“Mungan, I would not steer you wrong,” she vowed. “Leeches do not help, I don’t care what Diarmad or the medicine of your time says. Please believe me, I wouldn’t risk Ciar—anyone’s life by making such a statement if I didn’t believe it. If I thoughtleeching would help, I’d drop a hundred leeches on him, on everyone.”
She sighed now, plopping down into the chair at Ciaran’s side.
She’d hated leaving him at all during the day, wasn’t afraid to admit to herself exactly how much she hated it. Every step away from the keep had felt wrong, her mind tugged back here no matter how dire were the other patients.
The chamber was dim, the fire in the hearth had been kept purposefully low. He hadn’t moved. His great frame filled the bed as though even the heavy carved oak could not contain him, but his strength seemed swallowed whole by the fever. His face was flushed, damp with sweat, his chest heaving shallowly beneath the cool cloth she laid there.
She wrung another cloth and pressed it to his brow. He shifted, restless, a faint groan catching at the back of his throat. Then his hand stirred at his side, lifting, fingers groping weakly, as though searching for something unseen.
Without thinking, Claire caught his hand in both of hers.
The change was immediate. The restless movements eased, his breathing became calmer.
His hand dwarfed hers, hot and heavy, but his fingers curled weakly around her own, clutching her fingers as if he had found the thing he’d been looking for.
Her throat tightened, and she kept her hand tucked safely in his, watching the rise and fall of his chest in the wavering firelight.
After a long while, when his breathing steadied into a shallow rhythm, Claire eased her hand free. Her palm tingled where his fingers had curled, as if he still held her. She flexed her hand once, drew a breath, and pushed herself upright. She couldn’t sit idly, not when sweat still dampened his skin, leaving him restless and burning.
Earlier, before she had gone out to tend the others, she had pressed Mungan and Mairi into a task she could not do herself—stripping the laird of his breeches and drawers, and bathing his lower half. The captain had grumbled, but she had returned to find Ciaran no longer bound in sodden layers.
Before she reached for the basin, she tried first to get broth into him. She propped his head with one hand, spooned slowly with the other, and waited with each mouthful to see if he would swallow. Sometimes he did, his throat working weakly; other times the liquid dribbled past his lips, and she had to wipe it away with the edge of the cloth. It was painstaking work, testing all her patience, but she kept at it until she was satisfied he’d had enough. Only then did she ease his head back to the pillow.
She fetched fresh water from the basin and wrung out a cloth until it dripped cool against her knuckles. Returning to the bed, she set to work again, same as she had already twice today, drawing the cloth over the breadth of his chest and shoulders, down his arms, across the fever-hot lines of his ribs.
Even now, with his strength lax, his body bore the mark of a warrior, muscle hard and defined, a frame built for war. She told herself to look at him as she would a patient in the hospital back home, just another man in need of care. But she wasn’t blind. Nor immune. Each sweep of her hand reminded her of what he was, formidable, powerful even in this state, and so beautiful.
“God, you stubborn man,” she muttered, dragging the cloth across his collarbone and down the length of his arm. He twitched once, as though her touch stirred him, but did not wake. “Just fight the fever the same way you seem to challenge me at every opportunity.”
His lips moved. The words echoed faintly, broken but clear enough.
“Dinna die, Claire.”
Claire froze, the cloth suspended above him. Her heart lurched against her ribs. He sounded so raw, so desperate, that she leaned closer, searching his face. His eyes were shut, lashes damp against flushed cheeks, but his lips shaped the words again, barely a breath.
He thought she was dying.
“Oh, no,” she moaned with sympathy. “I’m not dying, Ciaran. I’m right here,” she promised him, smoothing her palm along his cheek. “Ciaran? Listen to me: I’m not dying. I’m alive and well.” She brushed a strand of damp hair from his brow with her fingers. On impulse, she lowered her face and kissed his forehead, just a soft, slow peck.
“I won’t die, Ciaran,” she whispered. “And you won’t die. I won’t allow it.”
Whether he heard her or not, she couldn’t say. But the hard lines of his face eased, just barely, as if her vow or maybe her kiss had reached him, in whatever place the fever had dragged him.
Chapter Fifteen
Awakening
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On the second full day of the fever at Caeravorn, twenty-one people now actively had fevers, varying from mild to dangerous. As the sick house thinned out, wounded soldiers growing stronger, well enough to return home or to the barracks, no longer needing Diarmad’s questionable attention, the flu house outside the village filled up and fear threaded through the entire clan.
By midmorning, the first had died. Old Donal, who according to Mungan had long struggled for breath even at his best, slipped away in his sleep. No true surprise, then, but the loss struck hard all the same, and his wife wailed until her voice gave out and his neighbors muttered of omens. Claire had tried to console the widow and calm rising fears, reminding them the living still needed their strength, but it was Mungan’s rough voice that cut through the grief.
“Ye’ll do the auld man nae honor,” he told them, “if ye let despair lay claim to his memory. We’ve work yet to do, and folk yet to save.”
The simple words, spoken without flourish, carried more weight than any reassurance Claire could muster. The wailing quieted and the muttering died down.
Claire was beyond exhausted, her own concern rising as too few recovered from their fevers but were still wrestling with it yet after two whole days. She moved from location to location throughout the day, forcing herself to keep going while not spreading herself so thin she snapped. Her secret guilt weighed heavily on her, for even as she pressed cloths to other brows orcoaxed broth past slack lips, her mind was with Ciaran. Always him. Every moment she wasn’t at his side felt like neglect. Every time she returned and saw his chest still rising and falling, her relief was great enough to raise thankful tears.
