“Fine,” he snapped impatiently, startling both James and Eilidh. “Ye stay with him, but James will leave guards outsidethe door. If he does anything untoward, anything at all, ye are to shout for them immediately.”
James gave one sharp nod in acknowledgment, while Eilidh’s nod was more exuberant, trying to show Ewan how agreeable, responsible and trustworthy she was.
“Aye, of course,” she agreed.
Ewan looked exhausted already. Eilidh was not going to be the one to tell him that a first birth could sometimes take days.
“And,” he added, “ye must find out his name, at the very least. We need to know what side he is on. And if it turns out he is an enemy?—”
“I will shout for the guards,” she promised dutifully.
Ewan didn’t seem entirely comfortable with what was happening, but maybe that was good practice for him. Babies so rarely followed orders, after all. Truly, Eilidh was doing him a service by giving him a chance to try out his skills on someone other than his own infant child.
He let out a long, slow groan, but then there was another yelp from down the corridor, and, this time, Ewan’s entire body turned toward the door.
“Leave your best guards,” he called to James as he headed out the door.
“Of course,” James called after his friend. He shook his head in amazement at Eilidh after the door had quietly clicked shut behind the laird. “I dinnae ken how ye get your way like that, lass,” he mused. “Ye must be touched by the faeries.”
Eilidh shrugged innocently at him, and he shook his head some more, chuckling quietly. “Dinnae forget to call for the guards if ye need them,” he reminded her.
She gave him a solemn nod, hoping to convey how seriously she took this responsibility. He clapped her on the shoulder, as much encouragement as it was warning, then headed out of the room. Eilidh heard him give stern instructions to the guards tonot leave the door unattended for any reason, including if the skies themselves started to fall.
Eventually, though, the sound faded, and Eilidh was alone with the man.
She had fought for this opportunity, but now that she had it, she felt vaguely at odds. She sucked in a slow breath, then let it out again.
There was an ewer of water on the table by the bed, as well as a stack of cloths that had been brought in by a nervous-looking healer. Eilidh took a cloth from the stack and dipped it into the water, which was still warm, and then began to dab the blood gently from the injured man’s face.
She could do this. She could help him. She could heal him.
No sooner had she had the thought than she felt one of her fancies coming over her. Her sisters hated when she did this, thought it made her naive—and maybe sometimes it did. But Eilidh had found that imagining herself as something bigger, somethingmorethan just the last, least helpful sister in the pack helped her get through things. The tough times like this past year, yes, but also the boring times when all her sisters had been too busy to spend time with a little tagalong. In the weeks after Graham had disappeared, presumed dead, and everyone had been lost in their fog of grief. In the moments when Eilidh wished she wasmorebut didn’t know how to make herself so.
Thus, she pretended. She imagined. She wove stories.
It was easy enough to let a new web spin around her. She would heal this man, this stranger, and then it would turn out that he’d been sent by Graham after all. But he wasn’t any mere man… no, he was a messenger! Carrying information that would end this miserable war, something so important and precious that it would changeeverything.
And of course the war was more important than anything else, so no doubt it would take a while. But after the war wassettled and Graham was secure in his rulership over Donaghey lands, when things were calm and they were all having supper together, someone would look at her and say, “You know, Eilidh, it’s really good that you tended to that man so well. I shudder to think what might have happened if he had died.”
Of course, Eilidh told herself as she turned her gentle dabbing to the man’s scraped and battered hands, it wouldn’t be about her. She didn’tneedpraise. But it would be nice to contribute something to her family. And it would be nice to have peopleknowthat she had helped the family.
To have them know that she was more than just the young one, more than just the silly one.
She smiled to herself as she continued the careful, painstaking work of cleaning the man without injuring him more.
“Ye’re going to be fine,” she murmured to him whenever he shifted in obvious discomfort, though he never once woke from her ministrations. “I’m nae going to hurt ye. I’m here to help ye.”
And even though he didn’t wake, Eilidh felt a sense of satisfaction when the blood was finally cleaned from his skin. She sat back in a nearby chair with a sigh of relief and watched over him as he slept, a strange softness consuming her.
“I won’t leave,” she promised him, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her. She just needed him to know. “I’ll stay right here until ye wake.”
Everything hurt. His head hurt, his back hurt, his legs hurt. Briefly, he thought his fingers didn’t hurt, but then he tried to move them, and no, they hurt, too.
“Och, ye moved! Are ye awake?”
Ciaran struggled to pry open his eyes at the sound of the voice—a surprisingly non-confrontational voice, given the last thing he remembered.
Violence. Violence and pain. Then, a blur. And now a soft, melodic voice.
