Chapter Ten

A cave would be best, back in the forest, preferably without any wolves or vermin inside. Alana’s heart thumped as she scanned the trees, feeling the silence around them like a weight. Was Shaw well or was he bleeding too much? His kilt looked soaked. “We need to stop soon,” she said and glanced over her shoulder to see if he looked listless and pale. Yet the man continued to show strength in his features.

“We will need to make camp and use the leaves to hide us,” he said.

She studied him. Was he delusional? “Leaves?” He nodded, and she turned front. They had ridden several miles from the town in a northward direction, the sun lowering on their left. “We need a stream.”

“The River Almond should be just north of here,” he said.

He leaned into her slightly, and the horse picked up a faster gait through the woods. Without the babe tied against her, Alana felt the chill of the fall wind. It was freeing not to have the child’s weight before her, but it also made her feel rather empty, like an appendage had been severed.

“I miss her,” she said.

Shaw’s arms came up on either side of Alana. He didn’t say anything, but his support was obvious, and she wanted it, needed it. She took a steadying breath as they increased in speed, holding onto Shaw’s warhorse as it maneuvered without any outward sign from Shaw through the thick forest.

After nearly an hour, the sound of water rushing caught her ear, and the subtle change of Shaw’s leaning made the horse turn right to angle toward it. They slowed and finally stopped near the bank. Brightly colored leaves arched over the fast-moving stream, the setting sun making the water look dark. A stray beam of light danced off the ripples where a leaf shot along like a boat caught in an ocean surge.

“I will climb down first,” she said, expecting his no, but he didn’t say it. She turned to see a light sheen on his brow. He was in pain. “There now,” she said, using the no-nonsense yet encouraging tone she did when helping Cat Campbell back in Killin with her patients. “We will get you down and fix that wound.” Lifting her leg to swing forward over the horse’s mane, her blasted skirt dragged, momentarily blinding the massive creature. But he didn’t move. Maybe Shaw Sinclair did know how to train animals. Alana twisted and pushed off to land on the ground.

Brushing her hands, she looked up where Shaw swung his bad leg over and dismounted on the wrong side. He grabbed the bag on the back of the horse and limped his way to the water’s edge, holding the injured leg out as he sat down on his opposite hip. “It hit my arse actually, slid along my hip. Logan tied a tourniquet.” The last words came through gritted teeth as he yanked the knot loose.

“Wait,” she yelled. “It will bleed again.”

“At this point my leg is going to fall off if I do not let some blood flow again.”

Alana hurried over. Blood had dried, making his kilt stiff with it. “Damn, it is dried to the wound.” She batted his hand away. “This needs to come off,” she said, reaching for the belt that held the kilt over his narrow hips.

He was turned away from her but looked back over his shoulder, his eyebrow raised. “Ye know I wear nothing beneath.”

“I have seen a man’s…arse before.” She waved her hand. “And other parts. I assist the healer at Finlarig Castle.” It was true she’d seen a man’s backside, but only the front in one of the art books that Evelyn had brought from England. The picture of David, who Kirstin said had a small jack, poor man.

Shaw unbuckled, letting the belt fall with the binding of his kilt. His white tunic was also covered in blood from the wound, dried to a darker red now and somewhat stuck. “Lie on your stomach if you can,” she said and bent over the stream, wetting another piece of linen she’d ripped from her old smock. He has a strong constitution. It was true. He hadn’t ended up with a fever from her stab wound. Perhaps he’d heal perfectly fine.

Shuffling back over to him on her knees, she squeezed the water over the dried blood, softening it enough for her to pick the kilt and tunic away. Skin tinged a rusty brown, she lifted the kilt gingerly to see a deep trail cut into the flesh of his hip running three inches down his leg. It still wept, but the flow was slow. “It could use stitches. The musket ball cut a chunk out of you.” Her gaze raised to the back of his head as he propped himself up on his elbows where he stretched out on his stomach. The dark waves of his hair looked soft. She swallowed, looking down at the wound. “Less than an inch farther to the left, and the ball would still be lodged in your flesh.”

He shifted and she looked up. He gazed back at her over his shoulder, a slight grin playing along his mouth. “My luck is apparently better than the Englishman’s shot.”

“Your luck?” A laugh flew out with her exhale. “I have only known you for four days, and you do not have a castle or land, you have been stabbed, saddled with a hungry babe, punched by your friend, and now shot.”

“But I am not dead,” he said.

She rinsed the cloth in the water, squeezing it over the wound, and wiped the skin around it, repeating the motion until the blood came away. “Why were you and Alistair fighting?” There was a pause where she held her breath.

“An angry husband should battle a persistent old lover.”

“Yes, but I think Alistair’s face took the brunt of the act.”

Shaw grunted, shifting slightly forward so that he lay his chin on his forearms.

Wiping the wound completely clean, Alana tried to ignore the strength in the muscle of his thigh and not look too long at the perfect shape of Shaw’s arse. It was an arse after all. Something everyone had. It was used for sitting upon. Surely it was only curiosity that made her want to study him more.

“How does it look?” he asked.

Alana coughed, turning her gaze from his toned backside. “A few stitches are needed.”

“I have thread and a needle in my satchel. And whisky to keep it clean.”

“You should drink some of it, too,” she said, finding the satchel on the back of Shaw’s horse. The horse picked at the grasses under the fallen leaves. She opened a flask, sniffing it. Whisky. “Here, best to numb the pain.”

“Warriors are accustomed to pain,” he said but took a haul of the flask anyway.

A smile pushed up the corners of Alana’s lips. “You sound like my father.”

“Was he a great warrior?”

She nodded but realized he couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

“And a Covenanter, someone strongly against the English king’s push to unify the country under one liturgy.”

“Yes. My father hated the English monarchy and felt that Charles just wanted to restore Catholicism.” She shook her head. “He would hate King James even more.”

“And the king’s children?” Shaw asked, glancing over his shoulder at her.

Alana felt a twist of guilt inside. “I do not know, but a babe is a babe, born innocent, and should not be hated for her father’s beliefs.”

A small amount of whisky flowed into Alana’s palm, and she dunked the threaded needle into it. “Now, brace yourself.” Before he could reply, she poured some whisky on the deep gouge that the musket ball had left. Shaw didn’t move, but the muscles in his leg contracted. “Try to relax,” she said softly. Working quickly, she gently pinched the flesh closed and caught the edge with the needle, pulling the thread through the other side to form a stitch. She added seven more, spaced evenly along the line of angry flesh.

She glanced up after each stitch, but Shaw remained quiet, seeming to stare out at the flowing stream. The salve that she carried in her satchel would help the skin to knit back together, and she wiped some on with the tip of a finger. “I will tie a clean piece of linen around it and wash out the tourniquet to use tomorrow. We need to keep it clean, but it should heal, leaving you a scar for which you may brag.”

He snorted lightly. “I have enough about which to brag.”

Did he mean the scars on his back? The one on his hairline and small nicks on his face? Or were there others hidden about him?

Alana kneeled before him, placing a clean swatch of linen across the stitches. “The scars on your back look well healed,” she said and shook out the long strip to tie it.

“Aye.”

He didn’t say anything else. “Were you just a boy then?” She paused at the gruesome vision of him, a dark-haired boy, having his back flayed open.

She watched him inhale. “Aye, too weak still to prevent it.”

Her heart hurt for the boy who had suffered so. “Who would whip a—”

“My uncle did not like me accusing him of throwing my mother to her death,” he said.

Good God. The pressure of tears swelled behind her eyes, but she blinked, refusing to let them fall. He would only see them as pity.

She swallowed hard. “I am glad he is dead, then.” She forced her voice into a lighter tone. “And likely in Hell being whipped for his deeds.”

Shaw snorted softly where he rested on the river bank.

She lay the clean linen across the stitched wound and paused. Threading it under his naked hip would bring her hand very close to his male parts. Alana took the one end high up on his hip and slid it under his thigh down by his knee.

“Do ye need me to turn?” he asked, not moving at all. His leg was as heavy as stone.

“Just a bit,” she said, and he pushed up as she hovered over him, completely uncovering his front. “Oh,” she said, dropping her eyes, but not before the size of him was etched into her memory. Kirstin was right; the statue of David was too small to truly represent the jack of a mighty warrior. Heat moved into her cheeks, and she kept her head bent as she worked the binding up, tying it high on his hip.

“There,” she said. “You just need to keep it clean and dry to guard against fever. I am nearly out of feverfew. But you managed to avoid a fever from my stabbing you, which you did deserve.”

“Aye, I did,” he said.

She glanced up, meeting his intense gray eyes. “If you had just asked me, I might have said yes without you having to truss me up like a caught goose. After all, I do need to get to Edinburgh to save my mother. I suppose you didn’t know that, and poor Rose was surely to die without a knowledgeable woman to help you.”

Lord, she was rambling. It was as if she stood on the outside, listening to the words spill from her mouth in a failing attempt to hide her flustered reaction to seeing him naked. Gathering a full breath, she clamped her mouth shut to stop the flow of words and stood up. Without further utterance, she gathered the supplies into Shaw’s satchel and grabbed his clothes to wash at the stream.

“I have another tunic in the other bag tied to Rìgh.” His voice was warm, as if there was a hidden smile within it. “And Alana…” He waited, but she was already striding to his horse to collect the covering. She turned to come back to him. He had draped the blanket that he lay upon over his hips and pushed up on his elbow, watching her. “Alana…”

She finally lifted her gaze to his. “Yes?”

“Thank ye. For sewing me back up and for helping me keep the bairn alive.”

She nodded and handed him the tunic.

“And,” he continued, “for what it is worth, I am truly sorry that we tied ye up to take ye with us. Desperation makes men foolish, and I allowed myself to fall prey to it.”

Alana froze at his words, her lips parting as her jaw dropped slightly. She closed her mouth. “Well, I had just stabbed you. You probably did not think I was open to discussing a trip east.”

A smile broke across his mouth, relaxing the tightness in his jaw. With his wavy hair haphazard and the threat of laughter in his eyes, Alana’s heart squeezed with…what? Forgiveness? Compassion? Want?

“I admit that option hadn’t entered my mind,” he said.

She felt her lips turn upward into a gentle grin and went to the river to wash the blood out of his kilt and tunic. The cold from the water worked up her arms to cool her heated cheeks and neck. It was a wonder that steam didn’t float up from her. She heard the rustle of linen as he pulled the tunic over his head behind her.

“Have ye always been so dangerous with a hair spike?” he asked.

She heard the crunch of pebbles as he stood, and she turned to frown at him. “You should not put weight on the leg so soon. Your muscles could split the stitches.”

“I will hobble about, then,” he said, meeting her gaze. His head tipped slightly as if he studied her, and his mischievous look slid away. “Have ye had a need in the past to learn the art of war? Or defense? Ye said that ye learned it at your Highland Roses School.”

Alana turned back to the water rushing under her hands. It was easier to talk about the fire when a flame’s natural enemy was coursing through her fingers. “I understand losing a home,” she said. “A castle like Girnigoe even. Finlarig Castle is my home, but those plotting to kill King Charles decided it was a good location for an assassination and used my father’s known Covenanter status to throw us out. He was killed, and when we refused to go, the English soldiers involved in the plot set fire to it.”

She could feel Shaw’s presence behind her there on the bank, but she remained crouched, facing the water. “Ye decided to learn to throw sgian dubhs and wield your hair spike to seek revenge?” he asked. She glanced over her shoulder at him. Even in just his boots and a long tunic, he looked formidable. A frown sharpened his gaze, and his fists rested at his sides.

“No.” She shook her head, meeting his gaze. “I learned to defend myself so that the next time men picked me up to throw me into a fiery inferno, I would draw their blood.”

Without waiting for a response, she stood, walking around him with his dripping clothes to lay out on a boulder upstream. She would hang them on a limb, but if Major Dixon’s men rode this way, the clothes would be a flag, calling them over.

A long, sturdy limb sat on the mosaic of leaves, and she picked it up, leaning on it. It might hold Shaw’s weight. Thumping with it, she walked back toward him. “You can use this to help you hobble about.”

“The English traitors…they threw ye into the burning castle?”

“Yes.” She held the limb up straight near his hand so he could take it. “When they found out I was the daughter of the chief, they picked me up and threw me inside, barring the door.”

He cursed under his breath, his face hardening into the promise of death. She wondered if he donned it in battle, because it would be quite effective. She moved past him, picking up the woolen blanket he’d laid upon, shaking it of leaves and dirt.

His limp had stolen his stealth, and she heard him thump closer. So, she didn’t jump when he clasped her upper arm, gently pulling her to face him. “Were ye burned?”

“My feet and here and there,” she said. “A few scars, but nothing horrific, at least not on the outside.” She smiled but knew her eyes were sad. Nightmares and bits of memories plagued her. “And now that I know I can at least draw blood, the inside scars are healing some.”

“Mo chreach,” he said, his voice low. “And my men grabbed ye up, under my order.”

She smiled. “And you lost blood from it. It is a start.” She looked away. “Night will fall soon. I am assuming we will not have a fire, so we better make a shelter. If you tell me what to do, I will build one.”

“Alana,” he said, his voice heavy with…regret?

She blinked against the ache building again behind her eyes. She didn’t let anyone see her tears. “Yes?”

“I would not have allowed them to tie you.”

“They did not tie me. They just lifted me up and threw me inside like I was a bundle of kindling to burn.”

He shut his eyes for a second, and when they opened, she would have backed away from the death in the fierceness of his face. “I will kill them.”

“They are dead,” she said, keeping her voice as light as she could.

He exhaled, still holding onto her arm. “And I meant my men. I would not have allowed them to tie ye back at the festival. I would not have thrown ye over my shoulder.”

It was her turn to tilt her head, studying him. “Yes, you would have. To save Rose.”

Her words made him inhale as if bolstering himself against them. The truth could be a heavy burden to lift. She planted hands on her hips. “Now, how do I build a shelter?”

…

Shaw watched Alana lay the blanket under the leaf-covered frame he’d helped her make with fallen limbs. Burns on her feet? Did they still pain her? Were any of the bastards who had thrown her into the inferno still alive? Questions filled his mind as he watched her stretch down on hands and knees to straighten the blanket. The panic in her face when she’d read his intent after his men walked in behind her at the Samhain festival had been the same any woman would show. Knowing now what she’d gone through before, the fact that she continued to bargain, continued to defend herself instead of just freezing in shock, showed just how much courage Alana Campbell possessed.

Despite her fussing this evening, Shaw had lifted the heavier limbs, laying them down and binding them with strips that they took off the dwindling length of her old smock. The shelter was propped against a rotted tree to cover them with leafy limbs and fallen leaves on three sides. On the fourth side, they had left an opening between the limbs for a hidden door.

Alana backed out of the lean-to, swiping her hands together after laying one of the woolen blankets on the ground. “There, small but snug for the night. And hidden so that anyone passing by should not spot us right away.” She looked at Rìgh. “Unless they see a large horse standing by it.”

“I will lead him away. I have trained him to lie on the ground when needed. He will not be spotted unless someone trips over him.”

“Good Lord. I cannot even get Robert to stay with someone else. If he sees me, he runs over, although he seems to like Mungo,” she said, her voice holding a wistful tone.

“I am sure he misses ye.”

She smiled slightly at him. “Mungo or Robert?”

Shaw wasn’t sure what to do. She was teasing him, even though he’d thrown her over his shoulder and carried her away. Could one truly forgive something like that, especially with her history?

She didn’t seem to need an answer and retrieved some mint she carried in her satchel. She walked off to finish cleaning her teeth and freshen up before settling down. He’d do the same when she returned. Shaw looked at the small shelter. Did she plan for him to share it with her or should he be making up a separate bed for himself? He could sleep next to Rìgh. The horse had kept him warm on nights before, camping in the field with nothing more than his kilt to drape over himself. But he didn’t like the idea of her being far from him alone.

He must have stood there, undecided for minutes, because Alana walked back around and froze. “Is something wrong?” she whispered, her face whipping left and then right as she peered into the darkness.

“Aye,” he said, but then shook his head. “Nay. Just tell me if the shelter is just for ye. I can sleep with Rìgh.”

In the darkness, she was a moonlit angel, her hair brushed to one side to lay over her shoulder. She still wore her traveling petticoat, another layer to keep her warm as the temperatures dipped.

“’Tis of no matter,” Shaw finally said. “I will bed down with my horse. Just promise to scream if anything disturbs ye in the night.” Using the limb as a crutch, he moved toward the stream to wash, grabbing the flask of whisky that he used to wash his teeth.

Her words came soft as he passed. “It would be warmer for me if we share the space. Body heat and only one spare blanket.”

His chest tightened with something he’d felt very seldom before. Hope.

Washing quickly, he made his way back to the lean-to where Alana already lay inside the tight quarters. He clicked to Rìgh, and the large warhorse followed him through the darkness fifty yards away, where Shaw tied him with a very long tether. “Sleep well, valiant friend,” he spoke close to the horse’s ear and made the signal, tugging gently on his halter to get him to lower his bulk down. It wasn’t natural for a healthy horse to sleep on the ground, but when hiding from bloody English soldiers, it was necessary.

Shaw approached the lean-to as quietly as the crutch allowed and lowered to crawl inside. Alana sat up, pulling the woolen blanket aside for him. With his wounded hip, he lay on his left side, facing her. “Thank ye for sharing,” he said.

“You make enough heat for two,” she said. “Are you comfortable?”

The ache in his hip and arse was nothing compared to the ache forming between his legs, as if his jack hadn’t heard that this arrangement was merely practical for keeping warm. “Aye,” he lied.

She stared at him in the darkness. Although she was in shadows, the moonlight from beyond the trees cast a bit of silver on the outside of the woven branches, giving them a little light as their eyes adjusted. He held himself on his elbow so that they were level and exhaled, running his hand through his hair. “Lass… I…” His words were slow with the heaviness of remorse, another tightening in his chest that was all too familiar.

When he didn’t go on, she leaned slightly forward. “Feel bad that you carried me off against my will? Wish that you legally owned and possessed Girnigoe? Will do anything to get it back? Including bringing Rose to St. Andrews alive and well? Which required you to abduct me? And no matter how thankful you are for me healing your arse, you would do it again? Is that what you want to say?”

The woman was courageous, strong, and highly clever. “I would likely have left off the last part about doing it again,” he said.

“But it is true, whether you left it off or not.”

He inhaled and exhaled fully. “Aye.” He lowered so that his head rested on his nearly empty satchel. “My whole life has centered around retaking the Sinclair castle…from my drunkard uncle and now from your clan.”

She stared at him, studying him. “You know something I like about you, Shaw Sinclair?”

“I have not a single guess.”

A small laugh came from her. “You are honest,” she said. “Which is something I value.”

Her words, given sincerely, formed rocks within his gut. Honest? He opened his mouth but then closed it again. He should tell her all before they reached Edinburgh, but something stopped him. What would Alana do if she knew the lengths that he had been willing to go to take his castle back?

The distance between them narrowed. Had she moved closer? Their combined heat inside the space created a comfortable nest out of the breeze. It seemed like days ago when he’d given her the gingerbread biscuit in the town square and shared a kiss under the mistletoe ball. Yet it was just that morning.

“Now my turn to tell a truth,” she said, her voice lower. She glanced down and rested her head on the rolled-up trousers she’d taken off. Her gaze turned to meet his. “This morning when I heard that musket fire…the thought of you being killed by the major…it made me feel sick.”

A slight floral scent came off Alana, and he remembered the soap that she had wrapped in her satchel. Bloody hell. His body was reacting to her nearness, her soft words, and her open stare. Blood rushed through him, and his fingers curled inward into fists to stop from reaching for her. She was beautiful and sweet, but she was a Campbell. And she would hate him.

“I am able to take care of myself,” he answered.

“But they had muskets and you had a sword. ’Tis not a fair contest.”

Shaw slid slightly closer, her siren’s voice seeming to lure him in. “Not much in this life is fair, lass. What ye have seen and lived through has surely taught ye that. We just make the best decisions we can in the moment and hope that fate falls in our favor.” Was he still talking about Major Dixon in the smithy? Of course not, but she wouldn’t know that.

He hovered over her, and she stared up into his eyes. “What decision are you about to make now?” she whispered, her hand raising up to touch his bristled cheek. Her fingers were cool and light, a caress so tentative that if he closed his eyes, he would think it a mere fancy of his imagination. Her fingertips slid to the side where a scar from his uncle’s tankard sat along his hairline. Her light touch was more powerful than a fist against him, flooding him with need and desire. He held still, firm discipline his only defense against her.

“Alana,” he said, and she moved closer, her lush curves pressing against him. There, alone in the darkness, surrounded by warmth and her sweet scent, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been shot through with holes; he felt no pain, no aches, only need.

Her cool fingertip moved down his cheek to slide over his bottom lip as she explored the contours of his face. “There is a best decision right here before you,” she said, and he detected the slightest tremble in her touch. “And the best answer is…yes.”