“The captain ordered the crew to sail at once so they could save the cargo. The poor bastards on shore didn’t matter.” He shut his eyes. “They said it was the roughest crossing in twenty years. Every man on that boat feared we’d drown.”
“Were you afraid?” she asked.
He shook his head, a rustle of sound on the boughs. “My brother was badly wounded. The surgeon gave him up for dead at once, said it was a lost cause. Daniel was fevered, delirious, asked for Hurit day and night, called her name. I stayed by him, cared for him. I pulled the arrow head out of his flesh, did what I could, but corruption set in. My brother lingered for weeks, half alive, suffering. I—” He squeezed her hand so tight he knew he must be hurting her, but she made no sound. “I prayed he’d die.” He said it aloud for the first time. She didn’t stiffen or pull away. She stayed where she was, her thumb rubbing his in a soothing gesture, soundless permission to go on and tell the rest.
“I prayed it for my sake as well as his, for silence, and an end tomytorment, for being the one left alive, for letting him come with me, one more sin, one more terrible, final sin . . . He woke near the end, clear-eyed for the first time in days.
“‘The letter,’ he’d said. ‘You won’t need it now. You’ll make a better earl than I would have, be a better leader, fix the wickedness and waste of father’s rule.’”
John reached for the medicine bag, clutched it in his free hand. “He gave me this. It was his. A person carries important things in their medicine bag—memories, things for protection, luck, and healing. It cannot be opened by another person, though the items inside and their meanings can be shared. Daniel shared his with me—the signet ring that marked him as Viscount Fellwood, my father’s heir, a feather, a blue glass bead from the tunic Hurit had worn on their wedding day. He told me about each item. He asked me for the letter he’d written to my father, and the arrowhead I’d cut from his body, still stained with his blood, and he added them to the pouch. Then he put it around my neck, to wear close to my body so I’d remember him. He made me promise to live my life well. He died an hour later. I added a lock of his hair to the pouch, and it’s mine now.” A sailor had come and sewn Daniel’s body into a scrap of sailcloth, and he’d been buried, with a half-dozen other souls, at sea.
“I spent the rest of the voyage pacing the tossing deck, daring the wind and the waves to take me, too. The crew forced me below, tied me, and kept me in the hold, afraid I’d curse them all, bring ill luck and death. They put me off the ship at Bristol, abandoned me. I was sick for a while. It took me four months to get home to tell Clive that Daniel was dead—his beloved heir, his perfect child, gone.”
She rose up, freed her hand, put it against his cheek. She leaned over him, found his mouth with her own, and kissed him. He reached for her, pulled her into his arms, dragged her over him, and kissed her back. He was raw from telling the tale aloud, desperate with sorrow and regret. She poured herself over him. Spread her body over his like a balm.
She’d been through a horrible ordeal, seen people she loved killed before her eyes, faced abuse and possibly rape, and she was comforting him. There was more to Gillian MacLeod than anyone knew.
Except him—and a regretful pack of outlaws, who were likely wishing they’d chosen easier prey.
He could feel her tears falling on his face, could taste them as he kissed her.
He drew back. “Why are you crying? Not for me?”
“Aye, for you. For all that happened to you then, and today. You could have died,” she said. “It must have made you remember terrible things, but you kept me safe. If not for you, I wouldn’t have been brave. I was afraid—” She put her hand against his chest, felt his heart beating. “But we’re alive. Alive.”
He pressed his hand over hers, concentrated on the present, on recent events. He feared he’d overwhelmed her with his story, yet he knew he’d not have spoken of the past if not for the things that had happened today, the danger they’d shared.
He felt his heart swell, fill. He could scarcely breathe, though her weight on his chest was slight.
“I wanted to be brave,” she said.
“And you were.” He stroked her back, feeling the silk warm under his touch.
“Is it so surprising? I am as much a MacLeod as my sisters, or even my father.”
“Oh, sweeting, I don’t doubt it for a minute.”
“I wasn’t afraid for myself, John. I’ve lost people I love before—my mother, my stepmothers, and now . . .” She lowered her eyes. “Callum, Keir, Tam, Lachlan, and Ewan. Lachlan was to be married, John, like the lad by the fire. He’ll never wed, or have the farm he wanted, or hold his bairns, or grow old.”
“Are you speaking of Lachlan or the lad?”
She was shaking, and he suspected she was crying again. “Both, I suppose. The boy thought I was his lass at the end, was comforted by that at least. But how will she feel, his Sorcha, when she hears he’s dead? Life is too short not to know love and happiness, to find it and hold on to it.”
His own life had proven exactly that. But some men weren’t destined to know love and happiness . . .
“John,” she whispered, and he heard the urgency in her voice, the need, and knew what she wanted. She shifted against him again, moving with purpose now, an undulation of her hips, belly, and breasts against him. He shivered and felt his body respond.
“Nay,” he said. His hands curled around her arms to move her off him.
“But I want—”
“Don’t say it,” he said, his voice gruff. He rolled out from under her, rose to crawl out and leave her, but she caught his hand.
“Stay,” she whispered. It wasn’t a trembling plea. It was the firm tone of a woman who knew what she wanted.
And she wanted him.
He was either the luckiest bastard in all the world, or cursed beyond redemption, being tempted to heaven before he tasted the bitterness of hell.
