Chapter Nine

Jeannie lifted her head as her ear caught the echo of a sound. She could not be sure just what she had heard—it seemed quite distant—but noises tended to funnel up the glen from afar.

Shouting? The clash of weapons? Absurd. Since Culloden, Highland men were not even legally allowed to own weapons.

She stood among the rows of plants and attempted to brush the mud from her knees before calling to Aggie. “Did you hear something?”

Aggie appeared from around back of the cottage where she had been spreading tea towels over the prickle bushes to dry. She shook her head.

Jeannie narrowed her eyes and peered down the glen. The sun, well on its way to set, showed her only a glare of brightness. After a moment, she bent her back and returned to work.

Not until many minutes later did Aggie return and cry, “Mistress, someone’s coming!”

Jeannie abandoned her task and straightened again. Sure enough, two horses approached, led by a man on foot. The first horse, a big animal, had a coat that shone red-brown in the dying sun, as did the head of the man.

Jeannie swore softly, speaking a word no decent woman should employ, and started forward decisively. Oh, no—they were not having all that again.

She met Finnan MacAllister as he breached the rise that led to the cottage door. “You can just turn about and go, Laird MacAllister. I have no time this day for your tales and blandishments.”

He kept coming. She saw his expression then, stark and grim, and the blood spattered on the hand that gripped the reins.

“Peace, woman. I am no’ here for you.” He gestured to the back of the horse he led where Jeannie saw what looked like a bundle. No, it was a man.

She gasped. “What has happened?” What had he brought to her door?

“I need a place to lay him down. I fear he is dying.” Finnan stopped at Jeannie’s side and turned to the bundle, which she now saw possessed a brown head and a young man’s face. He already looked dead.

Instinct made her block the way. Trouble, that was what he brought, and Jeannie had already experienced enough of that in her life. Yet he slid the lad down from the back of the horse, which stood like a rock, and then lifted him in his arms like a child.

His tawny eyes, grave and intent, met Jeannie’s. “I fear he is dying,” he repeated. “I will never get him all the way back to Dun Mhor.”

Jeannie made a swift decision. “Come.” She turned and led the way into the cottage, catching a glimpse of Aggie’s horrified face in passing. The cottage possessed but the two ground floor rooms, one of which was Jeannie’s bedroom, and the loft. She knew MacAllister would never make it up the ladder with his burden, so she led him straight into her room and indicated the bed.

A small, bare place this was, with only the bed, a single chest below the window, and the few meager possessions Jeannie had been able to bring from Dumfries.

Finnan eased the young man down on Jeannie’s bed as tenderly as he might a child, and she got her first good look at the lad.

“Sweet heavens!”

Finnan MacAllister had not lied; the lad, sore hurt and awash with blood, looked past saving.

“What befell him?” A hunting accident? But these looked like no wounds taken in the hunt. The lad’s clothing had been rent as with a sharp blade, and the blood came hot and fast.

Finnan shook his head. “An attack in the copse not far north of here. Danny is no warrior, and he was unarmed.” Hard anger colored his voice, far too well disciplined at the moment to qualify as rage.

Jeannie turned to Aggie who, clearly aghast, hovered in the bedroom doorway. “Bring water and what bandaging you can find. Use a sheet if you have to.” Jeannie possessed very few linens, but needs must.

She glanced at Finnan. “Who would do such a thing?”

“Avrie’s men.”

That made her stare at him harder. “Surely not. There is no one at Avrie House save the Dowager.” Unless the rumors Aggie had brought home were true.

He flicked at her a glance sharp as a sword. “Her grandsons have returned.”

Jeannie contemplated it even as she watched Finnan open the lad’s rent tunic. His hands, already stained red, moved with the competence of one skilled in tending wounds.

“Have you been trained to treat injuries?”

“Nay, but a man who makes his way with the sword learns a few things about stanching wounds. That scar on Geordie’s belly? ’Twas I sewed that up on a cold winter’s day, with coarse twine.”

Jeannie had never seen Geordie’s belly, but it seemed no fit time to say so. The red cloth came away and the lad’s chest into view. The stroke, high toward his left shoulder, had surely just missed his heart.

“Could be worse,” Finnan grunted, clearly agreeing with Jeannie’s assessment. “Where is your maid with those cloths?”

Jeannie, half dizzy from the metallic smell of blood, went to the door, where she was in time to take a basin from Aggie before its contents spilled. She bore it back to the bed and set it on the floor.

“Here, mistress.” Aggie tiptoed in with cloths which Jeannie recognized as portions of her very best sheet. She sighed and folded a pad even as Aggie stood staring down at the lad—Danny, Finnan had called him—like a woman in a dream. “Is he dead?”

As if in response to her voice, the lad opened his eyes, wide and gray-blue, full of a sweetness that might belong to a child.

“What happened, Master Finnan?”

“You ha’ been struck, lad.” Finnan’s tone, harsh and rough, belied the great tenderness with which he worked at the wound at Danny’s shoulder. He bathed away the blood and revealed a ragged rent, the sight of which turned Jeannie’s stomach queasy. Surely human flesh had never been meant to suffer such abuse.

The water in the basin immediately turned pink. Without looking at Jeannie, Finnan reached for another pad of cloth, which she folded as quickly as possible and handed to him.

“He has but one arm.” Aggie whispered the words as if unaware she spoke.

“Hush,” Jeannie told her even as Danny’s gaze found Aggie’s face. “Go and heat more water, quick as you can.”

Aggie went, and Danny’s eyes sank shut again. For a terrible moment Jeannie thought they had lost him, but his shallow pained breaths still came, far too fast.

She asked, “Did the stroke pass all the way through?”

“Nay, but ’tis a fearsome slash.” Finnan’s hands still moved in calm defiance of his anger. “Valiant men, to face a maimed boy.”

Danny clearly possessed years enough to qualify as a young man, but Jeannie understood Finnan’s sentiment and could feel the protectiveness streaming from him.

The blood had begun to well up from the folded pad of cloth. Finnan turned his head, and his eyes, tawny red-brown and with a flame of anger deep inside, met Jeannie’s.

“I will need to stitch him up. Will you bring me needle and thread?”

“Yes.” Jeannie stepped to the door beyond which Aggie danced, hands twisted in her apron, and requested the items. When Aggie brought the sewing kit, Jeannie picked out a needle and a length of thread with trembling hands and carried them back to the bed.

Another glance from Finnan. “Can you thread it?”

Jeannie sincerely doubted it; her hands shook like leaves in a cold wind. But she nodded and turned to the window, seeking both calm and light.

Behind her, she heard Finnan murmuring to Danny, soft words of comfort and reassurance. “’Twill be all right, lad. We have been in far worse places, surely you remember, and survived just as you will now. You hold strong, and I shall see you safe.”

“Aye.” The word was barely a breath from Danny’s laboring lungs. Jeannie could hear the fear, though, as must Finnan, for he went on, “Trust me, lad. Have I ever let you down?”

He turned to Jeannie. “Where’s that thread?”

She thrust the needle, now with a tail, into his reddened, slimy hand.

Tersely, he told her, “You will have to hold him. I need him still.”

Without question, Jeannie moved to the other side of the bed. She placed one hand on the lad’s chest, the other on his upper arm, and held tight.

She caught her breath, as did Danny, when the needle bit torn flesh.

Finnan began to speak, like a father soothing his son. “Do you remember that time the three of us—you, me, and Geordie—were caught in that high pass above Glen Lyon by that band of king’s men? How many swords were against us then?”

“Ten.”

“Ten, and no mistake, but we made short work of them. Would have taken our weapons from us, would they not? But we showed them right and proper. Easy odds.”

Jeannie turned her head away, no longer able to watch the needle plunge through bloodied flesh.

“And,” Finnan went on softly, “that time north of Callander, in that ale house.”

To Jeannie’s surprise, Danny gave a laugh that shook his chest.

“Aye.” Finnan supplied words for him. “They did not expect a one-armed lad to have a dirk nestled in his boot. You served them right well that day.”

“Aye,” Danny echoed softly.

“So what is a wee bit of a fight here in our own glen? We fight on our land, now. No success to them!”

No response. Jeannie stole a look to see the lad appeared to have fallen unconscious.

“At last,” Finnan breathed. “Lass, hold him still.”

She was certainly no lass, but as this scarcely seemed time to argue it, she obeyed and watched while he tied off the thread. The angry blood lessened to mere seepage amid the stitches.

“Will that hold?” she asked.

For answer, he held out his arms, the tattoos on which were liberally interspersed with white scars. “It always has. More water.”

Jeannie released the patient even as Finnan turned to the wounded stump. Her stomach flipped over. “Aggie?”

“Here. Give me the basin.” Steadier now, Aggie took the reddened bowl and languished a glance on Danny in the doing.

Jeannie experienced a flash of disquiet. She had supposed Aggie interested in the groom at Avrie House. This lad, with his redoubtable master, would not make a suitable substitute.

She turned her gaze back to Finnan. He appeared calmer now, but the anger still simmered in his eyes.

She blew out a breath. “Will he survive?”

“Oh, aye, no thanks to those who attacked us.”

“Avrie’s men.” She had to ascertain it.

“Aye, so.” He shot her a searching look. “You must ha’ heard enough about the situation to know those of Avrie blood do not want me here. But this glen is mine. And, Mistress MacWherter, I always protect what belongs to me.”