Sylvi woke to the steady, deep pain in her arm. The mix of herbs Kyle had made the night before had worn off and left her with a blaze of agony She shifted to ease some of the pressure from her arm and opened her eyes.
Ian was propped up beside her on his elbow, gazing down at her.
“Were you watching me?” she asked.
He grinned. “Do ye no’ like it?”
“Seems like it would be boring.” She tried to ignore the ache in her arm and let her eyes drift closed again into the caress of sleep.
“No’ when it’s ye I’m staring at.” He ran a hand over her cheek. “I love seeing all the beautiful contours of yer face, the way ye look almost soft when ye sleep.”
She wrinkled her nose at being called soft and squinted an eye open.
He playfully rolled his eyes. “I know ye’re no’ soft. Ye just look it.” He trailed a finger down her jaw. “Sweet.”
Sylvi opened her eyes and scoffed, regardless of the smile creeping over her lips. “I’m not sweet.”
“To me ye are.” He inclined his head. “And I heard ye last night.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“When ye said ye love me.” He grinned like a lad who’d gotten away with something when he ought to have been punished.
Heat scorched hot in her cheeks.
“First ye say ye love me, and now ye’re blushing.” Ian leaned over her and placed a gentle kiss to her forehead. “Ye know how to make a man feel appreciated, lass.”
She smirked. He knew very well that was not her intent. “Has anyone ever told you you’re arrogant?”
“All the time.” He settled his chin on his hand. “How does yer arm feel?”
Sylvi cast a dismayed glance at her arm laying immobile at her side. “In a lot of pain,” she admitted.
“I’ll be right back.” Ian carefully shifted off the bed and pulled his léine over his head.
Without a care to being nearly naked, he slipped from the room and returned moments later with a cup in hand. “Kyle was already awake and seeing to Percy. He figured ye’d need this and already had it at the ready.”
Ian helped her to a sitting position and passed her the acrid scented tincture. She gritted her teeth and swallowed it down, eager for the effects to warm through her body and calm the blaze of pain.
Ian settled onto the bed and gazed at her. “What were ye like as a girl?”
She passed the empty cup to him, and her light mood slipped behind a cloud.
“Before all of it,” he said. “Ye grew up too fast. I want to know the kind of girl ye were when ye were young, before the fighting and vengeance and death.”
Sylvi riffled through her thoughts the way one might through old clothes. What had she been like as a girl?
The question was so simple, but the answer so out of her grasp. Her immediate memories started when her family had been attacked. Surely there were more before then. She had flashes of her father periodically. His large hands and the impossibly fragile jewelry he created. But what else?
She closed her eyes, and sunlight filled her mind.
Einar laughed beside her on the floor, his baby squeals so alight with joy, they made everyone in their small, one-room home smile. His cheeks were rosy, and his blue eyes danced with delight. Her mother held him in her lap, with both other girls sitting at her feet, working on their sewing. Father had just come into the house with a wrapped parcel.
He held it up as if it were a prize. “We’ll have meat tonight.”
“Meat is too expensive.” Mor’s worried expression did not in any way diminish her fair beauty.
Sunlight played over her hair and made it sparkle like pale gold. She looked like a princess there by the fire in her simple dress. If she wore the gowns of the court ladies at market, she’d be the most beautiful one of them all.
“Do it again, Sylvi,” Alva said.
“I din’t know what ye’re talking about.” Sylvi buffed her nails with great exaggeration on her sleeve.
“Aye, ye do,” Inka said. “Please.”
Einar looked up at her, his eyes wide with ready anticipation.
Sylvi stuck out her tongue and curled it upward to touch the tip of her nose. Her brother’s face blossomed into a smile. She crossed her eyes. Laughter squealed out from his throat and brought a wave of it from the rest of her family.
“Ah, my Sylvi.” Her father strode past with his treasure and ruffled her hair. “Always so playful.”
“I was playful.” The warmth of the memory bathed her soul in an unexpected but beautiful light. “I had a brother, Einar. He had the most wonderful laugh, and I would do anything to make him squeal with joy.”
She looked down at Ian and stuck out her tongue, letting it curl up to touch the tip of her nose, then crossed her eyes.
Ian chuckled. When she relaxed her eyes, she found him staring up at her. “Ye know, ye’re actually pretty good at humor when ye do it.”
Sylvi smiled and rolled her eyes. “Thank you.”
Ian studied her. “I could see ye being playful.” He ran a hand down her cheek, and the lightness of the mood shifted to a more comfortable intimacy. “And kind, and loving.”
“I haven’t thought of that little girl in so long,” Sylvi confessed. “I never let myself remember any of those happy memories. Thinking of them was too painful.”
He nodded in understanding. “Reginald and his men are dead, and ye’re no longer a lass. Nor are ye alone.” He stroked her hair, and pleasure tingled over her scalp. The muscles of his arm bulged with the simple act. “Maybe ye should remember again.”
Sylvi stared down at the rumpled bedclothes. Perhaps he was right, remembering the joy of her family would help ease the weight of her grief.
“Ye can tell me the stories,” Ian said. “I like the idea of ye being a playful lass who sticks out her tongue and crosses her eyes to make her wee brother laugh.”
A knock came at the door, and they both startled.
“It’s Percy,” Kyle said. “Her fever still isna going down. I think it’s getting worse.”
Sylvi sat up quickly, and the ache in her arm exploded with enough ferocity to render her momentarily frozen.
“A moment,” Ian called. “We must dress.”
Sylvi tried to climb out of bed and was rewarded with a sharp spear of agony shooting up her arm. “We must hurry.”
The thud of Kyle’s boots on the wooden floor indicated his departure.
“Nay. There is time,” Ian said in a calm voice. “We still need to break our fast, ready the horses, and Liv needs to be told.”
Ian held out a hand to Sylvi to help her from the bed.
She looked at his offer of assistance and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I can still get up on my own.”
Ian shrugged, nonplussed. “It doesna mean I’ll ever stop being a good man. My mum would be appalled to think I’d no’ used the manners she forced into me.”
Panic beat in Sylvi’s mind despite Ian’s soothing resolve. She grabbed her trews with one arm and awkwardly thrust one leg into the limp fabric. It sagged into a crumpled heap at her ankle.
Ian raised a brow.
Sylvi sighed and tossed the trews at him. “Oh, fine, you can help.”
“I think I’ll dress first.” He pulled his léine on. “I like seeing ye naked.”
Irritation rankled Sylvi. Did he not see the severity of their situation? “Ian, Kindrochit is two days away. And that’s if we ride hard.”
She bit off the last word, refusing to continue with her following thought: that with her arm in such bad condition, she could not ride hard. No matter what it took, she would see Percy safe. Even if it meant two days of jostling on the horse. Kyle’s tincture would be a huge help, but it would not be without pain.
Ian lay on the floor to buckle his plaid. “Aye, but Dunstaffnage is only a few hours.”
He’d said it with such nonchalance, but she knew the weight of such a decision.
“You haven’t been home in over a year,” she said.
He adjusted several pleats before popping upright and taking her léine from the back of the chair. “Aye, and now it’s time I finally go home.”
•••
It was hard not to regret the decision to go home. Ian rode at Sylvi’s side, having lost the argument to try to keep her on the same horse as him. In the end, he knew it would be easier on the horses to have only one rider for their journey to Dunstaffnage.
Liv rode ahead of them in a cart they’d procured. Fianna could easily sit at her side, and Kyle and Percy could ride in relative comfort in the back. The cart had been a risk. If danger found them, their party would not fare well in their attempt to escape or defend themselves.
But it was not danger on the road that concerned Ian. It was what awaited him at home. His stomach knotted with trepidation. There was a father who would no doubt comment on his inability to stay and face responsibility, and a home without the camaraderie of his best friend or the warm light of his mother.
It had been easy to push aside the idea of her death while he was not home. Going back to Dunstaffnage with her not being there would be like walking into a castle without a great hall.
The heart of their home had stopped beating.
“You never told me what happened,” Sylvi said from where she rode beside him. Her father’s bracelet still twinkled where it lay on her wrist.
“Hmmm?”
She turned slightly to regard him and kept her injured arm cradled in her lap. “Why you left home.”
Ian drew in a deep breath to ward off the inevitable wincing of his heart. “Aye, I suppose it is time to share this story with ye.”
Sylvi gazed forward, but he knew she listened.
“I had a friend when I was a lad,” he said. “We were so close, he was more a brother to me than Kyle at times.”
The two of them had been inseparable most of their lives, sharing the same thoughts and ideals.
Ian sighed at the thought and let the memory press heavy on his shoulders. “Simon’s da had no’ been paying his taxes. But it was more than that. He’d been offering to bring his neighbors’ coin to my da for them. But then he kept it.”
Sylvi cast a hard look at him but said nothing.
“My da found out,” Ian continued, “and meant to punish Simon’s da by hanging him. As an example to others.”
“You can’t let something like that go unpunished,” Sylvi said. “Or others will see you as weak and take advantage.”
“I know that.” Ian tried to keep the edge from his voice. “But this was Simon. The boy I’d grown up with. Our friendship survived many obstacles, and even as our paths split, with him being a farmer and me being laird someday, it remained intact. I tried to stop the hanging,” he said. “But my da said exactly what ye did. He had a responsibility as a laird, and friendship couldn’t interfere with that. It was then I decided I dinna want to be a laird. I tried to tell him, but he wouldna have it.”
“And Simon’s father died,” Sylvi surmised.
“No’ just Simon’s da. Simon took his own life after as well.” Ian steeled himself against the memory. “He hung himself, dying the same as his da.” Though a year had passed, his stomach still knotted. “I tried. But I could have tried harder. I could have saved them both if I had just tried harder.”
“I’m sorry, Ian.” Sylvi’s brow furrowed with her earnestness.
A soft cry from Percy pulled their attention to the cart, where Kyle bent over her with anxious determination, the way he’d done with the small forest animals he saved when he was a lad.
Though no one had said it aloud, Percy did not look well. The stitches beneath the linen on her face were red and glossy with swollen anger. The fever had so taken her, she cried out to people no one else knew, the sounds pitiful and heart pulling.
Their progress was slow, mindful of the injuries they’d all sustained.
For her part, Sylvi had made no comment, even when she swung up on the horse and jostled her bad arm.
Percy whimpered from the cart again. “No.” Her voice was a whisper of a gasp, small and scared. “Please don’t.”
Sylvi tensed beside Ian.
He edged closer to her. “She’ll be better when we get to Dunstaffnage.”
“All her things are at Kindrochit.”
Percy sobbed and was immediately quieted under Kyle’s indiscernible soothing.
“Kyle has many herbs and healing remedies at Dunstaffnage,” Ian said. The image of Kyle’s small room flashed in Ian’s mind, the wall of shelves with various small bottles, all shadowed with herbs and powders and liquids of varying gray, green, brown, and white.
To even think of it made it seem like Ian had never left home, as if he were remembering a life lived yesterday and not a year ago. Going home became suddenly very real, and he had the urge to pull on his horse’s reins and reverse their progress.
“He is skilled at caring for others,” Ian said, fixing his gaze on the open road. “He willna let anything happen to her.”
Ian did not state that Percy would doubtless not survive the trip to Kindrochit. It would be too far for her to travel in such a condition.
The gray-black tip of a castle showed through the trees. Ian pulled in a deep breath. They were near Dunstaffnage.
Sylvi brought her horse closer to the cart, and Ian followed suit.
“We’re almost there.” Kyle glanced up at Ian. “Da isna upset with ye like ye probably think he is. I believe ye’ll find he’ll be glad to see ye.”
Kyle, always trying to make everything right.
Ian smirked. “Ach, aye. Glad to have his heir back after realizing ye’d no’ be up for the task of being laird?”
Kyle smiled. “Aye.”
The tip of the castle dipped behind several trees and then came into view in flashes through the trees beyond. Sea water tinged the air with the familiar salt and pine scent of home. They were so close. Too close.
Damn it, Ian did not want to do this.
Kyle glanced down at Percy. “Things are no’ the same since Mum’s death.”
Ian nodded vigorously in an attempt to rush his brother’s unwanted speech along. Ian did not wish to speak of any of this any more than he wanted to face it.
Kyle fell wonderfully silent.
Sylvi gave Ian a worried look. “I know you’re dreading this.”
“Is it so apparent?” he asked wryly.
“Well, you are gripping your reins rather tight.”
Ian regarded his white knuckles and relaxed his hold.
Sylvi smiled gently in understanding, and he was suddenly glad she understood him so well, that he didn’t have to explain what he could hardly bring himself to even acknowledge.
The trees cleared away and opened a wide path to the massive boat-like appearance of Dunstaffnage. As a lad, Ian had often wondered if Noah’s ark had looked similar. A wide hull with a single entrance and everything inside sealed off from the rest of the world.
But the door was not sealed today. The drawbridge was lowered to allow the clan access to their laird. And many tenants were there, all in swaths of plaid with their heads bare against the early spring air.
They nodded their greeting respectfully to Ian and the rest of the party, curiosity and concern on their faces as the cart passed.
Even though Ian knew Simon wasn’t there, couldn’t possibly be there, he found his gaze skimming the sea of faces for his childhood friend. Simon’s absence opened the gates to the hurt he’d dammed up, his failure to help, and the crushing weight of guilt.
Damn it, he did not want to be here.
“There was nothing you could do,” Sylvi said under her breath.
Her words drew him from scanning the crowd for his dead friend. Ian looked once more on Dunstaffnage Castle and the man striding toward them. His plaid was crisp, the colors more vivid than those around him. A band of gold secured the excess of his plaid over his shoulder, and he walked with a sense of authority and purpose.
Donald Campbell, Laird of the Campbell clan and Ian’s father, the very man Ian had been dreading.