****
Danny tossed in a restless sleep as Finnan reached him, burning with fever and difficult to rouse. Their hidey hole lay high above the glen. From here, by day, Finnan could look out and assess Avrie’s movements, but now he saw only darkness and little pricks of light—torches, perhaps—heading out from Avrie House to the place he had just fought his battle.
He unwound his plaid from his arm and rewrapped the wound in a shirt that would never again see service, and once more assessed himself. Only minor cuts, besides this one. He had to get moving, and Danny with him.
But the lad made a nearly dead weight and mumbled fretfully when Finnan got him up.
“Come, lad,” he said grimly. “We must find a better hiding place until morning.”
He had in mind a stony copse at the south end of the glen, where they had concealed themselves before. Half way there he knew Danny would never make it so far—nor, to be honest, would he. He paused to gulp a great lungful of air and saw that Jeannie’s cottage lay almost directly below.
Refuge. But why should he think of her that way? She had no real reason to help him, and her cottage, this night, could prove more trap than haven.
Yet if he might leave Danny there once more he could move far more swiftly, lead the hunters on a true fox’s chase.
Danny made the decision for him—he went down and would not rise again. Finnan carried him the rest of the way and bore him, like an oversized child, to Jeannie’s door.
The maid Aggie, and not Jeannie, answered his knock, and the blood drained from her face in horror.
“Oh, mistress!”
And then Jeannie stood there, her gaze reaching for Finnan like welcome. “Come in.”
“They are after us, or soon will be.” It seemed only fair to warn her.
Her only answer, a gesture, swept them in. Aggie shut the door behind them and barred it carefully.
“Lay him down beside the fire,” Jeannie instructed. “Aggie, run and fetch the blankets we used before.”
Tenderly, Finnan placed the lad where indicated and then stood back, watching Aggie fuss. He realized belatedly that both women stood in their nightclothes; he must have flushed them from their beds. To be sure, the night was now well advanced.
“His fever has returned,” he told them unnecessarily. A hectic flush mottled Danny’s cheeks, and Aggie had already placed a soft hand on his head. “If I might just leave him here a wee while, I would be most grateful. I ken fine ’tis not your fight, this. And I will no’ stay to endanger you.”
Jeannie turned her head to look at him. Her hair, loose down her back, tumbled like a river of golden silk; she looked impossibly beautiful. Did she know that when she stood so, before the fire, her gown became damned near transparent? He glimpsed everything he had already touched, and his throat went dry with longing.
This was no’ the time for such thoughts.
Her face paled. “You are bleeding. Your arm—”
He looked down at himself in rueful acknowledgement. Not only did the wound on his arm bleed, it now dripped through the wrappings and onto her clean floor.
“I am that sorry.” He tried unsuccessfully to stanch the wound. “There was a fight back down the glen.”
She spoke a word no respectable woman should know. “Sit down. You can go nowhere like that.”
“But—”
She fixed him with a fierce, blue gaze. “Sit.” She planted a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him down onto a stool. To his surprise, his legs collapsed and he sat. “Someone must see to that wound. Aggie?”
But the little maid, completely occupied with Danny, did not so much as turn her head.
“And it seems,” said Jeannie MacWherter through stiff lips, “it must be me.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
So God did answer prayers, Jeannie thought, but not always in the way one wished. She had asked most ardently to see Finnan MacAllister again. Just now, lying in her bed, she had longed for it in a decidedly impious fashion. And so he came, but so sorely hurt her hands shook and her heart quailed as she surveyed the wound.
His left arm had been laid open from the shoulder nearly all the way to the wrist. She could not see how deep the wound went for the welling blood. How had he ever managed to carry Danny, so? And how did he remain upright on the stool now?
