The forest blurred and spun as it rushed by, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Why was she clinging to this man—this stranger? He was a killer and a liar. Despite all their conversations, their stolen kiss, and the silent glances she thought spoke volumes, she didn’t know him at all.
But she realized as she forced her eyes open again, she was trapped now. If she flung herself from his horse’s back, she would likely break her neck on landing. And she couldn’t command him to stop. He was in complete control of the horse, steering it through trees and bushes with lightning-fast reflexes. There was no chance that she could simply wrest the reins from him.
So she held on, praying she would live to see the sun rise again even as darkness seeped into the forest and night fell.
What must have been hours later, Garrick—if that was even his name—whistled to Burke and reined in his horse. Every bone in Jossalyn’s body ached. The riding had been merciless. They had kept up their grueling pace, navigating through the dense forest in the dark without stopping. She felt like her limbs had turned to wood from the tension of holding onto Garrick’s back and gripping the horse with her legs.
Garrick threw a leg over the horse’s neck and swung down, though he stumbled slightly when his feet hit the ground. He reached up toward her, but she instinctively withdrew, trying not to let this killer’s hands grab her. Evasion was impossible, though. He took her by the waist and pulled her down to the ground next to him. Before he could do more, though, she jerked out of his hands.
“Who are you? Where are you taking me?” Her voice came out higher and more frantic than she had intended, but she didn’t care. She was not too exhausted to feel a surge of fear spike through her now that they had stopped.
“Christ,” he said, his eyes locked on the front of her dress.
She looked down and nearly screamed. She was covered in blood, which was dark against the fabric of her gown in the dim moonlight filtering through the trees.
“Are you hurt, lass?” Garrick’s voice was nearly unrecognizable. Instead of the soft Scottish lilt she had picked up on earlier, he spoke with a thick brogue.
Without waiting for her to answer, he began running his hands over her, looking for the source of the blood. His callused fingers brushed her neck, ran down her arms, then skimmed across her chest and waist. She inhaled sharply at the contact, but not in pain.
“I…I don’t think I’ve been cut…” The shock of first seeing Garrick turn from a blacksmith to a warrior, then being whisked away, and now having Garrick’s hands all over her was too much. She couldn’t straighten out her thoughts or even form words.
Suddenly, a dim memory came back and tugged at the corner of her brain. “Your back…”
“What?”
“Your back. That soldier with his sword…” She took a step past him so that she could look around his shoulder. She inhaled sharply at the sight. A gash ran down the middle of his back, and the fabric of both the leather vest and shirt he wore were cut clean through and covered in dark blood. She had been plastered to his back, clinging on for dear life, and had gotten his blood on her dress.
“I need to treat this.” Suddenly, she shifted from scared and confused girl to skilled healer. It didn’t matter that Garrick and Burke might very well be her enemies. She had to help.
Just as she reached for his vest to pull it off, she heard a thump and a groan. Several yards away, Burke had reined in and dismounted, but was now crumpled in a pile at his horse’s feet.
“Burke! Are you all right?” Brushing past her, Garrick moved to Burke’s side and knelt down.
“Ach, just a little stiff is all. This damn cut is bothering me.” He was gripping his right leg, and as Jossalyn approached, she saw that his breeches were dark with blood. Burke tried to stand, but winced and groaned again, and would have fallen if it weren’t for Garrick’s support.
“Burke, you mustn’t push yourself. Let me see to your leg.” Jossalyn knelt and put her face close to where the blood seemed to be coming from so she could see better in the moonlight. Gently, she prodded the area, which drew a sharp inhale from Burke. She could see a deep gash running down the outside of his thigh, and though it was a clean cut, the wound still bled.
“Do you mind if I…remove the fabric from this area?” she said, looking up at Burke, who still leaned heavily on Garrick.
“I’ve never said no to a pretty lass asking to take my pants off before,” he said with a chuckle, but his voice was tight with pain.
Garrick produced a short dagger from his boot, and she went to work cutting some of the fabric off Burke’s breeches. When the blood-soaked material was out of the way, she could see the long, deep cut even clearer. She frowned, but tried to keep the worry from her voice for Burke’s sake.
“I need to clean the wound, and then stitch it and wrap it with yarrow to help stop the bleeding. Then you’ll need to rest and stay off the leg for several days.”
Garrick and Burke exchanged a look, then Garrick said flatly, “That’s not going to happen.”
She felt her ire rising. “Then you risk continued bleeding, infection, and fever. Burke, you could die if this goes untreated.”
“And the three of us are guaranteed to be dead if we stay here much longer,” Garrick said coldly.
His eyes were locked on hers, and in the darkness, they looked almost black. She shivered, reminding herself that she didn’t know these men in front of her. And she had already witnessed just how dangerous and deadly they could be.
“What could we do quickly, lass? Just for the short-term,” Burke said, breaking the tense silence.
Her eyes shifted back to his leg. “We could wrap the wound tightly and hope that it stops bleeding on its own until I can stitch it and get a proper poultice on it,” she replied reluctantly. She hated the idea of being so sloppy in her work, especially if it meant endangering a patient’s life.
“Use the material of his breeches,” Garrick said, then turned to Burke. “We should have changed earlier outside of Dunbraes anyway. It would have been…entertaining to see Warren’s face as he recognized the Sinclair plaid.”
This brought a chuckle from Burke and a wry smile from Garrick. At first Jossalyn let the words pass over her head, assuming it was some inside joke meant to lighten Burke’s spirits. But something tickled her mind, and as the gears ground together, Jossalyn’s mouth fell open.
“Are you saying…How do you know my brother? And what do you mean by ‘Sinclair plaid’?”
Garrick sobered and gave her a long look, but then started to turn away. “You’ll see soon enough about the plaid, lass. And as for your brother, we can discuss that later.” He reached first into Burke’s saddlebag and pulled a bundle of cloth from it, then strode to his horse and withdrew a similar-looking dark fabric from his own bag.
Burke, standing with all his weight on his left leg, began undoing the ties to his breeches. Jossalyn spun on her heels, not wanting to see these men disrobe in front of her. Several minutes elapsed, and she felt a blush creep up her neck as she thought about the fact that Garrick might be naked behind her.
“It’s all right now, lass.”
She jumped at Garrick’s voice. He was standing right behind her. As she turned, she was met with the staggering sight that confirmed what she had suspected. Both men were now dressed in kilts. The fabric was the same dark shade of red as the blood on their clothes had appeared in the moonlight.
She shivered unconsciously and took a step back. These weren’t English-sympathizing Lowlanders. These men were Highlanders. Suddenly all the pieces fit into place—Garrick’s abruptly thickening accent, the enormous swords both men had wielded back at Dunbraes, and now these kilts.
She had met many Scotsmen over the years living in the Borderlands, but they were almost all Lowlanders who were sympathetic enough to the English to at least do business with them.
From what she had always been told by her brother, though, Highlanders were a different sort. He had
always said Highlanders were proud, stubborn, and hell-bent on not being controlled. He had called them barbarians, savages, and animals. She could recognize the vehemence and hatred in her brother’s voice whenever he spoke of Highlanders, and she normally didn’t trust his word or opinion, but without any other information to go off, she had always been apprehensive when it came to the people who lived in the far north of Scotland. And now she found herself alone in the middle of the wilderness with two Highland warriors.
Her face must have clearly shown her unease, for Garrick gave her a wolfish grin that held no mirth, only a raw warning.
She broke their stare, unnerved and unsure of herself. She still needed to see to Burke’s leg as best as she could, given the circumstances, so she skirted Garrick’s large form and walked toward Burke. When she reached him, he handed her a few strips of what used to be his breeches. Taking them, she knelt next to his right leg once more, and after he shifted his kilt out of the way, wrapped the bandages tightly around the wound. He winced and let a few muffled curses slip but didn’t complain. When she was done, she turned and found Garrick watching her closely.
“I should tend to your back as well,” she said carefully.
“I’ll be fine. We need to keep moving.”
As if his words concluded the discussion, he went to Burke’s side and helped him into his saddle, then turned to his own horse. Unsure of what to do, Jossalyn simply stood there. She certainly didn’t want to be left in the middle of the woods, hours of riding away from anything, but she also couldn’t just go north with these men—these Highland killers—willingly.
Apparently reading the war on her face, Garrick reined his horse around so he loomed over her in the darkness. But instead of threatening her or simply throwing her over his saddle and tearing off into the night, he spoke in a low voice, quiet enough for only her to hear.
“Burke needs you, lass.”
His words shook her to the core. He was asking her to help them, to use her healing skills. He believed in her ability to help Burke, and in her sense of duty to aid someone who needed her.
Yet, she still didn’t truly know these men. They had lied to her and deceived her. They were clearly dangerous, and they presumably meant to wage war against the English, based on what she had seen back at Dunbraes. And now they were fugitives, fleeing from her brother and the English army in the dead of night. Would they harm her? Would they use her against her brother and the English? Or could she trust this kilted Highland warrior, who had kissed her with so much tenderness and heat that she blushed at the mere memory?
He extended his hand toward her. Reluctantly, she placed her hand inside his, and he swung her up onto the saddle in front of him. He spurred his horse, and they were charging north once again.
Chapter Fifteen
The hours of darkness and tense maneuvering through the woods blurred together. Jossalyn felt her hold on alertness slipping as the exhaustion from a night in a bumpy cart, another day on horseback riding back to Dunbraes, the battle there, and now a long and frantic night of riding caught up to her.
By the time the sky started to lighten with the first signs of dawn, she felt like she was holding herself together by mere threads. Neither of her companions made a sound or an indication that they, too, were exhausted, and injured as well, but then again, they were hardened Highland warriors.
She had only made her exhaustion worse by chewing on that fact for hours as they rode. Why had they lied to her and deceived everyone back at Dunbraes village? How did they know her brother? And perhaps most bewildering of all, why had they taken her with them?
The sound of a soft whistle from Garrick snapped her out of her tangled thoughts. He and Burke both pulled their horses to a halt, and Garrick dismounted behind her. Burke stayed in his saddle, though, and even in the bluish light of pre-dawn, Jossalyn could make out a grimace on his normally smooth and congenial face.
Garrick went to his side, and as Burke began to let himself slide from the saddle, Garrick caught him and supported his weight. Burke got his good leg under him, and was able to stand upright as long as he put all of his weight on his left leg. Even still, the wound must have been throbbing and aching terribly; it needed to be properly tended to, and he was risking infection every minute that the wound was open.
Without realizing it, Jossalyn had slid from Garrick’s towering horse and was now in front of the two men, her eyes tugging toward Burke’s leg. It was plain to see that blood had already soaked through the makeshift bandages she had wrapped around the wound. She pressed her lips together.
“This cannot wait. I need to see to Burke’s leg,” she said softly, turning to Garrick.
He only nodded. He didn’t even argue or insist that they had to keep going, which worried her. It meant he could see as clearly as she could that Burke was in trouble.
“We can rest here for a few hours,” he said simply.
Jossalyn glanced around the dimly lit forest. It looked the same to her eyes as the rest of the endless woods through which they had been traveling for the last several hours, but Garrick seemed to have chosen this place to stop. As if reading her thoughts, he said, “There is a shelter just over there, and a large creek runs a little way past it.”
He propped his shoulder underneath Burke’s arm and turned toward a large rock outcropping tucked in among the trees and underbrush. Jossalyn took the two horses’ reins and followed.
For some reason, she was expecting to find a house or at least a shed, but she all she saw was more untouched forest even as they halted in front of the rocky protrusion. She shot Garrick a questioning look, but then she noticed he had stopped right next to the towering exposure of rock. Several dead trees had fallen against the rock, and ferns and other small plants had sprung up on top of the logs, creating a small covered crawl space between the rock and the leaning tree trunks.
She felt her eyes grow wide as Garrick helped Burke to the ground and got him scooted into the covered nook. She had never had to work in such conditions before. But then again, she thought, trying to shake away her shock, she had never been whisked away by Highland warriors before either. She would just have to make do.
She approached the little shelter and knelt down next to Garrick at the opening. There appeared to be just enough room for her to scoot inside and work on Burke’s leg under the cover of the dead logs and regrowth over them, which was good, because even though the sky was clear to the east where the sun was near rising, dark clouds were moving in from the west.
Setting these thoughts aside, Jossalyn let herself become totally engrossed in the task at hand: Burke’s leg. She unwrapped the cloth that covered the wound and forced herself to suppress a gasp. The gash was deeper and longer than she had thought when she assessed it in the dark earlier. Garrick didn’t bother covering up a low curse.
“That bad, eh?” Burke said, trying to lighten the mood, though he spoke through slightly clenched teeth.
“I’ve given myself worse with my fletching dagger,” Garrick said wryly for Burke’s benefit.
Ignoring them both, Jossalyn pulled her satchel from across her body and began digging in it.
“Fetch me some fresh water,” she said to Garrick, still rooting in her bag for her sewing kit and the yarrow she would need when she rewrapped the wound.
By the time Garrick returned with a full waterskin, Jossalyn had already laid out what she needed. She poured water over the wound, washing it of blood so she could see it clearly. At least it had been made by a sharp sword, she thought grimly. The cut was clean, so the skin had a better chance of healing. She threaded her needle and took a deep breath, steadying herself.
“Hold him still, please,” she said to Garrick.
He leaned into their shelter as much as he could and placed one large hand on Burke’s chest and his other arm across his legs.
Blessedly, the sun had just cracked over the horizon, and a beam of light somehow managed to filter through the trees into the op
ening of the shelter, illuminating the interior. Without hesitating and risking losing the light, Jossalyn bent forward and began stitching the wound closed.
At the first tug of the needle, Burke jerked and groaned, but Garrick kept him almost completely immobile, saving Jossalyn from misplacing a stitch. She worked quickly to save Burke from more pain but kept the stitches tight and in line. She had done this enough times to trust in the steadiness of her hand.
When the last stitch was in, she tied off the thread and turned to the cloth bandages and yarrow she had laid out. Normally, she would have boiled the yarrow and soaked the bandages in it to help stop the bleeding and heal the wound, but there was neither the time nor a fire to do that, so she settled with crushing the yarrow and spreading some of its paste and juices on the inside of the bandages. Garrick helped her lift Burke’s leg so she could wrap the bandage around his thigh several times.
She had felt his eyes on her the entire time she worked, but it wasn’t until the bandage was securely tied that she allowed herself to register his stare. She worried she would find him glaring at her, or looking at her suspiciously, as if she might hurt Burke, but when she met his gray eyes, they penetrated into her with a dark intensity. She wasn’t sure how to read them—they certainly weren’t shooting anger or suspicion at her. But why was he looking at her like…like he had right before he kissed her?
She broke their gaze and turned to look down at Burke. “How do you feel?” she asked, trying to shake the feeling of Garrick’s eyes still on her intently.
“A bit poked and prodded but better,” Burke said.
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