you return to the cottage.”
He glanced her way from the pile of hay in the far corner of the small building. “I’m always strong enough.”
Grace rolled her eyes. Men, warriors especially, were stubborn arses about their health and strength. “Yes, yes, you could lift mountains and wrestle lions with one leg cut clean off,” she said with a flip of her hand.
…
Keir watched the barn door close and turned to Cogadh. “If she screams, I’ll have to go.” The wolves might return.
He sat on the edge of a built-in wooden seat that Grace hadn’t yet splintered with an axe to burn. The woman had accomplished much for a gentle creature. Keir’s sister would have killed and gutted a buck by now, but Grace… She was made of softer stuff. Aye, much softer, in all aspects. That golden-brown hair felt like silk when he’d risked a touch earlier. Her skin looked like pure cream, and he knew her lips were soft, although the memory was more like a half-forgotten dream after his fever.
If he wanted to kiss her again, he must before they left the cabin. He frowned, but the twisted feeling that came with fulfilling duty above all else was familiar to Keir. As the feared Devil of Dunakin, protecting the clan and serving out justice was his life. He needed to carry a healer back to Dunakin as fast as possible. Hopefully, his sister, Dara, and his wise grandmother were keeping his nephew, Lachlan, alive. If Keir’s brother, Rabbie, lost his only surviving child, after his wife and daughter had died in childbirth last year, he would surely forfeit his mind. As it was, Rabbie seemed to balance on the edge of irate madness most of the time now. No, young Lachlan must live, and that required a talented healer.
In the silence of the barn, Keir’s stomach growled in a low, twisting echo within his empty stomach. Cogadh snorted, his ears twitching. “Ballocks,” Keir said, pushing up into a stiff stance, his thigh feeling bruised and tight. He narrowed his eyes at his faithful horse. “Ye have your food stacked up in here, while my stomach’s been empty for nearly five days.”
He checked Cogadh’s water and headed out into the blinding white landscape. Squinting, Keir turned in the direction of a small creek where he’d told Grace to set the rock trap, to knock an unsuspecting animal into the water to drown, tied to the tethered buoy.
“Where are you going?” Grace asked from the doorstep of the cabin, apparently waiting for him. She strode through the snow.
“Checking the traps,” he said as she reached him. “If ye didn’t set them perfectly right, they won’t work.” A hungry belly was worse than bruised feelings.
Stepping up to the creek, Keir noticed Grace remained behind several feet. He knelt by the edge where her earlier footprints marked the spot, but the rock wasn’t there. It had already fallen into the water. “It’s been triggered,” he said. “Come see.”
“I go near water only when absolutely necessary,” she said. “Did I catch something?”
“Or ye didn’t set it right.” He grabbed the rope tied to the rock and pulled it up from the freezing current. “Well, bloody hell,” he said.
“What?” Grace stood yards behind him.
He looked over his shoulder and opened his eyes wide with shock. “Ye actually trapped us a meal.” He lifted the large rabbit from the stream. “Maybe ye are an angel if ye can work such miracles,” he teased.
As he turned, a snowball flew straight into his face.
Chapter Six
Grace clamped a hand over her smile as Keir wiped his snow-covered cheek. “I didn’t mean to hit your face,” she said and squeaked as he rose. She grabbed up her skirts and leaped forward through the snow.
“Revenge is cold.” His deep voice didn’t sound amused. “Icy cold.”
Was he running after her? “You’ll pull your stitches,” she yelled and gasped as a ball of snow hit her in the back. She bent down to make another ball and turned.
Keir stood in the snow-draped woods, looking like some Norse god from one of the ancient manuscripts she’d seen in her father’s library as a child. Powerful and lethal, he was fodder for nightmares, except he held a snowball instead of a bloody axe. Ducking back down, she gathered another ball and volleyed it at him. But with the extended distance and lack of surprise, he easily dodged, hurling one back at her.
“No fair,” she said laughing, brushing her cape, which was crusted now with a circular ice patch.
“More fair than hitting a man with no warning.” He stalked toward her, a snowball in hand.
“I meant to hit your shoulder,” she said and dodged the icy ball by a mere inch. Turning, she ran, arms pumping. Surely she could move faster than a man with tooth marks boring into his thigh. Leaping to cut through the snow toward the cabin, Grace took three strides before Keir’s arms stretched around her.
“Bloody hell,” she yelled, laughing as his momentum felled them both, their bodies breaking through the crisp surface of an unblemished drift. He turned them so that they landed on his unhurt leg, plowing half of Grace’s face into the snow.
She spit the ice from her mouth. “Horrible wretch,” she said, attempting to roll away from him, but the height of the drift didn’t allow her to gain distance. She flopped onto her back, where Keir’s face loomed above her, framed by the blue, sun-filled sky.
His smile matched her own, making him all the more handsome. Longish hair hung about his ruggedly chiseled features, and his eyes sparked with unguarded merriment. “Never attack without a planned retreat.”
“I had a plan.” She laughed, her eyes wide.
“One that has half a chance to work.”
She watched his lips move over white teeth. Her heart beat faster as she realized he pinned her to the ground. A giddy feeling thrummed through Grace. Was this what Ava felt every time Tor touched her?
Inhaling smoothly to cover her reaction, she poked his shoulder. “It had a good chance of working, since you are supposed to be injured, but I suppose I am such a skilled healer that you are able to run faster than I thought.”
“And my aim is true,” he replied, smiling down at her.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ve had much more training than me. It was hardly a contest.”
“And yet ye started it.” He shifted slightly so that both his arms framed her head, but he kept his body off to the side. “What in bloody hell were ye thinking, lass?”
She opened her eyes wide, imitating his look at the streamside. Pursing her lips, she imitated his Scot’s accent. “Maybe ye are an angel if ye can work such miracles,” she said.
His smile broadened. “Ye took that poorly.”
Her face pinched into a frown, and she reached out to grab another gloveful of snow. He dodged to the side as she tried to smear it in his face, catching her wrists easily in his hands. She laughed at his grin, both of them breathing with their stomachs rising against each other. They were hidden down in the snow, the powerful sun slaking across them to warm Grace’s cheeks. Grace grew silent as she stared into Keir’s dark brown eyes. The world around them faded away.
Without a word, she slid one hand from his grasp to touch the side of his face. Even through her glove, she could feel the strength in his jaw as she stroked down his neck to his shoulder. He leaned closer, casting her face in shadow, and she closed her eyes. She knew his kiss was coming, but when his lips touched hers, her heart leaped high within her. She grasped his shoulders to draw him in, slanting her face to meet him fully.
Keir’s fingers curled in the edge of the shawl covering her head, raking into her hair. His mouth moved over hers, meeting her, yet seeming to hold back, too. Did he think she was fragile, a coy virgin afraid to experience passion? She was a virgin, but passion was not something that frightened her. Quite the contrary, Grace yearned for it.
Yanking at her gloves, to
toss away in the snow, Grace plunged her fingers through Keir’s wavy hair, pulling his face closer until their kiss grew more urgent, more reckless. His free hand stroked down her neck and lower across her breasts. Even with the many layers separating her skin from his touch, his caress teased her senses, causing heat to ache down through her very center. Grace pushed upward against his hard body, instincts taking over her rational mind. She wanted more—more kissing, more touching, more of this large, powerful warrior pressing against her.
Keir leaned farther over her so he could hold her face in both of his hands. The hardness of his body thrilled Grace, and she molded herself upward against him, her knees parting at the feel of his erection. She was wanton, hot and achingly wanton. “Keir,” she whispered against him, the chill tingling her kiss-dampened lips.
“Aye?” He left her mouth to kiss the side of her jaw, his fingers licking a path of fire along her neck.
She hadn’t a clue what to say, and her rational, cautious self abandoned her completely. “More,” she said, feeling drunk on the word.
He paused for the slightest of seconds, a low growl issuing from the back of his throat as he met her gaze before lowering to kiss and tease her neck with nibbles. Good Lord, she’d just thrown all constraint to the winter wind, with a man called a devil. What was she thinking? Things like this didn’t happen to her. Her mother had warned her to refuse carnal desires. At the time, Grace had had no idea what those were, but now she felt them. They were desires so fierce that she was tempted to ruck up her skirts for a virtual stranger, in a snowdrift, no less.
Forcing her eyes open, Grace slapped her palm at one of Keir’s large shoulders as she stared at his bent head where he kissed the hollow of her exposed throat. He lifted, shifting his weight, and gazed down into her face. She stared up at his deep brown eyes, filled with desire, and rubbed her kiss-moistened lips together.
“We…” She breathed hard, trying to let the coolness of the air beat back the heat raging within her body. “We…we left the hare back at the stream. Some other animal might be dining on the meal I caught for us.”
The Devil of Dunakin Castle (Highland Isles) Page 4