In the Country of Shadows (Exit Unicorns Series Book 4)

by Cindy Brandner

  She looked up then. “Is that entirely necessary?”

  “Aye, ye don’t want to risk infection. Where the hell were ye that ye got so filthy?”

  “In a pipe,” she said, feeling nauseated now between the whiskey and the impending pain. He raised an eyebrow.

  “Ye can tell me about it after I get ye sorted here. Holdin’ yer breath isn’t goin’ to ease the pain, so let it out.”

  “I’m scared to let it out, because that’s when you’ll pour the whiskey on me,” she said.

  “No, it’s not,” he replied equably and poured the whiskey as he said it. It was like a fire had been lit along her flesh; the pain was absolutely searing. It was only Noah’s hand on her shoulder that kept her from leaping off the table. She settled for cursing, volubly and inventively, rounding it off with a heartfelt, “Fuck!” before black stars began to burst in front of her eyes.

  She regained consciousness to find that Noah was hunkered down on the floor, so that his face was level with her own. There was concern in the blue eyes, but a certain clinical calm as well that told her how mild her injury was compared with most he had dealt with over the years.

  “Are ye all right now?” he asked and poured another tot of whiskey into the glass. “Here, a wee bit more internally will help take the sting out of yer ribs. Then I’ll make ye a hot cup of tea with plenty of sugar.”

  “Oh yes, tea,” she said with no small sarcasm, “the Irish cure-all—neither bullet nor stab wound can resist its curative powers.”

  He ignored her comment and after splashing a little whiskey over his hands, he picked something up and held it in the light. It was a needle and it looked, to Pamela’s panicked eyes, wickedly large and wickedly sharp.

  “Give me that bottle of whiskey,” she said, “If I’m going to get through this, I’ll have to be drunk.”

  In the end it was six stitches, a few undignified yelps and more whiskey than even Noah thought was wise. He took the opportunity to wash out the cut on her foot too, and close it neatly with two stitches, after stripping the ruined stockings off of her, along with her skirt. By the time he finished Pamela’s head was swimming and she couldn’t feel her ribs any more. She lay on the table, eyes tightly shut, knowing the room would float in a haze of alcohol should she open them. He covered her with a warm blanket then, for which she was grateful. The alcohol hadn’t quite disposed of every shred of modesty.

  “Do ye feel well enough to tell me what happened to ye?” Noah asked. He stood above her, blue eyes like slate, dark and impenetrable.

  She nodded and began to tell him slowly, but then the panic and fear started to beat in her chest and the words tumbled out one over the next. He took her hand. “Slow down, Pamela, an’ make sure ye leave out nothin’. Ye’re safe. Ye needn’t have any fears now that ye’re here with me. I’ve dispatched a few men to keep watch over Gert an’ Owen’s place as well.”

  “What?”

  “Aye, the guard radioed from the gate. When he told me what state ye were in, I felt it best to make certain yer children were safe, as he said they were not with ye.”

  She took a breath. “Thank you, I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

  “Never mind that now, just finish yer story.”

  She told him all of it: from getting lost, to being shot, to the men hunting her and the constable’s words about knowing where she lived, to the rat and her return to her car. He said nothing throughout the telling, merely nodded now and again, to encourage her to continue.

  When she was done, he said, “Give me a minute, will ye? I need to just tell one of my men something. I’ll be right back an’ then we’ll get ye settled properly.”

  She closed her eyes. She was cold now that the fear had passed and was becoming aware of the smell coming off her skin and the discarded pile of clothes. God only knew what had been in that pipe. She only hoped she didn’t get tetanus or something worse. She must have dozed slightly because it seemed Noah was back within seconds. She took a deep breath and attempted to ease herself up off the table, only daring to open one eye, under the theory that she would feel less drunk if she limited her field of view.

  “Pamela, I really don’t think ye ought to be up,” Noah said.

  “I’m all right,” she said with as much dignity as she had left to her, which was—bloody, three-quarters naked and quite, as it turned out, inebriated—very little.

  “Are ye, indeed?” Noah said drily.

  “I’m a bit dizzy is all,” she said and then swayed alarmingly. Noah caught her and eased her back onto the table.

  “Stay there, I’m going to make up a bed for ye. Ye’re not fit to go anywhere tonight. I think it’s best if ye stay here until things are seen to.”

  He was right, she was in no fit state to go anywhere. She nodded, the contents of her head feeling somewhat liquid. She squinted at Noah, hoping to put a defined line around his image. He shook his head slightly and then went off to make up a room for her.

  “All right, then,” he said, returning a few moments later, “it’s to bed with ye. Take my arm because ye’ll not be steady on yer pins.”

  She took his arm because she didn’t have the temerity to disobey this man and she was grateful for the support. He was right, she was not the least bit steady on her pins, though whether this was a result of blood loss or the large transfusion of whiskey into her veins was a point for debate.

  The room was his, she realized as they crossed the threshold. It was spare in its lines, just a bed—luxuriantly large, which surprised her—and an old battered dresser with a few things on it: his wallet, a small crystal elephant, a syringe for sheep medicine and tweed cap. He sat her down on the bed and then went to rummage about in the small closet. It must have been an addition, for these old farm houses didn’t have closets. She put a hand to the bed to steady herself; the whiskey had replaced her blood or so it seemed, for it felt like it ran in warm channels and then billowed out softly through her limbs.

  Noah handed her an old flannel shirt, much worn, but soft and warm. It was the second time she had wound up in his clothes. It made her slightly uncomfortable even in her drunken state to realize this, though not so much as being partly naked under his rather clinical gaze.

  “Thank you,” she said, unfolding the shirt one-handed. He took it back and shook it out and then put it on her, sliding it over her arm on the injured side first and then putting it over the other and buttoning it up the front. She shut her eyes, it was an intimate act to have someone dress her like this, even though Noah did it with a business-like compunction that made it far less embarrassing than it might have been had he been a different sort of man.

  He helped her settle into the bed, and then pulled the quilt up and tucked her in with a water bottle at her feet, like she was a child. She eased back into the pillows with relief. He was right, even if she could have navigated her way home, there was no way she could stay up all night to keep watch lest the constable decide to make good on his threat.

  Noah left the room and she could hear him moving about in the kitchen. Between the hot water bottle and the whiskey, she was feeling suddenly very tired in body, though not ready to sleep just yet. He returned with a tray, the teapot still puffing steam from its spout and a pot of honey to one side as well as a wee fat jug for the milk. He put it down on the dresser and set to readying her a cup.

  “You shouldn’t have given me your own bed,” she said. Each word seemed to require deliberate effort.

  “Aye, I should have,” he said, “it’s by far the most comfortable one in the house, so I thought I’d best put ye in here. Will it do for ye?”

  “Yes, it’s fine,” she said, thinking she did feel oddly comfortable despite the circumstances which had landed her here.

  “It’ll not be as comfortable as yer own bed, I know.”

  “I don’t sleep in the bed much these days, or at least not the bed I shared with Casey. I sleep with the children mostly. They like it and I don’t have to w
ake up alone in the middle of the night, wondering why their father isn’t there beside me. I miss it,” she said, with the meandering fluency of the inebriated, “having a man in my bed.”

  Noah continued in the act of pouring tea, as if she had said little more than she liked the color of his walls. He finished pouring, the purl of the tea into crockery the only noise beyond the crackle of the fire. She thought he wasn’t going to respond and that it was likely best if he didn’t, for even in the most flattering light it had been an indiscreet statement, at worst it sounded like an invitation. She should never have opened her mouth because whatever editor existed between her brain and her tongue always took a leave of absence when she imbibed anything more than a thimbleful of hard spirits. Whiskey was not her friend. She had only been drunk in front of Casey a handful of times and he had mourned the fact she wasn’t given more to drink, being that he had found it an amusing experience each time. Not to mention, he had said, she lost all inhibition when drunk, which was merely another perk in his opinion.

  Noah turned and handed her the mug, making certain that she had a firm grip on it.

  “I don’t expect you to fix it for me, what happened tonight,” she said, feeling absurdly small and without any sort of moral authority, lying in the man’s bed, drunk as a lord.

  “Then why did ye come here, Pamela? Ye could have gone to yer friend on the hill, if ye wanted a less permanent solution to yer problem. But ye came here. Ye might want to ask yerself why.”

  Why indeed? The fact that Jamie was away was beside the point and she understood that. She had not thought twice about where to go tonight, nor about just whose help she needed in this situation. She knew what had to be done, and she didn’t want the blood of it on Jamie. Noah was looking at her, his eyes cool and assessing like he was reading each thought in her head.

  “I only meant that I have brought my troubles to your door, but if you don’t want to be involved, I understand that.” Like hell she did, she thought, but she had to give this man an out, because in truth her life or death was not his responsibility.

  “It’s what I do. It’s why ye chose to come here, no? Because ye know if ye want rid of a killer, ye go to another killer.”

  “Maybe,” she agreed quietly. “That’s a bare bones summation of it, but I suppose there’s a validity to it as well.”

  “Honesty as usual, Miss Pamela,” he said. She had the odd sensation that he didn’t mind and that he would rather she saw him for what he was, instead of building an alternate and more palatable version of him in her head.

  “I don’t have much else to offer you,” she replied.

  He gave her a long look, the blue eyes giving nothing away. “I wouldn’t say that’s exactly true, but that’s a conversation for later.”

  “Is it? If you do this for me, what do you want in return?”

  “Now is not the time, Pamela. I have business to take care of. Get yerself settled an’ we’ll talk in a bit.” He turned and left the room, leaving her with the comfortable bed and her most uncomfortable thoughts.

  She sipped the tea, hoping it would sober her up a bit. Her head was still spinning from the whiskey. She knew what business he meant. It was not the first time she’d had a man’s blood on her hands, neither literally nor figuratively. It was the latter which troubled her more. She could justify what she had just done, what she had asked of this man without saying a word; she could come to terms with it because there were no other choices. She was all Conor and Isabelle had, the only parent left. She had to survive and she was not going to allow an evil man to orphan her babies because she was squeamish about mortal sin. Anything Noah might ask of her in return for this act, she would give him, regardless of what it was or what it cost her. It would be small in comparison to leaving her children alone in the world.

  So thus reconciled to her decision, she drank her tea and waited for Noah to return.

  True to his word, he was back within twenty minutes, looking as unruffled as when he had left, despite the event which she knew he had just set in motion. He refilled her mug with tea, and then filled one for himself and sat down in a worn armchair which he had pulled over to the side of the bed.

  Despite her earlier resolve, she felt dreadfully nervous. Noah was not a man to shy away from any topic, no matter how uncomfortable. And so, true to form, he picked up the conversation exactly where she had dropped it.

  “What ye said about missing havin’ a man in yer bed? I would imagine that ye do, though I warrant it’s one man ye miss, not just a warm body, no?”

  It was a rhetorical question in part, she knew, but it was also the opening salvo in their negotiation. She was going to have to take the bull by the horns, so to speak. The answer was flowing off her tongue before she could stop it anyway. For the truth was that she did miss the one man in particular and sometimes she felt starved by the need to talk about him, to speak memory into the air and so conjure up for an infinitesimal moment the man for whom she yearned.

  “I do. I miss his touch, just the feel of his body sleeping there beside me, I miss the scent of him, I miss his body against mine,” she said softly, the whiskey having set up housekeeping behind her eyes now and lending the room a subtle golden glow. “But it’s not just the act itself, though I admit I miss the simple physical release of that, too—it’s mostly the intimacy and the way it seemed to ground our relationship. There were times when we couldn’t speak to one another for grief or fear, or even anger, but our bodies spoke another language and we could connect in that way when we couldn’t in others. What we had was something rare, that I think maybe some people never have in their entire life.”

  She took a sip of her tea and felt the heat trickle down into her stomach, it seemed to fortify the whiskey’s effect rather than dilute it.

  “Aye, that’s true. I did see ye with him, in the village one day. There was a deal of passion between the two of ye, apparent even to my untutored eye.”

  She didn’t miss the slight sarcasm in his voice and looked over the steam of her tea at him.

  “I don’t know what your life has been like in that respect and I would never presume to know either. I hope you realize that.”

  “Aye, I know that, only I’m maybe a wee bit jealous, that ye had that, but then sorry that ye have it no longer.”

  “Thank you,” she said, not certain what she was thanking him for, but then nothing really made sense right now.

  “It sounds lovely, like a private world.” She thought he spoke to ease her discomfort over having revealed herself so. “I think real love does that—creates a place, somewhere that’s not quite of nor in this world, which belongs only to the two of ye, an’ it’s a world where ye retreat an’ none can touch ye.”

  It wasn’t the first time Noah had surprised her with his insight and sensitivity. That he was an intelligent man she knew well enough, that he was ruthless she also understood in equal measure, but this side of him always surprised her. Perhaps because he so rarely showed it.

  “Yes,” she said quietly and felt a soft rush of tears prickle at the bridge of her nose. “Yes, that’s exactly how it was.”

  “Well, I see why ye would miss that.”

  “Sometimes,” she started slowly, her eyes riveted to the brown and gold of the quilt on the bed, “I think sex can be just that—sex, just an exchange, a physical release for the two people involved.”

  “Erm—aye, it can be that. But have ye had that sort of sex yerself?”

  “No, I haven’t,” she admitted. “But I imagine you have.”

  There was a tiny voice inside her head repeating rather insistently, “Shut up, Pamela, shut up, shut up NOW!”

  “Aye, I have,” he said mildly enough, considering. She squinted at him through the golden haze and saw that he was fighting a smile.

  “And did you like it?”

  He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed. “Well, aye, I suppose I did. But I’m a man, an’ I think maybe we view sex just the wee bit
differently than women do.”

  “You had to have had it with a woman, so did you mind if her expectations were different?”

  “Well,” he said slowly, suddenly looking like a man picking his way through a minefield. “I tend to be very honest about what I want, an’ not sugarcoat it. I don’t like the woman to believe I’m lookin’ for a romantic relationship.”

  “What if there was a woman who felt the same—who wasn’t looking for a romantic entanglement, but merely wanted the physical aspect of it?”

  Noah’s eyebrows were slowly rising in what appeared to be a rather large amount of consternation. “An’ who might this mythical woman be?” he asked, inching slightly further back from the bedside.

  “Me,” she said, surprising even herself a little. “If it doesn’t need to mean anything, you could have sex with me.”

  “I suspect ye’ve not had sex, solely because ye had the physical need of it. I would imagine ye’ve only bedded men ye loved.”

  “You’d be wrong there,” she said.

  “Would I?” He gave her a dubious look.

  “Yes, you would. I’ve done some terrible things and sleeping with a man I had no wish to isn’t the least of them.”

  “Well, if ye had no wish to, that’s another thing entirely. I’m talkin’ about havin’ it because ye need the physical release or ye merely want the pleasure.”

  “That is what I am proposing to you,” she said. Her blood seemed to have been replaced by pure alcohol but she had enough wits left to realize that she was likely going to regret this come morning. “Do you not find me desirable?”

  Noah sighed; clearly she was beginning to tax his patience. “Pamela, listen to me, ye’re drunk right now an’ in pain, that’s not the ideal circumstance under which to be makin’ this sort of offer. An’ as I stated before, it’s one man that ye miss.”