Eddard cursed. “I cannae believe Scott took that blaggard’s money. See what poverty does to a clan? Friends turn on friends. And I killed him. What does that say about me?”
“You didn’t ask for it,” she replied. She turned to look at him in the dark. “Do you know what you were saying to me when we got to the tavern?”
“What?”
“I like you.”
“No I didnae.”
“You did, you kept saying it over and over.”
“Well, so what? I do like you.”
His grip on her tightened and she turned away once more. Could she tell him about what happened all those years ago? The reason why she never kissed a man.
That wasn’t true though, was it? She had kissed a man. She’d been a girl in foster care and he’d been in charge of the place. It sickened her to recall it. Him holding her face while she tried to get away.
She shuddered and he took it as her becoming chilled, his arm holding her tighter against him.
She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t tell anyone. It didn’t matter. This was a dream and she’d wake up or this was real and she’d go home. Either way, no point sharing her dirty little secrets.
She closed her eyes, willing herself to sleep. She found herself thinking again about what he’d said, about how she felt while he held her. How safe she felt. There was still that tension though, would that ever leave her?
Oh, to be normal. To not have a past more murky than the filth underneath the straw. While she was wishing, why not wish for a horse with wings to fly her back to her enormous palace in the Bahamas?
Exhaustion washed over her as her aching limbs throbbed painfully. Before she knew what was happening, she was asleep, dreaming once again of being trapped behind a door. On the other side, though she could not see, she knew there stood a man with an M scarred into the back of his hand.
Chapter Nine
Eddard woke up aching all over. He sat up in the darkness, listening hard. Nothing. If they were looking for him, they were looking in the wrong places, following the false trails he’d laid.
He ran through a mental checklist. Injuries? Bad but not fatal. The fact that he was alive was always a good sign. He tapped his chest. The wounds hadn’t reopened overnight. That was good. The cut Scott had given him with the dagger had crusted over. It stung but didn’t feel as if it was going to rot.
His hand was the worst of all the injuries. Each time he clenched or loosened his fist, pain shot up his arm.
He was used to pain. He could handle it. The only question was whether it would affect his ability to fight. There was no way of answering that until it happened. He would just have to wait and see.
He thought back to the fight on the boat. Did he have a choice but to use his hand to grab the sword? It was a spur of the moment thing and it had ended the fight but while the guards would soon dry, he would be dealing with the consequences for some time.
He sat up silently, moving out of the straw like morning mist when the dawn began, rising without sound and drifting outside.
He scanned the gray pre-dawn landscape. He made a mental calculation. If they marched hard and managed without too many stops, they could make MacGregor Castle by nightfall. That would give him the night to check the outsides, see where the guards roamed, see if the routines had changed in patrolling since he was last there.
Would she be able to walk that far? When he first met her he would have been certain she couldn’t manage it but she’d surprised him. She’d surprised him a lot. Warning him about Scott. That had saved him.
The wounds had dulled his attention. He should have noticed the knife but he didn’t until it was almost too late. The sting above his hips was his payment for that.
She had run when he’d run, she hadn’t complained about being tired despite the distance they’d traveled. She had tended to his wounds with knowledge he had not expected.
If she was going to make it, she would need something to eat though. So would he. He scanned the ground, moving swiftly over it until he found what he was looking for.
He returned to the barn a few minutes later. She still slept. He had to wake her. They needed to eat and then get moving. He stood in the doorway, watching her for a moment. Her face looked troubled even in sleep.
She was muttering something to herself. “I dinnae want to go through the door. Where’s Ma and Da?”
She looked pretty in the straw despite her twisting and grimacing as the dream took her. Not that it mattered what she looked like.
What mattered was getting her to the castle and getting into the treasury. Then he could boot out Ronald and what happened after that would be up to the spirits of the Highlands.
