“Lass?” Still incredulous, Cameron couldn’t take his eyes from her hollow cheeks even as Tobias leaned down to press his palm to her forehead.
“Aye, Laird, and burning with fever. She’ll die right here in this cell if I canna get her quickly tae the infirmary—och, be gentle with her!”
Cameron already had picked her up from the floor, her weight so featherlight that indeed, she was no more than flesh and bones.
Her head lolled back.
One arm lodged against him while the other dangled limply, along with her legs… and what appeared now as Tobias lifted a lantern, her soiled face etched with what Cameron would swear were tracks of tears.
Tears…
Chapter 2
“Go, Tobias! Lead the way!”
The healer murmured his assent and hastened from the cell, Cameron hard on his heels. He heard the menservants grunting as they lifted up the other prisoner, but his mind wasn’t on the older man… just the lass.
An Irish lass! So the guard had told him, and Cameron intended to thoroughly question the man to learn if anything more had been said.
How could she not be Irish with that shock of red hair? Aye, matted and dirty, but still as bright a hue as any he’d seen. Yet clipped so short as if she had intended to pass as a youth, her dirty tunic, trousers, and leather shoes attesting to the ruse.
Cameron would never have guessed the truth if Tobias hadn’t pointed it out to him, for she had no breasts to speak of—
“The infirmary is this way, Laird!” the healer’s voice cut into his thoughts, but Cameron only shook his head.
“It’s overrun with men—no fit place for a young woman,” he said grimly, continuing past the wooden structure not far from the prison and toward the massive keep. “She’ll have a room in one of the towers—”
“Laird, I’ve so many tae care for—the other freed prisoners, not tae have her close by…”
Tobias had fallen silent at the dark scowl Cameron cast him over his shoulder, which brooked no further discussion.
Though the healer was heavily built, Cameron still towered over him as he did with most men—except for Gabriel MacLachlan, who had him by a few inches. The two of them together on the battlefield had made even their most fearsome enemies quake in their boots.
“You’ll have as many servants tae help you as you need—och, man, do you have all your potions and bottles in that basket slung over your arm? I can feel the fever burning like flame through her clothes!”
“Not all, Laird, but it’s enough for now,” Tobias answered hastily, clearly chastened as he followed Cameron through the archway that led into the keep.
To the left was the entrance to the great hall where no doubt Conall and Uncle Torence were drinking ale by the fire, but instead, Cameron turned right and strode toward the steps that led up the nearest tower.
The tower where his cousin Cora, the now-widowed wife of Earl Seoras, had lived in a suite of second-story rooms that were empty after her recent departure from Campbell Castle.
Cameron’s jaw tightened at the thought of how she had suffered during her marriage, but that was in the past, thankfully.
Cora hadn’t tarried any longer than to give Cameron a tour of the living quarters in each of the four towers, and of all else that supported the household: the kitchens, the storerooms, the washrooms, on and on, until his head had pounded from the vastness of it. She hadn’t said so, but he had sensed that she couldn’t wait to leave behind what had been a deeply unhappy life, and a day later, she was gone.
A kiss upon his cheek and a wish for his health and prosperity as baron of the fortress, and no mention at all, unlike so many others, about him finding a bride.
He had wondered as her small entourage had left the castle to return to her parents’ home in north Argyll, if she might ever wed again after so unfortunate a first marriage—och, had he just heard a moan from the lass?
Cameron wasn’t sure as he lunged up the tower steps to the second floor, her face still as pale as death. More bedchambers lay above on the third story, but this suite would be closer for Tobias, who did his best to keep up with him.
Another small moan—aye, this time he’d heard one indeed!—made Cameron kick open the door to Cora’s former rooms, startling a pair of maidservants with their feather dusters, who cried out in surprise.
“Fetch water! Clean cloths! A nightgown!” he shouted as he carried his still ominously limp load toward the huge four-poster bed, the wide-eyed women scurrying from the room. “Tobias, she might be waking—”
“Not waking, I fear,” murmured the healer as he deposited the lantern on a table and rushed to Cameron’s side, the young woman beginning to writhe in his arms. “She’s delirious from the fever—aye, Laird, lay her down upon the bed.”
Cameron did so even as a sharp elbow cuffed the side of his head, her arms and legs jerking and flailing.
