Page 83 of Outlaw Ever After

She shook her head, forcing a smile onto her mouth again, but he squatted and lifted her chin to him, palming her jaw.

“Ye’ve always been such a charmer.” She bit her lip and glanced askance, forcing a laugh that sounded more like a garble. “So free, whilst I’ve been…”

He hoisted her up amid the happy faces that weren’t so unaccepting anymore, his brow pleating, when she swayed at the sudden shift. The teasing, lightheadedness, and anger that she couldn’t tell what was truth from tales, all churned into a potion of distress. Apparently, no wounds had healed at the abbey after all.

She braced the wall of a bothy for leverage as dizziness blurred her vision. Lack of food and drink seemed to be catching up to her and she fought to clear her vision. She grappled with the wall for support. Blinked at the spots blotting her vision…

Her limbs felt like pudding as she collapsed.

“Peigi …” a bellow echoed, darkness shrouding her mind.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Alex swooped down and caught her as the villagers gasped. She hung limply upon his arms. He shook her.

“Peigi! Lass?” She was so pale. “She’s nay rousing. Jossy, she’s nay rousing! She’s—”

“This way, mi laird,” Joslyn called.

He whirled around, striding toward Jossy’s cottage as panic knotted his throat.

“Move, ” he commanded, wedging between the crowd.

Fok, she hung spiritless, like a wet rag. Her breathing, so shallow. He buried his nose in rosewater as he strode, and kicked open the door, thudding a wall. Jossy scurried in behind him. The heady smell of herbs and peat overpowered.

“Lay her here.” Jossy fluffed her pillow, and he laid Peigi down upon the pallet of coarse furs, creaking the rope supporting the mattress.

He wrenched loose the tartan as Joslyn rested the backs of her fingers to Peigi’s forehead. Yanked her bodice lacing open and slipped a finger beneath, dragging the ribbon free. It slackened. Her head lolled, a soft moan. Christ, she was rousing, and yet, the relief lifting off his shoulders like an oxen yoke did nothing to loosen the twist in his heart.

Had she fainted ? Her eyes fluttered open, those rich chestnut pools disoriented at first, then coming to. She felt clammy. She pushed up on her elbows—

“Lie down ,” he commanded as he pushed her supine and braced her shoulders there.

“I’m-I’m fine,” she croaked.

“Bullshite ,” he gnashed out.

Last night, she’d slipped away from his attempts to make her sit when she’d nearly dropped from carrying the water.

Yet his hands wouldn’t stop tremoring. He searched every inch of her face, his nerves ablaze with something foreign he couldn’t name. Was it rage? Fury? Nay. It was…fear .

She started to protest— “Ye’re nay to get up.” He lay a finger over her lips. “Francine, stoke the fire. Thomas, gather wood. Gertie, bar the door.”

Jossy sloshed water into a pot to heat over the flame as the bairns did as he bade, then began to grind a mortar and pestle.

“I’m fine,” Peigi protested again.

“Ye crumpled to the ground . That’s nay fine .”

“I stood too quickly, ’tis all.” Again, she wrestled free, and this time, he eased his hold, but as she pushed up on her elbows, he sat, blocking her escape as his hands twitched with unchecked frustration and he braced his knees instead.

“Has this happened before?”

She looked away as Jossy ladled hot water over a sieve at her worktable strewn in vials of medicinals. That was an aye if he’d ever seen one.

“When?”

She shook her head. “Everyone has grown lightheaded from standing too quickly once in a while, aye?”