Aggie stood by with the needle already threaded. Suddenly, though, Jeannie felt unequal to the task.
Finnan assessed her with a measuring look and took the needle from Aggie’s fingers. “You steady my arm,” he told Jeannie, “and keep the blood sponged away. I will do the stitching.”
She knelt on the floor beside him and gripped his arm in both hands. Their heads bent so close they touched as, with another sharply drawn breath, he began the work.
Before he finished they were both sweating, and Jeannie’s hands trembled badly. Thirty painful stitches he had made, for she counted them.
What kind of strength—mental and physical—kept a man upright in his seat through such an ordeal? Finnan had turned pale as milk, but his hand remained steady and firm. A woman could only admire such a man.
In truth, she felt much more than admiration. At that moment, kneeling beside him, she experienced what she never yet had toward any man: a stir of the heart.
Nonsense, she told herself sternly. She could not possibly be falling in love with Finnan MacAllister, not when she had kept her heart whole so long. He was completely and utterly unsuitable—the last man in the world she needed: wild, dangerous,beautiful.
He looked up and caught her gaze with his, which was full of ironic light. “Well, now, that was no’ so bad. I thank you for your assistance.”
Jeannie, still shaking, got to her feet. “We are not done. You stay there while I wrap the bandages. Aggie?”
Aggie, who had stood and watched the procedure despite herself, stepped up with the remains of Jeannie’s best sheet cut into strips.
“Aye,” Finnan said, “and then I will away.”
Jeannie glanced at him. “You are going nowhere. Aggie, make the laird some tea and then take an extra blanket up to the loft.”
“He’s sleeping there?” Aggie squeaked.
“No, I am. The laird will take my bed.”
Finnan parted his lips to protest, but Jeannie’s gaze met his like a crossed sword.
“’Tis no’ safe for me to stay here,” he told her. “I refuse to bring trouble to your door.”
And she replied, “I do not wish to hear your protests. We will worry about the consequences come morning.”
****
Jeannie MacWherter’s bed, soft and comfortable, should have drawn Finnan into exhausted sleep. He had been living rough for days, laying his head on boulders and bracken, and his weary body craved this haven.
But his mind stayed vigilant even once his body relaxed and the cottage became quiet. He listened for every sound inside and out—heard the women murmuring to one another in the loft before they slept, heard Danny stir restlessly. He listened to the wind rise outside and fooled himself there were footsteps.
His arm throbbed with a steady ache in time with his heartbeat. He throbbed elsewhere also and ached for release. Jeannie’s bed smelled of her, a delicate and beguiling scent, and prompted a host of memories. Her golden head had lain on this pillow—he recalled burying his face in her hair when they lay in the rowan copse. He thought on the perfect globes of her breasts, glimpsed down the front of her night dress, almost enough to distract him from his stitchery.
By all the gods of this place, how was he to sleep, with her under the same roof?
Upon that thought, his ear caught a sound, and then a succession of them, inside the cottage rather than without. A shadow stirred in the doorway of the room, and then a miracle came to him on soft, bare feet.
She wore only the night rail and floated like a spirit, being nearly soundless. In the dim light—for she had hung a cloth over the window—he could barely see her, just the blur of her pale clothing as she moved.
But he did not doubt her identity, and the breath caught in his throat. “Jeannie?”
“Hush, we do not wish to wake the others. I came to see how you fare.”
Liar. ’Twas not why she came. Finnan’s every instinct told him she answered the same desire that rode him here in the dark, and his heart leaped with hope.
She paused beside the narrow bed and regarded him. He wanted so to reach for her, but in this game he played she must reach for him.
She whispered, “I hoped you slept.”
Liar, again. Whatever she desired, she did not want him insensate.
