Chapter Twenty-Five

Abby didn’t remember mentioning her mother in response to Daniel’s whispers about queens and their beds. She remembered only falling asleep in his arms, drawn close to the languid beat within his chest.

She woke from her dreams to find him beside her, asleep in their small haystack. Careful not to wake him with the fierce ache of her heart, she let her gaze rove over his features, taking him in like a starving waif.

Soon, their nightly talks would end, along with his kisses. Why did it have to be?

She sighed, waking him to her gaze.

He smiled, taking her in like a glorious sunrise.

“You slept well,” he said, after a moment when he seemed to struggle to breathe.

“I feel better,” she told him, failing to keep her worshipful grin off him, especially when he leaned up and kissed every part of her face, including her mouth.

“I’m pleased to hear that.”

She watched him rise up over her, and proving once again his supreme control, he left her arms and stood.

“Come.” He extended his hand to her, then closed his fingers around hers when she accepted his chivalrous offering. “Lying around here will get us nothing.”

She agreed, but she could have done without his haste to be away from her. They folded their blankets in silence and left the stable without looking back. Mayhap it was the stable and not her that he hurried away from. If it was, it didn’t make her feel any better. She’d hoped sleeping with animals had humbled him a wee bit.

They stepped outside together. The sun had barely come up, but it was light enough for Abby to note the color returning to Daniel’s face as he drew in a deep breath. He turned to her and smiled, then took her hand and fit it into the crook of his arm. She didn’t refuse him, of course, but walked at his side back to the inn.

When they stepped inside, there were only a few patrons littering the seats and no men standing but Daniel and one other.

“How was yer night?” The innkeeper grinned when they reached him.

Daniel glared at him.

“ ’Twas lovely,” Abby answered, before her knight swiped off the proprietor’s head.

But when she tossed him a warning look, she saw that Daniel had already forgotten about him and was looking for a suitable table.

“Two of everything you have warming in your kitchen,” he ordered, then tugged her away.

He led her to a table in the right corner, away from most of the sleeping bodies, and as she looked around, she realized what Daniel’s hurry had been. When he offered her a chair, she let her fingers graze over his.

“I see the wisdom now in yer decision to leap from yer blanket,” she said as he took the seat opposite her. “By arriving before anyone else is awake ye’re guaranteed getting the freshest portions of what the inn is serving.”

He smiled. “You deserve a hot meal at a table, like a lady.” He moved back in his chair when a serving girl swept her body over the table to clean it. “Did you think my haste meant something else?”

Abby blinked out of the spell he cast over her by being so considerate of her needs. He certainly was charming. “Something else? Nae. Of course not. I just meant…” She couldn’t tell him her fears without sounding like a child. She wouldn’t. “I only meant that—”

He had mercy and saved her from any further stammering. “A fresh, hot meal will do much for you.”

“I believe ’twill,” she told him softly. “Ye’re verra’ gallant, sir.”

Firelight from the hearth reflected like emerald facets in his eyes when he leaned forward in his chair and said in a low voice, “Before you form such an opinion of me, I must be honest and tell you that it was extremely difficult to leave the warmth of your body.”

She blushed at the passionate thoughts he provoked. She wanted to go back to the hay and to hell with breakfast.

“My hope is that your breakfast pleases you.”

The spell he cast was a powerful one. She didn’t want to give him up. She wasn’t sure if she could. “Every meal I partake of with ye pleases me.”

The playful intimacy of his smile coaxed a flip from her heart. “Who taught you how to charm a man, even one who is supposed to be your enemy, so artfully?”

“Who says I ever bothered charming anyone before I met my first knight?” she replied.

“I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse to be so favored,” he told her while the servers set their bowls down before them. “You make it difficult to deny you.”

Abby blinked, looking into his eyes. “And ye tempt me to win ye.”

His grin widened, along with his glorious eyes. “What would you do with me after you won me?”

She shrugged and felt heat smudge her milky complexion. Did he expect her to be so bold as to tell him? Butterflies fluttered in her belly, making her want to laugh. She wanted to tell him that she loved him beyond endurance and she wanted to return to their haystack, but what if he reminded her that they had no future together?

“We should be heading out before the crowd awakens,” he said, possibly reading the emotion in her eyes and ending it before it erupted into speech.

She nodded and swallowed back a rush of disappointment. She couldn’t win him. Abby wondered if any woman could.

But his detachment made sense to her. Letting himself care for her was a betrayal to everything he stood for, fought for. He wisely held back. He also believed his affection for Abby would put her in danger from this Charlotte lass. He rejected her to keep her safe. It was a noble cause. One that every legend of honor would applaud. Normally, she would agree and applaud along with them in her books and in her dreams. But this was real. Daniel was real and she wanted to spend all her days with him.

He’d promised not to harm any of her kin, no matter what. He’d given his word. Did she trust it? Could she ever bring him to Camlochlin? How she would break the news to her father, her grandfather? Her mother? She wanted to hold Daniel in her bed and sit at his side while she made decisions for her clan. She wanted to tell him about her uncle James Francis Stuart, the king, and turn him to the Jacobites’ side. How wonderful would it be to love him without secrets?

But he would never leave his service, and she couldn’t leave hers. So, again, he was wise to rebuke her. Their future was over before it began.

They shared breakfast over light talk and scant smiles. Daniel had ordered too much food, but it was hot and fresh and it tasted quite decent. They ate what they could and would take the rest with them.

She watched the way sunlight finally streamed through the windows and bathed him in flames when he stood up. For an indulgent moment she basked in his profile, in the cut of his jaw—straight, strong, determined—in his classically carved nose, and in the almond flare of his eyes. Truly, his babes would be beautiful. She wondered what it would feel like to be heavy with his child.

“Come then.”

She blushed, coming out of the trance she’d fallen into, and looked at his hand, offering her aid from her seat. She accepted and walked with him while they returned to the innkeeper and paid him what was due.

They were about to leave and travel onward toward part of her destiny. She was thankful that Daniel was thoughtful of her safety and immune to her flirtations. A little hurt, as well. But thankful.

A hefty man bumped his shoulder into Daniel’s and turned to him. “Pardon me.”

Daniel let go of her hand, alarming her, as his eyes widened and he turned both hands to his side, where the hilt of a dagger protruded from his flesh. At the same time, the larger man stepped around him and grabbed Abby by the waist.

His muddy eyes dipped to her breasts and his hands followed. “I’ve been watchin’ ye while ye ate. I’m going to—”

He grunted and stared at her as he slipped to the floor, almost taking her with him. His eyes went blank, distant, and finally cold. Daniel stood behind him. The knife the assailant had plunged into him was now jammed and twisted in its original owner’s back while he lay twitching on the floor.

Abby ignored the fallen attacker and rushed to Daniel’s side as he clutched the table nearest him and reached for his bloody wound. “Daniel! Daniel!” she cried, catching him before he folded to the floor. She examined him with shaking fingers and a racing heart. All the blood frightened her because it was his. What if he died? Not being with him was one thing, knowing he no longer breathed on the earth was different. Thankfully, the stranger had stabbed him in the fleshy part of his side, a few inches from his lung. Daniel would live. She kissed his forehead, then held her mouth to him. “I’ll fix ye up, my lord. I’m quite good with a needle.”

“Somebody get this flea-bitten pile of rat shyt out of my inn!” The innkeeper kicked the dying man and then bent to Daniel. “No one gets stabbed from behind at my inn without a free night’s accommodations. Ye’ll get two of my finest rooms, meals, and—”

Abby stopped him with a hand on his arm, a bit short of breath. “One room will be enough, kind sir.” She had to keep her wits about her while the man she loved bled in her arms. She did. “I’ll also need some water and clean rags. Some garlic will do, and cinnamon, mayhap clove. I need a number of mints: thyme, sage, and basil.” She patted his beefy shoulder when he offered her a lost look. “Just bring me what you have.”

“I’m fine,” Daniel assured her.

She ignored him and so did the innkeeper when he nodded and sent two of his daughters to the task, then helped her and Daniel up the stairs and into a spacious room.

Abby looked around while another young lass, mayhap a few years younger than herself, scooted around her and hurried into the chamber first. Abby guessed she was the innkeeper’s daughter, but didn’t ask while the girl prepared the bed to receive Daniel. The room was brightly lit with wall sconces and candles. A huge hearth on the eastern wall promised even more light and heat when its embers were stoked. Which the lass rushed to do next.

Two small windows were unshuttered, allowing streams of light to spill over a cushioned chair and the bed.

She and the innkeeper set him in the bed, despite his objections. She began unbuttoning his shirt, then saw the futility of it in her trembling, useless fingers. She pushed him down on the bed and tore the rest of the woolen obstruction away and set about examining the gaping wound at a closer angle.

“Abigail.”

“Ye had to rip his blade from yer flesh?” she asked him, glancing up briefly from her exam. “If ye had left his dagger where it landed, I could have removed it more neatly.”

She caught the slant of his mouth before he spoke and she lowered her gaze again.

“I needed a weapon and didn’t want to lose one of my finer blades in his thick flesh and then have to ask you to remove it for me. Had I known that you had no aversion to yanking blades out of men’s bodies, I would have made what you’re about to do for me much easier. As it is, I’m in your debt.”

Lord help her, but he mesmerized her. His breath on her head and the raw cadence of his voice stilled her heart and drew her eyes to his. In the harsh sunlight, his skin was pale beneath his dust of auburn facial hair. His eyes were like pools of shallow water dappled in light and shadows. They opened to his soul and sought out hers at the same time in a trade-off of emotions. She loved him, and everything about him, including the way he looked. Was there any returning from this? God help her.

“I’m not in jeopardy, Abby, and that was my last clean shirt.”

“I know ye’re not in jeopardy,” she told him, a willing captive of his slow, seductive smile. “But I want to help ye avoid infection. Would ye deny yerself a woman’s touch?”

“I would,” he told her. “But I can deny you nothing.” He gave her leave to do whatever she needed to do. He drank her bitter teas without quarrel, though she knew he despised her thinking he needed any kind of pain reducer. He remained silent and stoic most of the time while she tended to him, but when she moved him to clean inside the gash, he cursed under his breath.

She kept her touches light and as tender as she could while she stitched him up, then wrapped him in bandages. She did her best not to let seeing his honed, warrior’s body splattered in scars or touching them affect her. She soon realized, though, that the short, shallow breaths filling the room were hers and not his. She also noted that the innkeeper and his brood had gone away sometime during her ministrations, leaving her alone with her knight.

She rinsed his blood from her hands in a basin of fresh water.

“You’ve saved me,” Daniel said, sitting up and testing his mobility by turning left and then right. “I owe you my life.”

She laughed, drying her hands. “Infection can kill ye.”

“Which is why I’m so grateful that you were here to save me from it.”

She knew he was teasing her but she didn’t care. “ ’Tis the least I can do,” she told him, “after all ye’ve done fer me.”

“What,” he asked, “have I done but only my duty?”

His duty. She was his duty. She tried not to feel anything and she failed. She felt like smashing him over the head with another vase and then running to find a quiet place to cry her eyes out.

“Lay back, Daniel.” She pushed him down, perhaps a bit harder than needed. “I mixed an herb in yer tea to help ye sleep and ye’re already halfway there. Ye need to rest and not disturb the wound.”

He tried to fight it but finally fell back on the bed, asleep. She hoped, as she walked out the door, that she hadn’t given him too much. Good thing the herb wasn’t too potent. Even better that he couldn’t speak to dash her already frail fancies to pieces.

She was his duty.