Carnal Gift (10 page)
She sat beside him again. Holding the bowl of water in
one hand, she lifted the moss from his chest with the other and discarded it.
Jamie bent his neck and was shocked by what he saw. An incision ran from below his collarbone almost to his breast as if he’d been cleaved with an ax. Small, neat stitches of green thread held the flesh together. Though the edges were still an angry red color, the flesh surrounding the cut was not inflamed. It was a wonder he hadn’t bled to death or died of infection.
“It festered badly.” She took the cloth, dipped it in the water, and gently wiped the incision. “I had to cut you.” The water was warm, pressure on the incision quite painful, but Jamie found himself distracted by the graceful movements of her hands, the occasional fleeting touch of her fingers against his skin.
Her words finally hit him. “You cut me?” “Aye.” Her gaze met his for a moment, flitted nervously away. “The wound was deep but very narrow. I could not get medicine deep enough.”
Jamie was amazed. This slip of a woman had performed surgery on him. “Did I not bleed all the more?” “Aye, but I cauterized it.”
He had no memory of it, and for that he was grateful. Her gaze met his. “I’m not a doctor, but you’d have died else. I had no choice.”
“Sure you did. And you chose to help me.” He watched the way his words made her cheeks turn pink, then made her frown. “You’re a healer.”
“Not like some. I know but a little.” She reached for a wooden bowl.
Jamie didn’t have to ask what was in it. The smell of garlic was overpowering. “You remind me of Takotah. She could cure a toad of warts, but she never takes credit for her skills.”
“Who is Ta-ko-ta?” She stumbled over the pronunciation, and her brow turned down in a frown. Her gaze was fixed on a clump of moss, which she soaked with garlic juice.
If Jamie didn’t know better, he’d swear she was jealous.
He couldn’t resist. “A beautiful Indian woman.”
“An Indian?” Her surprise was quickly masked by indifference.
She placed the damp moss over the wound. Jamie couldn’t stop the hiss of breath that passed between his teeth. It stung like hell. “Aye. Her people, the Tuscarora, were all but destroyed by settlers. She found refuge on my estate.” Because the irritation on her face amused him, he didn’t tell her Takotah was as ancient as the hills and had come to live at Blakewell’s Neck long before he’d been born.
She snatched the ball of linen from his hand and began to bind the dressing in place. As she slid her hand beneath him to pull the cloth through, he was treated to a whiff of lavender and a glimpse of her creamy breasts. There had to be some silver lining to being half dead. “There.” She tucked in the end of the linen strip and stood. “I think you’ll live.”
“Help me sit.” It galled him to realize he truly needed her aid.
“Stubborn man.” She reached behind his head with her arm and lifted. “If it will keep you from hurtin’ yourself, I’ll help.”
He gritted his teeth against razor-sharp pain. She tucked a pillow behind his head, supported him as he eased back onto it. “Is that so much better?” Not waiting for an answer, she walked back toward the table.
It was then Jamie noticed the weight of the cross around his neck. He recognized it as hers, remembered finding it in the servants’ hallway while she slept. He reached up with his right hand, felt the pewter between his fingers. Warm from contact with his body, it was the oddest-shaped cross he’d ever seen. Its four arms jutted out from a shared center and reminded him more of a windmill than a cross. It stirred him some way he couldn’t describe that she had shared with him the power of this symbol, which obviously meant so much to her. He heard her gasp.
He looked up to find her gaping at the cross. Then her gaze met his.
Jamie had seen that look in her eyes before. She was afraid.
“I won’t apologize.” She lifted her chin, dared him to insist otherwise.
“For what?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Are you not angry?”
“Aye.” He was angry about a great many things. “Well, as I said, I won’t apologize.” She wiped her hands on a cloth, walked toward him. “I meant only to save your life, not to offend you.”
She stood for a moment beside the bed, her hand out, and Jamie realized she was waiting for the cross. With his right hand, he lifted the leather thong over his head. “Just what have you done to offend me?” She stared at him, confusion on her lovely face. “St. Brighid’s cross. It—“
“You think it offends me?” He handed it to her. She took it from him, slipped it over her head. “You are Protestant, are you not?”
Jamie tried not to notice that the cross had come to rest in the cleft between her breasts. “I’m supposed to be angry because you dared hang a Catholic symbol around my neck when you, a Catholic, were trying to save ray Protestant life?”
“Then you’re not angry?”
“No, Brighid.” He stifled a crazy urge to take her hand. “Where I come from, there are more religions than days in a month. I decided long ago such things aren’t worth fighting about. I doubt God cares one way or another how we pray, as long as we make time for it once in a while.” She gaped at him as if shocked by his words. Then she turned, walked back to the table, continued slicing. “If you had died, we’d be guilty of murder. I had to do everything I could to keep you alive.”
Whatever warmth Jamie had been feeling for her vanished. He almost laughed at himself. She’d gone to extreme measures to save his life, not out of concern or affection for him, but to save her own skin and that of her brothers. In her eyes, he was nothing more than a hated Sasanach. Hadn’t he learned long ago that women, with few exceptions, acted for their own selfish reasons? “What makes you think I won’t turn your brothers in once I’m gone from this place?”
She turned to confront him, her face pale. “You would do that?”
Because he was angry, because he was in pain, he made her wait for an answer, forced her to meet his gaze. “No.” She went back to her work without a word, but he could see her hands shook.
Jamie felt like an ass but couldn’t bring himself to apologize. Instead, he took in his surroundings. From this vantage point, he could see the entire cottage. It was tiny, with whitewashed clay walls that had begun to crumble.
Daylight shone through cracks here and there. There were no windows. The floor was hard-packed dirt. Other than the bed, which was big enough for only one person, the room held only two rickety chairs and the rough-hewn table. Smoke from the hearth floated to the ceiling, hovered. “Your chimney is stopped up.”
She continued to slice potatoes, didn’t look up from her work. “There is no chimney.”
Jamie found this astonishing. Then he noticed everything—the walls, the door, the legs of the table—were covered with a thin layer of soot. The thatched ceiling was black with it.
The cottage was more primitive in some ways than the clapboard slave shanties of Virginia.
“Who owns this place?”
She continued to slice. “We’re not sure. It’s been empty for a long time. We do know it’s off the iarla’s lands. But barely.”
“Ear-la. Earl? Do you mean Sheff?”
“Aye, your friend,” she said bitterly. “The murderer.”
“Murderer? What are you talking about?” She dropped the potatoes into the pot. Liquid splashed into the fire with a hiss. “Father Padraig is dead, God rest his soul.”
“The old priest?”
Brighid nodded, crossed herself, her back still turned to him.
“How do you know Sheff... the earl had anything to do with it?”
“The good Father was found hanged not far from the Old Oak eight days ago. Someone had put a sign around neck that read Traitor.’”
That must have meant Sheff’s men had hanged the priest shortly after the crowd had dispersed. They’d walked some distance away, then killed the old man. But was it Sheff’s bidding or their own doing? Even as he asked the question, Jamie knew the answer. He’d seen the rage on Sheff’s face, had known in his gut Sheff was not going to back down. But he’d let himself be deceived, and an innocent old man had died. “Good God.” He lifted his right hand to his temple. His head had begun to ache. “I’m sorry, Brighid. I thought—“ “I don’t blame you. I know you tried to stop him.” Then it dawned on him. Why hadn’t he thought of it immediately? If Sheff were looking for him, he might have had time to discover by now that Jamie hadn’t returned to London. But perhaps it was not too late to create a diversion. “Brighid, I must get a letter to my brother-in-law in London, or you and your family could be in grave danger.”
Chapter Eight
Muirin watched Aidan eat, couldn’t help smiling. The child gobbled his food as if he’d never been fed before. “Will you be wantin’ more?”
“Aye.” He smiled, his blue eyes wide with anticipation, then grew serious. “If there is more. Fionn says I’m not to be eatin’ your last potato.”
“Don’t worry. I haven’t yet cooked my last potato.”
Muirin took his bowl to the hearth, refilled it with beef soup, tried to ignore the flutter in her belly. “What else does Fionn say?” She felt wicked asking the child, but the question was out before she could stop herself. “He says I’m to mind my manners.”
“And so you have.” She carried the bowl back to the table, placed it before him, bent down until her gaze was level with his. “When he comes today, I’ll tell him you’ve been a perfect Irish gentleman.”
“Fionn is right.” Aidan beamed at her. “You are pretty.”
Then he attacked his soup.
Muirin sat, felt heat rise to her cheeks, felt her pulse quicken. Fionn thought her pretty?
She dared not think too much about that.
It would be hard to think about anything but that.
“I take it you like my cookin’, young Aidan.” Aidan nodded, looked up at her with bright eyes from beneath eyelashes almost as red as his hair. She smiled again, surprised at how easy it had become. When Domhnall died in the spring, she’d felt she might never smile again. Then his babe had grown strong inside her, and life had mattered again. But the babe had strangled in her womb, had gone to its grave not having taken a single breath. She’d wished God had taken her, too, with her wee son still inside her. But she had lived. She had lived though each day seemed a burden, though laughter was intolerable, smiles insufferable. She had lived though she felt dead inside.
The kind women of the parish had tried to comfort her. Most of them had lost a child, knew her pain. Though she was grateful for their sympathy and understanding,
Muirin had felt cut off, alone. Life in the parish had gone on as it had before, seeming to her a cruel parody of the world she’d known before. Even her body had mocked her. Milk had pearled, creamy white, on her nipples, but there had been no babe to suckle. The weight of her grief had seemed enough to keep the sun from rising. The pain was still there. It hadn’t gone away. Muirin feared it would never go completely away. But in the past month, she’d felt something she hadn’t felt since she’d held her son’s lifeless body—hope.
Like light from darkness, it began when life seemed it could not get worse. It began early in the morning the day after the babe’s funeral, the day after Father Padraig, God rests his soul, was martyred. Fionn had come to her early in the morning and asked her to watch Aidan. While Aidan sat sleepily in the horse cart, bundled in a blanket, Fionn told her the Englishman who’d persuaded the
iarla
to give her baby’s body back had been horribly wounded while trying to help Brighid escape the
iarla’s
clutches. Brighid was doing all she could to save his life while in hiding, and Fionn was needed to get supplies to their hideout. He was afraid Aidan might be punished with the lot of them if they were caught. Fionn’s handsome face had been lined with worry—for Brighid, for Rhuaidhri, for Aidan, for her, and even for the injured
Sasanach.
“I know you’re deep in moumin’, Mistress Congalaig, but I’ve nowhere else to turn, no one I can trust with the truth. He’s a good boy. He’ll be no trouble to you. Can you take him?”
iarla
to give her baby’s body back had been horribly wounded while trying to help Brighid escape the
iarla’s
clutches. Brighid was doing all she could to save his life while in hiding, and Fionn was needed to get supplies to their hideout. He was afraid Aidan might be punished with the lot of them if they were caught. Fionn’s handsome face had been lined with worry—for Brighid, for Rhuaidhri, for Aidan, for her, and even for the injured
Sasanach.
“I know you’re deep in moumin’, Mistress Congalaig, but I’ve nowhere else to turn, no one I can trust with the truth. He’s a good boy. He’ll be no trouble to you. Can you take him?”
It was as if she’d awoken from a dark sleep. “Aye, Master Ui Maelsechnaill,” she’d said. “It would be an honor.”
She, too, owed this mysterious
Sasanach
a debt. If not for him, her son would have been laid to rest in a nameless grave in a heretical graveyard. She owed Fionn Ui Maelsechnaill, as well. From the day Domhnall died, he had taken on the chores of a husband. He’d cut and stacked peat out of the rain where it could dry. He’d tended the enormous bull that was supposed to have secured a future for her and Domhnall. He’d taken this year’s cadet to market and gotten a fair price. When her belly had become so swollen with child that milking the cows was an ordeal, he’d taken on that task as well. She’d never asked him to help, and he’d never asked for anything in return.
Sasanach
a debt. If not for him, her son would have been laid to rest in a nameless grave in a heretical graveyard. She owed Fionn Ui Maelsechnaill, as well. From the day Domhnall died, he had taken on the chores of a husband. He’d cut and stacked peat out of the rain where it could dry. He’d tended the enormous bull that was supposed to have secured a future for her and Domhnall. He’d taken this year’s cadet to market and gotten a fair price. When her belly had become so swollen with child that milking the cows was an ordeal, he’d taken on that task as well. She’d never asked him to help, and he’d never asked for anything in return.
Each night when the work was done, he’d knock on her door. “Is there anything you need, Mistress Congalaig?” He would stand, cap in hand, sweat on his brow, his blue eyes full of concern.
Fionn had been steadfast, undemanding, polite. Though her heart still sorrowed for Domhnall, Muirin wasn’t blind. Fionn was tall, vigorous, more handsome than most. Like most Maelsechnaill men, he had deep blue eyes and blond hair, but his hair was shot through with darker tones. In his face he resembled his sister, but where Brighid’s features were delicate, his were manly, aristocratic. When Muirin looked at him, she fancied she could see the royal Ui Naill blood still strong in his veins. She’d been in awe of him as a little girl. Like other families, her family had shared whatever harvest they had—honey from the hive, cheese, a cut of beef—with the Ui Maelsechnaiil, descendents of the High Kings and rightful heirs of the land. Master Ui Maelsechnaiil, Fionn’s father, had been a hedgerow teacher and had risked his life to teach parish children—boys and girls—to read and do math. He’d taught them ancient Irish history, taught them to walk proud and not to bow down under the weight of the
Sasanach.
And when he’d been caught and dragged off like a common criminal to be sold as a slave . .. Muirin had wept for him and his family. “To be Irish is to remember,” he’d said.
Sasanach.
And when he’d been caught and dragged off like a common criminal to be sold as a slave . .. Muirin had wept for him and his family. “To be Irish is to remember,” he’d said.
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