by Paula Quinn
She heard the thread of terror in his voice, the rising pitch of panic.
“Oliver Winther has the law to contend with, to some degree, and you and I had nothing to do with his brother’s death. We’ll be safe. These are the only sons of Connor Grant, and the warrior before him. The Highlanders will come. I don’t know what they’ll do!”
“I will do my best, Harry,” she promised, wanting to soothe him without giving him false hope. “But the younger one’s condition is dire. You must send the rest of your patrons away immediately and then help us get them both upstairs, away from the men who will come for these bodies. Then you must let me do my work.”
She was grateful that Harry did as she asked without any more questions when he realized that the Winthers were coming back. She would rather move Cailean as little as possible, but if his enemy found him so helpless, she could not save him.
She guided the girls’ preparations for her patients and listened while Gunter carried them to her room as carefully as he could. First Cailean was brought to her bed, and after the girls had undressed him she immediately took over. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. She needed to stop his bleeding but she couldn’t sew him with the ball still inside. She couldn’t remove it now. Any more tampering could kill him.
For now, she packed his wound with ointments and leaves. She smelled every herbal mixture before applying it. One ointment to stop the bleeding, two more to fight infection. She topped it all with leaves and then covered him with many blankets to keep him warm. It was all she could do for now. She must leave the metal where it was until his body recovered.
Next, Gunter brought in Malcolm and laid him in a makeshift bed she’d fashioned on the floor from soft pillows and some of her bed coverings. The pillows would have to do until they could find him an unused bed in the brothel.
Emma wasn’t familiar with men’s characters, but she knew their bodies. Clementine had often let her assist with her patients while they slept with Clementine’s help.
Mr. Grant needed to come out of his shirt, perhaps his entire plaid. She figured she should do it herself, since the girls were too busy arguing about who would do it.
Foolish girls.
Going to her knees, she reached down for his shirt with one hand and produced her dagger with the other. She did her best to ignore the sudden, blessed silence and the slight gasps coming from the girls above as they watched her cut a nick in his collar.
Never mind their reaction.
She was here to help him, perhaps his only hope, depending on the seriousness of his wound. Emboldened by determination, she moved over him to tear the rest of the fabric apart with both hands. She wouldn’t fail, because, being on her knees, ripping away his clothes made her feel more senseless than all the others put together.
“He’s awake!” Mary shrieked. More gasps.
Emma froze, realizing that if he’d opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was her. Should she smile? She wanted to hide. She didn’t like feeling so exposed.
She lowered her eyes but felt his breath on her cheek. His fevered breath. She laid her palm gently on the chest she’d exposed. His skin felt hot over hard, baking muscles. Was he this hard everywhere? She wanted to run her hands over the expanse of his chest, his arms, his belly. She’d never felt any man like this before!
“Emma?” Thankfully Mary interrupted her thoughts and brought her back to her present, real life.
He was developing a fever. She was almost certain she was as well.
She sat up, away from him, and ordered a cup of the tea she had Brianne prepare earlier.
His hand brushed across her thigh and made her hands shake when she reached for the cup.
“There now, you’ll be fine,” she said softly, hoping he believed her and didn’t begin to panic. Was he still looking at her? What if it was her who panicked? She almost laughed at herself. Why would she panic? What did she care if Eden’s serpent and the soul who saved her dog tonight was watching her? She couldn’t see him. She could ignore it.
“Drink this.” She reached for him again, and this time she had to pull him up a little and steady him in the crook of her arm so he could drink. Just beneath her nose, his hair smelled of outdoors, like rain. His closeness and how pleasant it felt unnerved her. It didn’t stop her from working though. He’d be asleep in a moment or two and then she could cease this childish whim.
Impatient to be done, she swept her fingers over his shoulder and his neck to closer examine his wound. She noted the quickening of his pulse while she worked over him.
“Malcolm, dear?” Bess dropped to her knees beside Emma. “Can you hear me?”
“They say hearing is the first to go,” Mary lamented over them.
“That’s in yer old age, Mary,” Alison called out from her station at Cailean’s bed. “Not at death.”
“Is he going to die?” Jane asked from her place in Mary’s arms.
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
“He might if you all don’t give him some air!” Emma waved her hand but none of the girls moved too far.
“Why doesn’t he answer me?” Bess whined at him.
“Because he was shot in the neck.” Emma did her best to suppress the sneer Clementine used to warn her would get her whipped, hanged, or burned. She failed. “He won’t be able to tell you how magnificent you are for at least a se’nnight.”
She was grateful she couldn’t see Bess’s scowl and returned to her work.
His shot was mostly a serious flesh wound, but nothing more. Thankfully, the pistol ball went straight through the lower side of his throat and came out of his collarbone. He’d be in pain for a while, and he wouldn’t be able to lift his sword, but his wound wouldn’t kill him. She was more concerned about the blow to his head. By touch, she could tell that blood dripped down above his ear… and that his hair was luxuriously soft in her fingers. It had to come off. He needed sewing and she couldn’t do it with flowing locks falling around the wound.
When she used her dagger to begin cutting his hair, the girls collectively gasped yet again.
At least they were stunned enough to keep quiet while she worked. She didn’t shear him bald, but left a few inches, so that now, instead of satin, his hair beneath her fingers felt like velvet. When the last lock was loped off, she cut closer around the wound and then cleaned it.
Lizzie and Brianne headed for the door when she began stitching him together. When she was done, she let Bess and Mary tie his head with a clean cloth while she scrubbed her hands again.
She checked her ointments and crushed more herbs into poultices while the girls fussed over her patient.
When she returned to his makeshift bed and knelt before him, Bess scooted closer. “You don’t know the story of Samson then, do you?”
Emma could hear the sneer in Bess’s voice. For the last month all she heard from the other girls was how pretty Bess was. Emma disagreed.
“I do know the story of Samson, as a matter of fact.” She swung an amused smile toward Bess. “Are you suggesting that his hair holds special power from God?”
“Well, no,” Bess insisted. “Not at all. I’m not mad in the head.”
“Of course not,” Emma agreed. “And it will grow back.”
“You’re correct,” Bess conceded, or so it seemed. “His beauty remains, bare and utterly masculine. I wish you could see, just this once, Emma.”
Emma’s smile remained. She wasn’t sure how, but it remained. She could see him if she wanted to. She just had to touch his features, his frame. She remembered what Clementine had told her about building images up in layers of light and shadows, using her fingers as brushes. She’d practiced on the old hag often, learning every line and crease in her weathered skin. Oh, but her face was soft, not leathery and ridden with moles, the way one might expect a witch to look. But then, Clementine was no witch, she simply knew everything about the earth and what it supplied.
She could put her brushes to Malcolm Grant and
see for herself what all the girls fussed about. But she didn’t want to see him that way. That kind of vision was deceptive.
She didn’t care about that part of a person. It meant nothing to her and served no purpose. A man’s… or woman’s character was how she judged their merit. Still, her hand shook again when she applied her poultice to his neck and every breath in the room paused. No one moved; indeed, it felt like even the air had stopped. At the touch of her fingers to his flesh, they all let out a collective sigh.
Emma had no idea why touching him would be any different from touching any other man. Was it the slow, heavy rhythm of breath, of blood coursing through veins, spreading to her, that made her want to touch more of him? She did, just enough to know he was carved from hard, curved stone. His heart beat beneath her palm and she felt a rush of thankfulness that he lived. She extended the poultice mix down his shoulder, captivated by his solid strength, even in sleep.
“No, Emma.” Bess took her wrist and guided her hand back to the wound in his neck.
“We’d all like to touch him,” Mary assured her with a delicate pat on the back, understanding a bit more. “You just make sure we all have a chance to, aye?”
Mortified, Emma shook her head. “I didn’t mean to…’Tis how I see… and I’ve never felt a man like him before.”
“And you likely never will,” Bess muttered.
“Why do you say ‘felt’ in that way?” Mary asked her, ignoring Bess’s insult as Emma did.
“What way?”
“Like you just did more to him than apply that concoction to his skin?”
Emma blinked and burned from her soles to her roots at being caught admiring him at a time like this.
“Are you a virgin, Emma?” Mary asked.
“’Tis all right, gel.” Bess’s smirk was evident in her voice. “We all want him atop us… or beneath or behind us. ’Tis nothing to be ashamed of.”
Emma wished the floor would open up and swallow her. She was certain that the girls could see her unfamiliar and unwanted desire for him creeping red across her face. She wanted to touch him, not make love to him, but since Bess brought it up she could think of nothing but him “behind” her.
When Mary took her hand and laid it on the mound between the Highlander’s legs, Emma lifted her free hand to her mouth and gasped so deep and short it made her a little unstable on her feet.
“There’s a lot of him to feel,” Mary said, her voice dipping low near Emma’s ear. “Fix him up and then fuck him until he can’t piss for two days.”
Mary ignored Emma’s burning cheeks and took hold of both Emma’s hands. Placing them on his chest, she said, “Feel until your heart’s content. We won’t tell your brother.”
Emma wanted to tell them all that Harry didn’t matter. They barely knew each other. But he did matter. He was her brother.
They all waited, some giggling while her breath and her fingers traversed over the breadth of his shoulders, then stalled over the hills and valleys sculpting his tight belly. She didn’t think molesting him while he was helpless to resist was the right thing to do, so she skipped over his groin when she came to it again, despite the girls’ disappointed sighs, and continued to his legs. She could feel her breath changing as her fingers trickled over his plaid to his thick, shapely thighs and bare calves, sculpted and strong like the rest of him.
Damn it. They were all correct about him. Malcolm Grant’s body was as beautiful as his face was rumored to be.
She shouldn’t have looked.
Chapter Four
He should be in my bed tonight,” Bess muttered with deep regret by the door. “I should be beneath him right now, enjoying all that—”
“Honestly, Bess,” Alison, who remained at Cailean’s side with Emma, complained from the other side of the room beside the bed, “is that all you think about?”
“What else is there?” Bess asked her annoyed friend.
For a moment Alison remained silent, then, “I don’t know what it’s called, I just know that this one fought for my sake when that Winther bastard struck me, and protected me from being struck again. Whatever that is called, I like it. I like that he would do that for me.”
“’Tis called being grateful,” Bess said, laughing and heading out the door. “Alison, you’re young, a mere babe of what, ten and nine? Don’t make more out of it than what it is; you’ll only open your heart to being broken, and that’s not something we can afford in our position.”
Emma continued preparing mixtures and tending to both men while Bess and the others left. Alison stayed, keeping the herb-soaked cloth over Cailean’s forehead fresh.
“’Tis called chivalry,” Emma said softly while she moved to the other side of the bed to check Cailean’s belly.
“That’s it,” Alison agreed with a smile in her voice. “Chivalry, gallantry, honor. I’ve heard stories about these traits in men, but I’ve never seen them at work.” She laughed at herself. “Good thing we’re alone. Imagine how Bess would react if she heard such words? She’d likely laugh until she lost her wits.”
Emma smiled while she tended to Cailean. She liked the girls who lived here, with the exception of Bess. Most were kind to her and appreciated her cures for certain irritations and preventions for pregnancy. But like the villagers in France, they only spoke to her when they needed her and hardly ever the rest of the time. She didn’t mind. If Alison wanted to stay with him, Emma wouldn’t refuse, but they didn’t need to pretend affection until the morning.
“I haven’t heard your thoughts on it.”
Emma looked up. “On chivalry?”
“Aye. Am I a fool?”
If she was, then Emma was as well. “What did he do, that you offer him such status among men?”
She listened while Alison told her about Andrew Winther throwing her into a chair in a prelude to the next twelve hours that he’d paid for with her, and of Cailean boldly leaping for Andrew and “beating the shyt out of him.” She paused for half a breath, then added, “He didn’t kill Andrew though.”
Emma thought of him for a moment, remembering what he, along with his brother, had done for Gascon. She would do her best to save him.
“Don’t let Bess distress you,” Alison said, almost as an afterthought.
Emma closed her eyes. She didn’t need them to work but oddly, it gave her a sense of privacy. She didn’t need friends, especially one who misinterpreted her intentions and assumed she knew what Emma was feeling.
“Bess doesn’t bother me.”
“She had his attention until you showed up,” Alison continued anyway.
Emma dropped the clay cup of oil-coated leaves she was bringing to Cailean’s side to the floor. She cursed inwardly, chastising herself for not ending this small talk sooner. “That’s a ridiculous thing to say.” She bent to pick the leaves off the floor.
“Why is it ridiculous?”
“Because…” Why in damnation hadn’t she insisted that Alison leave with the rest of them? “Because Bess is beautiful.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Alison persisted. “Was it Bess herself who told you?”
Emma didn’t remember where she’d heard it. But what Bess looked like really didn’t matter. What Emma looked like did. She didn’t know what “gaunt” was or how “washed-out” should look, and it hadn’t bothered her that Harry often described her that way. She had foggy images of herself ten years ago and those, along with what she felt when she touched her face, gave her an image of nothing extraordinary.
“I know the rumors about him,” she told Alison. “I’m glad I cannot see his face if he is truly so alluring. I don’t ever want to pine for a husband and settle on a man who is settling for me, or a cruel sot who thinks he can push me around because I can’t see.”
“That is not Malcolm Grant, Emma. He helped you bring your dog inside, did he not?”
He did. She owed him everything for that. Had he truly stopped giving his attention to Bess when Emma appeared at
the table? It was a pleasant thought, a passing fancy. Nothing more. She knew about chivalry and courtly love. As a child at her mother’s knee, she heard the tales about such noble knights as Sir Gawain, Sir Tristan, and Galahad. She’d never forgotten them. She’d known what Alison was describing to the girls, but that didn’t mean she believed it existed. She didn’t know, but in this case, she agreed more with Bess on the matter.
These men were either going to die or they were going to recover. Either way, soon she and Alison would be nothing but a memory.
“He should wake up soon,” she said of Cailean, and stepped away from him. If he didn’t, he’d likely die. She didn’t tell Alison that much but called to Gascon and left the room to go hunt for a bed for Malcolm.
In the hall, she stopped to catch her breath. “What’s come over me, Gascon? You know me. I’m not easily beguiled, especially by kindness. Aye, we have Malcolm Grant to thank for you spending a warm night by the hearth instead of in the rain, but why should my heart beat so urgently in my chest at the thought of him noticing me? Why should my knees feel shaky simply because I think of him?” So what if he was pleasing to the eye? That meant absolutely nothing to her. The blessing in losing her sight was that she learned to read the heart. So far, Grant had shown her nothing but kindness.
She buried her fingers in her faithful dog’s fur. Gascon had never left her, sleeping beneath her window every night for the last month.
“Emmaline,” her brother’s voice shouted up at her. “What are you doing roaming the hall alone? Are the Grants still with us?”
“Aye, they are,” she reassured him. “And I am not alone. Gascon is with me. I am trying to find a bed for Malcolm Grant. The floor, despite its cushions, is no place for recovery.”
She heard Harry swear an oath about her being mad followed by a giggle from one of the girls. “How do you intend on finding a bed, my dear?” he asked in utter sincerity. “You are blind.”
Emma smiled in the softly lit hall. Harry meant well. He just didn’t understand her and her ways yet. He thought of her as being much more fragile and helpless than she actually was. She might trip over obstacles, but she never let them stop her.