Taming the Scotsman (20 page)

She laughed triumphantly. “The horse was the easy part. You did the hardest part, what with pulling the ring from the wall. Are you all right?”

“A bit sore, but damned glad you kept your wits about you.” He kissed her quickly and soundly on the lips.

She smiled at his praise. “Were you expecting me to lose my wits, my lord?”

“Nay. I know you better than that.”

She was warmed by his words and wanted desperately to kiss him for it. And that she would as soon as they stopped.

She would kiss the poor man blind for everything.

Ewan led them through the woods, farther away from the MacKaids.

“Shouldn’t we head back toward town?” she asked.

He shook his head. “They’ll be expecting us to do that. No doubt it’s where they pulled back, too, and they’re waiting for us. I say we go farther north, then west before he head back toward Lochlan’s.”

It amazed her how much she trusted him.

How much she loved him.

He slowed the horse so that he could untie the
belt from her hands and free her. Nora tried to return the favor, but his ropes were so tight that she couldn’t.

She gingerly touched the red welts on his wrists, some of which had already started bleeding. “It must hurt dreadfully.”

“I’ll live until we find some way to cut it off.”

“Do you not have the dagger in your boot?”

“Nay, I loaned it to Lysander earlier this morning and forget to get it back.”

She sighed. “’Tis a pity,” but even as she spoke those words, she frowned.

Ewan looked somewhat pale and he was perspiring quite a bit as if he’d been running for a while.

Attributing it to his exertion at the wall and their close escape, she leaned back against him and let him lead them to safety.

They didn’t stop until nightfall.

Ewan removed his arms from around her and helped her down as best he could.

It wasn’t until he slid from the back of the horse that she saw the bright red stain on his clothes. It looked like blood. A
lot
of blood.

Nora’s heart stopped at the sight. Surely he wasn’t injured. If he were, he would have mentioned it.

Wouldn’t he?

And yet there was a pinched paleness to his handsome features. He was still perspiring, and
she noticed the uneasy way he moved. There was no sign of the lethal grace she was used to seeing from her giant.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the stain.

“Nothing.” He pulled the horse to a cleared area and secured it so that it could graze.

Nora frowned at his actions, and when she looked down to see that the side and the back of her own dress was also coated in red, her heart pounded even more.

“You’re hurt?” She rushed to him.

He wiped the sweat from his face with his arm and shook his head as if to clear it. “Graham stabbed me while we were fighting. The blade glanced off my rib.”

She blinked in disbelief of his blase tone. How could he be so nonchalant about a stab wound?

“Ewan MacAllister, sit!”

He arched a brow at her as if he couldn’t believe her commanding tone.

“I can’t believe you,” she muttered. “You play helpless when you have a minor fall out of a tree, but let you have a serious wound and you get all noble on me. ‘Oh, it doesn’t hurt. I’ll be all right.’ How dare you! Now you sit down and let me take a look at you.”

He growled at her, then did as she said. “I’m not an infant, Nora, and I’ve no need to be coddled like one. I’ve suffered much worse wounds than this and I’m still here.”

She didn’t even deign to respond to that, because if she did, his ears would be ringing with her insults until the world ended.

Nora took a deep breath and fought the urge to loose her tongue on him.

How could he do this?

The wound had to be excruciating.

She forced him to lie down so that she could lift his shirt up to see the injury. She felt the color drain from her cheeks as she saw it.

Graham had laid open a long gash. The evil-looking wound was still oozing blood.

“Oh, Ewan,” she breathed. “I can’t believe you didn’t bleed to death. Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

He reached up with his bound hands to touch her cheek with his fingers. The intensity of his crystal blue gaze made her hot and shivery all at once.

“We couldn’t stop, Nora. Had I told you I was wounded, you would have made me stop so that you could tend it, and I didn’t want to see you retaken.”

Her love for him tripled with those words. For her, he had suffered this for untold leagues without a single comment or complaint.

She took his hands into hers and kissed his fingers. “Thank you. Now lie still and let me see to you.”

He nodded and pulled his hands away.

Ewan steadied his breathing as he lay there,
staring at the woman who had come to mean so much to him.

For her, he would walk through the very fires of hell.

She laid her hand against his cheek and chastised him with her worried gaze. “You’ve a fever started.”

“I know.” He could feel it. He was already shivery, but then he was often shivery whenever Nora touched him.

She tore her chemise and used it to make a bandage. “Hold this while I fetch some water.”

He did as she bade him.

She rushed over to the stream near the horse and after a few minutes, returned with another part of her chemise that she had torn off.

She pressed the cool fabric to his wound.

Ewan breathed deeply as the cold water stung and the material scraped against the ragged edges of his injury. Aye, but it hurt. He wanted nothing more than to curl up and sleep for a bit, but he didn’t dare.

The MacKaids might be headed back to the village or they might be trailing them still.

It was a gamble he didn’t mention to Nora. He wanted her to have the illusion they were safe. The truth would only worry her unnecessarily when there was nothing she could really do.

He did need a little time to rest before they went any farther.

“I wish I had something to stitch this with,” she
mumbled. “But we’ll have to make do with just bandaging it.”

“Bandaging it with what?”

She lifted her skirt high, gifting him with a luscious view of her legs, and ripped more of her chemise. A large portion of it.

“You keep doing that, lass, and you’ll be naked by the time we get back to the others.” He smiled wolfishly at the thought. “Not that I’d mind that, of course, but I’m thinking you might be embarrassed.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Just like a man. You’re lying there half dead and all you can think of is me taking off my clothes.”

“Half dead, not
all
dead.”

She shook her head at him as she bandaged his ribs. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Nay, my lady, I am
en
-courage-able.”

Her cheeks pinkened. “That’s not a word, my lord.”

Ewan had to admit he loved teasing this woman. “Sure it is. It’s a perfectly good word.”

She leaned over him and kissed him lightly on the lips.

Ewan closed his eyes and inhaled the scent of her as he savored the softness of her mouth on his.

Aye, the lady was the world to him.

He drew a ragged breath as she pulled back from him. “You rest here while I—”

“Nay!” he roared, sitting up in spite of the pain that lacerated him. “It’s not safe.”

She gave him a peeved glare. “I have needs to tend to, Ewan, and if you don’t let me do so privately, I’ll not be kind to you in the future. I’ll only be right through yon trees and I won’t be gone long.”

Ewan looked at the trees where she indicated, trying to see if there was anything lurking there to grab her. He didn’t want to let her out of his sight, but he could understand her need for privacy. “Very well. But you talk the entire time so that I know you’re safe.”

She laughed at that. “I think this may very well be the only time in my life anyone has ever
invited
me to talk.”

He kissed her gently. “I cherish your tongue, my lady,” he said, then he tasted said tongue with his own. He moaned at the feel of her.

“Aye,” he said, pulling back. “I find myself quite taken with it.”

She gave him a delighted grin. “So you’ve changed your mind about having it cut out?”

He laughed at her reminder of what he’d said to her the day they met. “Aye, lass. I’ve become quite attached to it. Now be off before it gets any darker.”

She bit her lip, then did as he said. As she left him, she began chattering about her favorite ballad.

“You know,” she said, her voice drifting back from the forest. “I miss my lute. ’Tis a pity I didn’t have it when Graham showed up. I could have used it to bash him.”

Ewan smiled at her as she continued on.

Heaven above, how he loved to hear her prattle.

“By the way, Ewan, I am very sorry for all this.”

Ewan considered everything that had happened to them since he had awakened to find her standing over his bed.

“Don’t be,” he said loudly as he sat back down to rest. “All in all, it’s been rather interesting, hasn’t it? Besides, you said you were always up for an adventure.”

“True,” she said from the other side of the trees. “But I never meant for this to happen.”

“I’m sure your father didn’t, either.”

“My father?”

“Aye, Catarina told me that he paid them to put us together.”

Total silence rang for several heartbeats.

“Nora?” he asked worriedly. “Are you still there?”

She ignored his question. “Just what do you mean, my father paid them?”

Ewan explained it to her between his attempts to loosen the ropes on his hands with his teeth.

“So my father
wanted
me to marry you?” she asked as she rejoined him.

He looked up to see her less-than-pleased visage. “Apparently so.”

She appeared flabbergasted as she stood there with her hands on her hips. “Oh, I am a fool.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I should have known something was up. My
father telling me that I had no choice but to marry Ryan, then my maid telling me that the only hope I had would be to get to England. ‘You’ll be needing an escort, my lady,’ Agnes had said. ‘And I’m thinking there be no better man than Ewan MacAllister. He’ll see you to England fast enough and you won’t have to worry about him. All the MacAllisters are good men…’”

She paused in her tirade to curl her lips. “Oh, they are evil. I should have known when Agnes brought the guard as escort. Why didn’t I see it?”

“Because you were scared.”

Nora sighed disgustedly. She felt ten kinds of foolishness. How could she have let her father manipulate her so? The man was the devil, no doubt about it and when she got home again, she fully intended to let him know exactly what she thought of his machinations.

While she silently condemned her father, she heard Ewan’s stomach rumble. “We need to eat, don’t we?”

He let out a tired breath. “I’m afraid I’m not quite up to catching anything other than a cold in my current condition, and even if I could, we dare not start a fire while I’m outnumbered, wounded, weaponless, and bound.”

She patted him on the arm. “I can gather greens and make a salad for us. It won’t be the best, but it’ll keep our strength up.”

Against her protests, Ewan got up to go with her.

He refused to let her out of his sight while he followed her. Even though it perturbed her, there was a small part of her that reveled in his care.

He might not have said it, but she rather fancied that he did love her. Surely there was no other reason for him to be so concerned for her welfare?

After she gathered the greens, she went to the small stream for fresh water to wash them.

Ewan knelt down on the bank and bent over with a grunt to drink. Because of the way his hands were tied, he couldn’t do anything more than suck the water from his fingertips.

“Here,” Nora said, setting the greens aside. “Let me help.” She cupped her hands and helped him drink.

He smiled gratefully, then dipped his head down to kiss her lips.

Nora sighed at the tenderness of his lips on hers. After everything that had happened, she found his kiss strangely fortifying.

“Do you think they can find us tonight?” Nora asked after he had drunk his fill of both her lips and the water.

Ewan lay back while she used her lap as a place to break and blend the leaves together.

“Nay,” he said. “’Tis too dense in the woods and too dark now. They’ll have to stop for the night. We should be safe until morning.”

Nora nodded as she fed him her greens. While he chewed his, she ate some herself.

“It must be frustrating not to be able to get loose,” she said after she swallowed her mouthful.

“I have to say ’tis not one of my more favorite situations.”

Nora took his hands into hers and was awed by the strength of the man before her. She’d never met anyone like him. “You were incredible back there. I can’t believe you pulled that ring from the wall.”

“There are times when being a bear is a benefit.”

“Aye, there are…”

Tears gathered in her eyes as she thought about what had happened that day. “Poor Ryan. I can’t believe he’s dead. Had he been larger…”

“Shh,” Ewan whispered. “It’s not your fault he fought them.”

“Had I not been there—”

“He’s the one who…” Ewan trailed off as he almost echoed the words she had said to him earlier about Kieran’s choice to kill himself.

She was no more responsible for what Ryan had done than he was for Kieran.

Kieran had been the fool who had walked into the loch.

And for what?

For a worthless whore who had destroyed every man she’d ever known, including her own family?

Isobail had never cared for anyone other than herself, and Kieran had been a fool to throw his life away over the likes of her.

Ewan had lived these last years in seclusion
with guilt eating away at him. Blaming himself for the decision Kieran had made. He hadn’t forced his brother into the loch.

Kieran’s stupidity had done that. In the end, his brother hadn’t given a care to anyone other than himself. In his grief, he had destroyed not only his life, but Ewan’s as well.