The girl still didn’t move.
Calum shifted the lantern closer. “Is she dead?”
His brother didn’t answer because he was trying to get the gag back on the shrieking brunette whom he had pinned to his chest with one arm while he struggled with the gag. She stomped on his feet the whole time and threw wild punches that Eachann kept ducking.
“Eachann. This one’s not moving.”
The brunette turned toward Calum with a furious look. “She’s seasick, you moron!”
Eachann stuffed the gag back in her open mouth and pinned her knotted fists behind her with one hand.
Calum stood there like someone watching an ambush from a hillside. He didn’t know whether to get involved or stay clear of the whole thing.
Eachann was laughing as he struggled with the woman, which made Calum want to punch him. This wasn’t funny. It was reckless and foolish and... and was pure trouble.
The blonde moaned.
He spun back around.
“That one’s yours,” came his brother’s voice from behind him.
“The bloody hell she is!” Calum turned again, but his brother had disappeared into the thick mist with the other woman gagged and slung over his shoulder again.
“Eachann!” he shouted. “Dammit! Come back here!”
“Sorry! I’ve got my hands full with George!” Then Eachann grunted as if he’d taken a hard punch.
“I don’t want a wife!” Calum hollered, standing there, a lantern in one hand, while he shook his fist at the empty fog.
The woman moaned again and he spun back. He stared down at her, watching her the way a dog eyed a cornered cat—fully expecting her to strike out at him any second.
But she just lay there, curled into a pitiful ball. She looked as if she weren’t capable of moving or screaming or fighting back.
After a minute of nothing but watching her, he shifted and realized that standing there was stupid. She was barely half his size. He waited a second more, then lowered himself into the hold, keeping his eyes and the light from the lantern on her the whole time.
He bent down, quickly pulled the hair back from her face, stared at her, then untied the gag.
All she did was mutter, “Sick... so sick. Please...”
For the first time in a few years, he wanted to punch Eachann for his foolishness. Stealing women like reivers of old stole cattle, like some feuding clan stole food to eat and women to handfast, like... oh hell! Like some sick practical joke.
Yet he knew his wild brother for the defiant and stubborn man that he was. Calum figured that Eachann was half hoping his antics would give credence to all that tall talk the mainlanders made about mad island Scots.
Calum glanced down at the woman.
She looked cold and drained and ill. He cursed and bent down and picked her up. She went completely limp, her arms and legs flopping down like a wilting flower whose petals were unable to withstand the spray of the sea. Her skin so pale it looked like the mist, white and soft and fragile, as if it would vanish into nothingness if the wind touched it.
Something about her seemed familiar. He stared down at her trying to understand what it was. She was helpless. Completely. There was a neediness about her. Like he’d felt in Kirsty tonight. Yet in this young woman the neediness was different. When Kirsty wouldn’t let go of Eachann it was as if holding on to him was important. This weak lass curled against him the way a wounded animal cowers against a tree, half in hiding and half for protection.
He didn’t know what to do with her, so he held her even tighter against him as he got out of the holding tank. He straightened quickly and moved toward the dock.
“Oh God...” She clamped a hand to her head, which lolled over the edge of his shoulder. “Don’t move. Please.”
He stopped, frozen in his tracks. Minutes ticked by with her saying nothing. He found himself listening to her breathing; it echoed the quiet lapping of the water against the dock pilings. The air was wet with the damp pine and sea taste of island fog.
Her head drifted closer to his neck and he could smell the scent of light perfume like sweet honeysuckle mixed with the sharp tang of the sea. Around them, the mist was freezing and grew thicker and wetter the longer he stood there holding her; it began to seep into his clothes and hers, beading on his forehead and upper lip, and on her hair.
“We cannot stay out here, lass.”
