Oh God, Janet!
He opened his eyes again, blinking up into the face that had haunted his dreams.
He reached up and cradled her cheek in his hand. “You’re here,” he said, his voice gravelly and weak. She was safe. Janet was safe. “God, I’m sorry.”
She smiled, and he felt the first inkling that something wasn’t right—a fuzzy prickle nudging the frayed edges of his consciousness.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
Another face appeared beside hers, also familiar but scowling. Despite the way the man was looking at him, Ewen knew that he should be relieved to see him for some reason.
“I know you almost died,” the man said. “But you are going to find yourself close to death again if you don’t get your damned hands off my wife.”
Sutherland, Ewen realized.He’s alive.
He dropped his hand from the woman’s face. Mary’s face, not Janet’s.
Mary gave her husband a sharp scowl. “He’s been unconscious for nearly four days—do you think you could put aside your primitive male possessiveness for just a few minutes?”
Four days?
Sutherland shrugged unrepentantly. “Not if he’s going to look at you like that. Hell, I thought he was going to drag you down on top of him. I was just saving him from a thrashing when he recovers.”
Ewen wasn’t too groggy to scoff. “That’ll be a cold day in hell, Ice.”
Mary harrumphed. “Obviously, he thought I was my sister.”
“Where is she?” Ewen said, instantly alert. “Where is Janet?”
Sutherland sobered. “We were hopingyouwould tellusthat.”
“You mean she isn’t here?” He looked around, suddenly realizing that he didn’t know where the hell he was.
Mary seemed to understand his confusion. “Dunstaffnage.”
Bruce’s headquarters in Argyll, won from the rebel John MacDougall, Lord of Lorn, a couple of years ago.
“We found you not long after you collapsed at the Wallaces,” Sutherland said. “I’m sorry for leaving you and the lass alone out there, but it could not be helped. When the English attacked for the second time, I didn’t want to take the chance and lead them to you. I caught up with MacKay and MacLean, who had found Douglas. We would have been here sooner, but Douglas had a few problems we needed to take care of.” Ewen assumed they were English problems. Sutherland’s expression turned grim. “You were bad. We didn’t think you were going to make it. Saint and Hawk got you to Angel just in time.”
Angel. That was who had been tending him when he’d woken delirious—
Ewen froze in horror as the rest of the memory returned. He was almost scared to look. Hell, hewasscared to look. Taking a deep breath, he lowered his gaze to the blanket over him, releasing it only when he saw the lump of his legs—thetwolumps of his legs.
“You remember?” Mary asked.
He nodded.
“You were fortunate in the location of the wound,” Sutherland said. “Angel decided that it would be more dangerous to take your leg because of where the injury was than to let you fight the festering in the bone.”
But it wasn’t the fact that he’d nearly lost his leg that had turned his blood cold. “Why didn’t someone go after her?”
“Striker and I did,” Sutherland said. “We only returned last night. We thought we picked up her trail going north on the road to Glasgow, but then we lost it.”
“Glasgow? Why the hell would she go there?” But he knew before he’d even finished the question.Bloody hell!She’d taken his lessons to heart.
He sat up and would have lost the contents of his stomach had there been anything inside. He swayed as nausea and dizziness fought to take him right back down.
“Wait!” Mary cried, trying to push him back down. “What are you doing? You can’t get up.”
