“For the best?” Dair echoed. “What? You think we’d leave you behind? Yer daft!”
“It’s no her fault.” Simeon shrugged his shoulders. “She’s no ever seen a MacAlister in the defense of his woman as we have.”
Once she was on her feet, Dair leaned over and caught up the hem of her overdress. With a “pardon me, my lady,” he proceeded to rip a good foot off the bottom.
“It feels to me as though yer ribs are broken. We’ll have to bind them or you’ll no be able to bear the ride. It needs to be tight, you ken? Up against yer skin.”
“Fine. Whatever will help.” Abby did her best to lift her arms, not very successfully.
Behind her, Simeon coughed. “That’s no quite his meaning, my lady.”
“Not his meaning . . . oh, crap.” Against the skin, he’d said. Over her dress, and the binding would twist and slide, useless. Too bad she hadn’t landed in Scotland a few hundred years down the road when every lady’s stylish longer bodice would have served as a rib binding on its own. “Then you’re going to have to help me. I can’t get these things off by myself.”
“We’ll just lift them, aye? Sim, yer assistance?”
Simeon was at her side in an instant, gathering her skirts and lifting them up around her face. Dair placed the band of cloth against her ribs and began to wind, pulling it tight. He finished by tearing off another strip of cloth and tying it over the binding to hold it tight.
“There. That should help.”
Simeon dropped her skirts, fluffing them into place, his face a mottled pink. “A reminder, my lady. Just as you’ve promised no to share with yer husband the details of Dair’s adventure in retrieving yer wee knife last night, I’d take it as a personal boon if you’d keep this moment just between us, as well, aye?”
Whether Simeon was actually worried about Colin’s reaction or simply trying to ease her tension, she didn’t care. It worked.
Getting back on the horse was pretty much as painful as before, but once she was settled, she found, amazingly enough, the binding actually did help a little. She was still forced to take only short, shallow breaths, but at least it no longer felt as if razors slashed into her with every move.
Dair fixed one arm around her middle, pulling her back up tightly against his chest, and they were off, their horses pounding across the ground as if another wildfire chased them.
Within seconds Abby knew if she could last out this day, she’d be able to do anything. Andanythingwas what she’d sworn she was willing to do to keep Colin from riding off to get himself killed.
Thirty-seven
It’s no far now.”
If Abby didn’t hurt so bad, Dair’s words might have made her smile, wondering if hisnot so farwas anything like Colin’s.
As it was, the best she could manage was catching her next breath without passing out.
“Halt!”
Dair and Simeon both pulled their mounts to a stop as two men moved out of the forest to block the road ahead of them.
“No,” she managed between pants. It couldn’t be. She blinked slowly, struggling to focus on the men ahead.
What couldn’t be, was.
Jonathan Flynn sat on one of the horses, his gun pointed directly at them.
“Abigail, dearest,” he called. “I’ve found you at last. And with new friends.”
How wrong was this? She’d traveled seven hundred years to escape staring down the barrel of that bastard’s gun, suffered more than she ever had in her whole life, and how was she ending up? Staring down the barrel of the bastard’s gun. Again.
“You ken who this man is, do you?” Dair asked.
“Yes. He has a gun. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“Gun?” Next to her, Simeon snorted. “That wee bit’s hardly bigger than the knife you had stuffed down yer front, my lady. It’s of no consequence.”
They didn’t know about guns. They didn’t understand the danger they were in.
