Mary Reed McCall (12 page)

Cold twisted in his gut as he held Aileana close, murmuring in her ear, trying to elicit some response from her. She was so quiet, her eyes closed, her cheeks flushed
from the fever. His anxiety intensified, building with every step he climbed. But as he reached the top of the stone staircase, something broke inside him. It had long been crusted over, but it was released now by the surging flood of feeling that consumed him. When it had happened, he didn’t know, but it was clear as day in this moment. He cared deeply for Aileana MacDonell. It was too confusing to make sense of right now, but he knew one thing with certainty: he’d fight with every ounce of strength in him to keep the hand of death from pulling her down into the shadows.

Duncan bowed his head. His lips began to move in an almost forgotten stream of words. He’d sworn never to do it again, vowed to deny it as a worthless waste of breath and time. But he did it now, and with every bit of energy that was in him.

For the first time in thirteen years, Duncan prayed.

“What else? Just tell me what else can be done, and I’ll do it. Anything.” He grasped Aileana’s burning hands in his own and laid his forehead against them. He wasn’t sure that he’d spoken aloud, but Bridgid stepped forward. Through a haze of exhaustion, he saw her approach, her hands twisting in her apron.

“There’s nothing more that I know of. If I did, I’d be telling you, I swear I would.”

He didn’t answer, but he felt her hand on his shoulder as she tried to urge him away from Aileana’s bed. “You’ve got to rest, now, laddie—you haven’t slept in two days. I promise I’ll stay here, sitting by her to bathe her forehead. If she wakes, I’ll be quick at sending someone for you right away.” When he didn’t respond, she added, “If you don’t rest, you’re going to end up as sick as the missy. Please, let me take over for a little while.”

“Nay.”

Duncan sat up and reached for the basin. “No one will tend her but me.” As he’d done a thousand times in the past two days, he felt the temperature of her skin, sought the swellings that would mark the apex of the disease in her slender body. She remained hot, but the area on her neck and near her groin showed what seemed to be an inflammation where none had been before. The discovery sent a shock through him, making him sit upright.

Aileana moaned and twisted as he examined her, and he wanted to cut off his hands for hurting her. But he had to be sure. Satisfied, he sat back.

Joy mingled with incredible fear; the presence of the swelling showed that the pestilence had almost spent its course, but it also brought them to the crucial point. She’d live or die in the next twelve hours.

“Give me the salve, Bridgid.”

“Is it time already?” she whispered, her voice shaky.

Duncan glanced at her. “Aye. I have to apply it now. And bring the wine for her, too.”

With a sharp nod, Bridgid left, leaving him alone with Aileana. He reached out, smoothing the thick, red-gold tresses from her brow. God, she looked so small in his bed. Helpless. Vulnerable.

He twisted the cloth in the mint water and unfolded it across her forehead. His eyes burned, and his teeth clenched as he worked, hating that he couldn’t take the ravages of the disease onto himself for her. But tending to her and treating her was the best he could do, and he vowed to make the healing work.

“Here.” Bridgid pushed through the door and hurried forward with the pot of salve. Kinnon followed close behind with a skin of wine. As Duncan reached for the ointment, Bridgid held back.

“I’m thinking you might want me to do this part, laddie. It’s not a pretty sight, what happens, after it is spread over them.”

“Just give it to me.”

His tone left no room for argument, and, handing the pot to him, Bridgid sidled out of the way. Wordlessly, Kinnon untied the wineskin and set it near the bed.

Duncan propped Aileana in his arms and prepared to help her drink. “You can both leave now.”

Lifting his gaze from Aileana only long enough to catch Kinnon’s concerned look and Bridgid’s frightened stare, he added, “I’ve got everything I need here. Go now.”

As if they both understood the strange force that drove him, they turned to leave. But before Kinnon stepped out he said, “If you need me, just come to the door and call. I’ll be sleeping in the hall, a little way off.”

Duncan nodded, not moving as his cousin shut the door behind himself. Then it was quiet. Gently, he laid Aileana back down. He washed his hands, readying himself to apply the salve that Aileana had mixed herself before she fell ill. If it went as he’d been told, she would resist the ointment, but once applied to the swellings it would immediately begin to take effect. She would most likely vomit, and the convulsions might start again. Within a few hours, the engorgements would either subside or burst, but with a different outcome for each.

The first meant life, the other death.

Steeling himself for the suffering he was about to inflict on her, Duncan removed the thin linen sheet. He worked with efficient speed, trying to hold her still long enough to smooth the ointment along her neck and on the swelled places below. He cursed when the stiffness in his crippled hand made the task more difficult, berating
himself for the additional pain his clumsiness surely caused her. Perhaps he should have accepted Bridgid’s help.

But suddenly he was finished. Aileana lay still. Her cheeks remained flushed, though the rest of her was ghostly pale. Moving gently, Duncan covered her again with the linen sheet and set an empty basin near the bed.

Then he waited.

He didn’t need to wait long. With a sudden motion, Aileana jerked, her body heaving as she retched from the effects of the ointment. Duncan supported her, tipping her sideways and holding her hair from her face as he murmured soft words of reassurance until the violent sickness passed. Then he laid her back against the bolster and bathed her face with cool water again before giving her a few more sips of wine mixed with water.

When she was quiet, he pushed himself up from where he’d knelt by the bed. His legs protested the cramped position of the past three hours, and he stumbled as he walked to the hearth to drag a chair back to the bedside. He sat there like that, not moving except to bathe her face periodically with mint water and encourage her to take sips from the wineskin.

The night faded away. His legs grew numb and his eyes stung. And still he sat. He studied her face, the beautiful, noble features that shifted from wrenching pain to peaceful serenity and back again, more times than he could count as the hours slipped by. Aileana was in truth nothing like her sister, now that he took time to notice. Where Morgana’s beauty had been cold and precise, Aileana glowed with inner strength and goodness. He prayed to God for the joy of looking into her vibrant eyes again, vowing to fight any battle, face any enemy for the privilege of it. He’d even go willingly to the bow
els of the Tower again and suffer the tortures of the damned.

If only she could live.

For in those still, empty hours of the night, when death hovered round him like a curse, Duncan realized something startling. Somewhere along the twisted path of hatred and revenge, he’d changed. The sweet enemy had come quietly, secretly, tying him with silken chains more solid and irrevocable than any walls that had ever held him prisoner.

And he knew that come heaven or hell, he would give up his life to keep Aileana MacDonell safe.

S
omething stabbed her in the eye. Something white-hot. Bright. Twisting her head from the source of the pain, Aileana raised her arm to shield her vision. Her lids felt crusted shut, but she managed to edge them open enough to peek from beneath the shadow of her elbow.

Everything was quiet, the place coated, it seemed, in the scent of mint. Her mouth felt full of dust, and her head throbbed as if a boulder had rolled over it, but still she peered through scratchy lids, desperate for a drink of water. A pitcher and wash basin rested on the table across the chamber, but she felt too weak to get it. Then a more terrible thought wrenched her foggy mind.
Heaven preserve her—she’d fallen asleep and left the sick to fend for themselves.

With a groan, she tried to push herself up from the bed, but her muscles refused to obey. The throbbing increased in her head and spread to every aching joint in her body, making her fall back limp against the bolster.
Panic swelled. What was wrong with her? Why did she feel so strange?

Then she noticed something odd. Using every bit of effort she possessed, she pushed herself to her elbows and peered over the edge of the mattress. Duncan lay curled on the floor near the bed; his left arm stretched out above him, cushioning his head, his right hand was cradled to his chest as if for protection.

Or defense.

His hand
. For the first time she saw his crippled hand without the glove to conceal it. The first three fingers curved in an awkward twist; they’d healed without being properly set. His knuckles seemed strangely flattened, and thick, ridged scars formed a mass at the back of his hand, while his thumb seemed locked at an angle.

She frowned and managed to roll to the edge of the bed, reaching down to gently touch him. It didn’t look nearly as bad as she’d feared it would. The sight of it inspired a rush of sympathy for the pain he must have felt with its happening, but she certainly didn’t feel disgust as she’d been led to expect, based on the murmurs of his clanswomen. So then why did he bother to—?

Suddenly, she slid and began to tip toward the floor, unable to stop herself in her weakness. She shrieked but the sound came out more like a croak from her ravaged throat. Duncan growled something indistinct as he sprang to a sitting position and grabbed her wrist, twisting it and forcing her back against the bed.

He scrambled atop her and pushed down, and Aileana struggled under the pressure of his hand round her throat. “Dun…” she tried to call, “Duncan…”

His steel gaze flickered at the sound of her voice, and the scowl faded from his face. In the next instant he
dropped to his knees at the side of the bed, releasing her and taking her hand gently in his own.

“Oh, God, forgive me—the dream…” he mumbled. Stunned, she saw his eyes welling, watched as cold gray melted to quicksilver. “Thanks be, you’re alive,” he said hoarsely, before leaning his brow against their entwined hands.

“Duncan,” she rasped. “Water. Please.”

His head snapped up, and he sprang into a flurry of activity. Soon a cool cup was tipped to her mouth. “Here,” he murmured as he urged tiny sips past her cracked lips, “but don’t drink too much at first. Otherwise you’ll be sick again.”

“Again? I was sick?” Aileana frowned as she tried to remember, but only an incessant thudding at her temples rewarded her effort.

“Aye. For almost a week now.” Duncan nodded and shifted away from her. She saw his furtive movements as he pulled his gauntlets over his hands again. She wanted to say nay, to tell him to foreswear the unnecessary protection of the gloves, but the words got stuck in the incredible weariness weighing her down.

“So tired,” she breathed, trying to resist the urge to close her eyes again. She felt cool and relaxed. An almost forgotten peace lulled her toward slumber. But as the gossamer waves of sleep closed over her and her eyes drifted shut, she felt certain that she must already be dreaming…

Because as Duncan leaned over to tuck the coverlet around her, she thought she felt him press a tender kiss on her forehead.

The autumn rain pattered its chill melody against the window, though the fire crackled brightly enough to dis
pel any dampness. Duncan stood in the shadows of the bedchamber, watching Aileana sleep; myriad emotions filled him with startling swiftness. He followed each rise and fall of her breast, let his eyes slip over the red-gold sweep of her hair on the bolster. His eager gaze absorbed the beauty of the face he’d come to know so well in the tortured, wee hours of those nights when death had lain in wait, trying to claim her.

He’d never thought to feel so about a woman again. Not after Mairi. And certainly not for Aileana MacDonell.

But he cared for her deeply, and there was no going back from the truth.

He paused, a kind of incredulity forcing him to review what he’d hardly begun to comprehend. His mind and heart mingled in force, examining, searching. He approached her and crouched beside her as she slept. His head dipped in prayer, the words flowing free and from his heart. God had answered his call, giving back Aileana’s life. In time she would blossom again. She’d regain her vibrancy, her sharp-edged tongue and her lush, impossible beauty. She would heal and grow strong and prosper.

But no matter; he could never tell her how he truly felt about her.

The thought broke the spell of his prayer, and he raised his head to look at her. There was so much weighing heavy between them—so much that had the power to destroy them both, were he fool enough to allow it. She was a forbidden temptation, and not only because of her heritage or her connection to Morgana and the clan who’d butchered his people—nay, it wasn’t that, though it would have been easier to hold on to that notion. Aileana had proven her character and her loyalty time
and again, in sacrificing her own security for her brother’s safety, in standing strong against the insults and trials of living as his leman…in risking her own life to help his people. He could put down any lingering animosity the others might feel against her, were he to make her his wife. If only it were that simple.

But it wasn’t. Even if he were foolhardy enough to ask her to become his bride in truth—to consider the possibility of love growing between them—she would never consent. How could she? What woman would want to take to her heart and her bed the very man who’d led the attack that killed her father and clansmen, a man who’d humiliated her, threatened her brother’s life and ripped her from her family to live in subjection with him?

Yet even with all of that, there was still more that made him likely the last person that she or any woman would choose willingly for a husband.

Duncan pulled off his glove to stare at his crippled hand. It was true that it worked well enough, ravaged as it was. He could wield a sword, saddle Glendragon, and help in the repairs of the Castle. But he was damaged nonetheless. His touch wasn’t capable of evoking haunting, beautiful music on his
clarsach
anymore, of carving fine lines in a stick of wood…of stroking Aileana to the brink of passion and beyond in the way that he wanted to love her. In the way that she deserved to be loved.

He fingered another of his ugly scars, the one that threaded along his cheek and jaw, bitterness twisting in his chest. He was disfigured and flawed. If he lived to be an old man, he’d never forget the look Aileana had given him on the battlefield, that first day, when she’d seen his face up close; he’d thought himself accustomed to such
reactions, but her shock and aversion had cut him to the bone.

When she awakened for good from this sickness, it would surely be more of the same; she would continue to hate him, both for who and what he was.

He needed to remember that.

But right now she slept. He stared at her, soaking in the sight of her like a drowning man reaching for a branch anchored on the shore. Uncontrolled need swelled inside him anew. Heaven help him, but he wanted to feel the warmth of her skin against his one last time before he made good on his vow to forsake it forever.

His hand trembled as he reached out to touch her, sweeping his fingers in a reverent path across her brow, her cheek and down to the pulse that fluttered warm at the base of her throat. He savored the moment, storing the sensations for the lonely, barren nights that loomed ahead of him. She was like warm velvet, alluring to him even with the ravages of sickness still evident. Her lips parted in a sigh, and she turned her head toward him, nuzzling into his caress.

The tide overflowed, then, carrying Duncan with it to a place of no thought, no reason…only feeling. He leaned over and brushed his mouth across the full swell of her lips, tasting wine and mint. Her lips moved in response, melding to his and softening in surrender. He felt the sweet pressure of her mouth beneath his as he cupped her face gently, letting all that he was feeling through his palms and into her.

But then with a suddenness that almost stilled his heart, her eyes fluttered open, dark pools of liquid yearning that took him by surprise with the force of
their intensity. He froze as she raised her hands, bringing them slowly up his arms and across his shoulders until her fingers tangled in his hair. She pulled him closer, burying her face in his neck. She nestled there, and he felt the light tickle of her lashes against his skin as her eyes drifted shut again. When he pressed a kiss on the top of her head, she sighed in contentment.

And he thought his heart would break.

Never. He’d never have this joy, this happiness of a life and love with Aileana. He’d stolen a single moment in hopes of its memory sustaining him through the emptiness of his future. But he’d discovered too late that it brought nothing but lancing pain for what might have been.

Gently, he disentangled her hands from around his neck and tucked them back beneath the blanket. Then he stood, closing his eyes and squeezing his fists tight against the wave of anguished emotion that washed over him. When he’d controlled his feelings enough to command his legs to move, he turned and walked from the room, hardly daring to breathe for fear that a single wrong step might make him fracture into a thousand pieces.

He’d been kissing her. Aileana kept her eyes closed, holding on to the tattered edges of the dream floating through her mind. Only it wasn’t a dream; it was true. Her lips felt warm and slightly swollen, and she ran her fingertips across them as if testing for traces of Duncan’s touch. A happy tingle wavered in her belly, and the corners of her mouth curved up slightly.

She’d liked his kisses.

Duncan had given her a feeling of peace, of security…of passion when he’d pressed his lips to hers.
The memory of it sent a pleasurable shiver down her spine.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes, hoping to see him sitting at her bedside. But only night shadows greeted her; in the gloom she could make out Bridgid’s ample frame tucked into the chair before the fire. The
bailie
stirred and yawned, the back of her hand brushing across her eyes as she turned to find a more comfortable position.

“Bridgid?” Aileana whispered. She hadn’t intended to whisper, but that seemed the only level of noise she was capable of making at the moment.

Though Bridgid sighed in response, she didn’t wake.

Aileana looked up at the intricate stone design of the ceiling above her head, then closed her eyes again as she gathered her strength. She needed some water, and it seemed that she was going to have to get it herself.

Swallowing with effort, she pushed herself to a sitting position on the bed. Her legs felt weak as a newborn foal’s. It was a strange sensation, the dizzy weightlessness that came over her when she scooted to the edge of the bed. Her bare toes slipped from beneath the covers, dangling toward the cool floor. Little goosebumps rose on her arms and legs.

Drawing the coverlet around her, she waited until her balance felt stable again. Then she pushed herself up to stand. But for all her thinking she was ready, her legs refused to support her weight. Blindly, she reached out for something solid to break her fall, groping for the table Duncan had positioned next to the bed. Her hand smacked into it, making an empty cup atop it clatter to the floor. Aileana followed soon after, collapsing with a painful thud that knocked the breath from her lungs and made her curl into a ball on the hard stone.

“What is it? Where—?”

Through breathless pain, Aileana saw Bridgid start from her chair. The
bailie
’s eyes opened wide as she cast her startled gaze from right to left, her face still bleary from sleep. But Aileana couldn’t call out; it was all she could do to try to stave off her panic at not being able to get enough air.

As she tried to blink away the increasing number of black dots dancing before her eyes, she felt Bridgid’s strong hands grip her shoulders. With one swift motion, Bridgid helped her to sit, and before long she was back in bed.

When her breathing calmed, Aileana saw that the
bailie
stood over her, clucking her tongue with disapproval, her hands on her hips.

“What’re you doing, missy? You shouldn’t be out of bed yet, as I’da told you if you hadn’t gone ahead and tried it on your own without a by your leave.”

Aileana attempted an answer, but she was forced to swallow again, this time with even less success than before. Her tongue felt thick and dry, like a strip of leather, and her lips twisted with the effort to speak. Pointing across the chamber, she tried to show that she needed some water. Bridgid hurried to comply, mumbling apologies as she shuffled back and tipped the cup to her lips.

Finally, Aileana lay against the bolster and closed her eyes. “You’ve no cause to scold me you know,” she said hoarsely. “I did try to ask for your help, but I couldn’t wake you. My voice wouldn’t carry that far.”

After a moment’s silence Bridgid came closer and took Aileana’s hand in her own. “Aye, well, I’m sorry for not being here, ready when you needed me.” Her brows met in a frown. “It’s strange that Duncan didn’t wake me to take over the vigil.”

“What vigil?”