The Love of Her Life (Highlander Heroes Book 6) Read online

  “Cover them!” she heard Alec shout, his voice brutal, just before he appeared at her side. He pressed Henry onto the ground at her hip and used his own body as a shield over both of them.

  Katie lie still, confused about what had flung her back, vaguely aware of pain above her right breast.

  “Mam!” Henry cried with fright, but the sound was muffled, as if he were under water.

  Above her, holding himself up on his arms even as she felt so much of him pressed along the length of her, Alec MacBriar swore and pushed the hair away from her face. “You’re hit.”

  “Oh.” It was then she saw the shaft of an arrow rising upward, leaning against Alec’s shoulder. It was fletched with three feathers—of a goose, she thought unnecessarily. She blinked, confused, wondering why it didn’t hurt more.

  “Mam!” Her son continued to cry.

  “She’s fine, Henry,” Alec told him, though she detected a wee bit of worry in his tone. “I promise you she will be fine.”

  Her son had grabbed her hand, was holding it tight with both of his. She squeezed hard and tried to smile, though Henry likely couldn’t see this.

  His face only inches from hers once again, Katie thought that Alec MacBriar’s eyes really were a remarkable color. So much intensity as he scanned her face, his worry evident there, inside the depths of the piercing hazel.

  The fighting continued at the edge of the woods, she understood, brutal noises penetrating her consciousness. She was in no serious peril just now, she knew, either from the arrow jutting out from her shoulder or the brigands making war with them. Alec wouldn’t be lying atop her if he were needed elsewhere, within that fight. Yet, she felt as if she were enveloped in rather a haze of wanting to sleep and a cloud of numbness.

  Shock, she thought it might be.

  “Open your eyes,” Alec commanded in a harsh voice. “Damn it, Katie. Open your eyes.”

  She did and met his, dark orbs under heavily furrowed brows.

  “You should have kissed me,” she whispered.

  Chapter Six

  She closed her eyes again.

  His entire body was pressed against hers, though he tried to keep so much of his weight off her. One elbow dug into the ground at her side, the other arm was flung across Henry, curled up in terror against his mother.

  Malcolm and Eleanor and the others addressed the current attack. The very sound of it suggested no hardship. When Malcolm had either the time or inclination to spout slurs at the enemy, Alec knew that victory was nigh.

  “I’ll gut you like the pig that you are!” His captain charged. This was followed by noises suggesting Malcolm had suited action to words. “And that’s for clipping our healer, you belly-crawlin’ bastard!”

  Alec was right pissed about the attack, though not entirely surprised. Still, he’d have words for his unit for giving the all-clear call when they’d obviously not scoured the area for stragglers.

  The fingers of his right hand, laid along Katie’s cheek, having moved her tangled hair away from her face, were covered in blood. Behind them, Eleanor let loose a guttural cry, likely the preface to running her sword through some poor bastard. Katie Oliver lie beneath him with an arrow protruding from her shoulder. Her son was a ball of pudding, his tremors shaking his mother even...and all Alec could think just now was: how the hell did she know I’d been thinking about kissing her? And then, more intriguing: why, in the name of all that was holy, had she just hinted that she might have welcomed it?

  Quiet descended around them. Only Malcolm’s frustration was vocal, equal to Alec’s and for the same reason.

  “Bluidy hell! Elle! Aymer! Who the hell was charged with clearing the hills and the woods? Take ten into those hills and make sure we’ll no’ be surprised again.” His voice lowered to grumbling but drew nearer to Alec. “Bluidy simpletons, acting like it’s their first fight.”

  Alec shifted off Katie, settling on his knees beside her. With his movement, Henry sat up as well.

  The lad wailed anew. “Is she dead?” was asked just as Malcolm, standing over Alec’s shoulder, breathed, “Shite.”

  Katie’s long lashes fluttered.

  “Mam. Oh, mam,” Henry sobbed and threw himself at her, lying over her midsection, hugging her tight.

  “I’m fine,” she murmured weakly. “Just shocked, that’s all. Fetch my pouches, Henry.”

  “C’mon, lad,” Malcolm said, his voice kindly. “I’ll take you back to the wagons. You ken what she wants?”

  Henry removed himself from his mother, received her slight but encouraging smile and went off with Malcolm.

  “Tell me what to do.” Alec said. His anger intensified, that she should have been injured while under his protection.

  She took a deep breath, which came with a wince, and met his gaze. “’Tis not your fault.”

  “Everything that happens within this unit is my responsibility.”

  No further argument came, though he sensed more inside her. But it wasn’t on her to relieve him of guilt.

  Lifting her hand, she grabbed hold of the shaft and moved it cautiously and so very slightly, testing its depth, eliciting a wrenching expression of pain that effectively twisted Alec’s gut.

  “It’s in the bone,” she told him, dropping her hand back to the ground at her side, as if she hadn’t the strength to hold it aloft more. “So it cannot be pushed through, needs to be pulled out.”

  Fergus and John appeared then, hovering over the pair.

  “Bluidy hell, lass,” Fergus said. And then to Alec, “Who fixes the healer?”

  Alec held Katie’s gaze while she answered for him. “He will.”

  Alec nodded. He speculated briefly if this was to be his penance.

  “But then, who’s going to patch up everyone else?” John wanted to know.

  “Me first,” Katie said evenly. “Get this out and I’ll be fine—”

  “You’ll no’ be running around tending others,” Alec interjected hotly.

  Ignoring him, Katie continued, “You’ve been hit as well.”

  “’Tis but a scratch. One thing at a time,” Alec argued just as Malcolm and Henry returned.

  Henry placed the pouch on his mother’s belly, which for some reason made her smile slightly. Curiously, as she appeared mostly calm, a tear slipped away from the corner of her eye.

  Another deep breath and she instructed evenly, her eyes closed now, “Try first to remove the entire thing. Likely, the tip will remain embedded in the bone and you’ll have to address that separately. But you might get lucky and the tip will come out with the shaft.”

  Shuddering inwardly for his own ineptness, but buoyed by her calmness, Alec shifted onto one knee and leaned over her. “Should I wiggle it?” He asked, having taken a firm grip of the shaft.

  “You can try that,” she answered without opening her eyes.

  “Do I need to hold her down?” Fergus wondered.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she said, waiting.

  Alec mumbled a curse and began to move the shaft gingerly back and forth. It was wedged firmly, he could feel, and wondered if firm but even pressure to pull it out would be successful. He worked with singular attention, trying his best to not be made weak by her changing expressions. First, her closed eyes tightened, forming many creases at the corners, then her lips rolled inward, clamping down against the pain he brought to her.

  He wriggled it, slowly and with control, but to no avail. A firmer tug with more pressure only proved what she’d expected, the shaft breaking away from the tip.

  Those hovering gasped, and then a collective groan was heard when it was realized the arrowhead was no longer attached to the shaft. He didn’t turn around, but it appeared a larger crowd had gathered.

  “Well, that dinna work,” someone said needlessly.

  “Now he’s got to dig around in there.” John’s voice. “That’ll bring some mighty pain.”

  Malcolm grumbled to the watchers, “I ken about forty things need being
done right now and yet, you’re all standing here.”

  Katie opened her eyes as some, not all, departed, ignoring all the fuss around her, and met Alec’s tortured gaze. “It’s fine. That was unlikely to work anyway. You’ll have to go in and fetch it, and possibly I might lose consciousness if the pain is too great.”

  Alec rolled his head back, wishing to dear God she hadn’t said that.

  She continued, “So I’ll give all the instructions now and my apologies if I do pass out, as you and the others will have to await my—”

  “Will ye stop worrying about the others?” Malcolm growled above Alec.

  “Henry can mix the salve,” she went on. “He knows about that. Fish out the tip, apply the salve and all will be well. I’ll bind it myself later. Very simple,” she said.

  Alec couldn’t believe she was trying to make him feel better. Obviously the tension he felt just now was not well disguised, though he couldn’t imagine that his face moved at all, his jaw being clamped so tight. He managed a nod.

  With a grimace, as if afraid to deliver the rest of her instruction, she added, “And...if it gets too messy, it will need stitching.”

  Alec cursed under his breath.

  “Sounds awful, and I’m pleased it’s not me,” Malcolm said unhelpfully, and finished, “but we gotta move this along. We canna stay here much longer, too vulnerable right now.”

  Henry jumped up then, uncinching the pouch on Katie’s belly and then taking off, saying as he ran, “I forgot the honey.”

  Turning his head, Alec requested of Malcolm, “Send someone into the woods to retrieve my sword and axe. They’re holding bodies against trees, about sixty yards straight in.”

  Alec withdrew the knife he’d earlier borrowed from Katie and wiped it on the forest floor, removing as much blood as he could, and once again leaned over Katie, gently lifting away the fabric of her gown, about to slice it open.

  “Wait,” she said, curtailing his intentions. “Could you not shred my gown?” At Alec’s incredulous look, she added feebly, “I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t many frocks and...”

  “I’ll get you a new frock,” he said crossly and cut away at the wool. He was forced to cut away the strap of her undergarment also, supposing he might provide her with a new kirtle as well once they reached Swordmair.

  He swallowed hard then and considered the exposed skin and wound. It looked so small, too small for his fingers or any tool to get in there to find the arrowhead. Chewing the inside of his cheek, he touched only one finger to the bloody gap in her skin, upon the curved line of her collarbone. Immediately, he sent his gaze to hers, measuring the depth of pain from that small touch.

  “Are you hoping I do pass out?” She asked.

  “Aye—for your sake and mine. At least close your eyes, lass. You’re making me all kinds of uneasy.”

  “Sir, I saw you earlier hack off a man’s arm with one stroke of your blade.” Her voice was slower, weaker, he thought. “And apparently you applied such force in the last strike of your sword that even now it is still impaled inside a tree. This here seems rather simple an act, all things considered.”

  “It’s no’...this is verra different. I dinna ken how to be...soft.”

  “But you cannot be soft, as this requires strength. Same as when you retrieved the tip of that blade from Malcolm.”

  “I dinna have the spoons to hold the—”

  “They would not be helpful. This is very near the surface, as you can see. You might have to slice more of the skin to get to it.”

  Alec lanced her with a disbelieving scowl. “Are you jesting? You want me to cut you?”

  She stared hard at him. “Will you get to it, already?” Her voice had returned to that angry one he was familiar with.

  He ground out, “I dinna want to hurt you.”

  “It hurts now and there stands no chance of that ever lessening if you do not get the tip out,” she informed him, her own tone heated.

  Furious at both the godawful tension and anger at this wretched circumstance, Alec curled his lip and finally plunged his finger into the hole of her creamy skin. His eyes lit up almost instantly, his finger quickly landing upon the arrowhead. He dipped his other hand into the pouch on her belly and withdrew her small pliers just as Henry returned. It took some doing, and the incision was inadvertently made larger, but he managed to pinch the tip of the arrow with the pliers.

  And Katie Oliver did indeed pass out while he wrestled with removing the metal from her bone. He was convinced it was embedded deeper and more firmly than the one he’d removed from Malcolm’s rib. Twice, while he struggled with it, he heard Malcolm drawing in a hissed breath between his teeth behind him.

  “Henry, the salve,” he said then, when the offensive piece was finally removed. But the boy only handed a small crock to him, did not himself apply the ointment.

  Alec swabbed her collarbone with the honey mixture and spared a few seconds to consider her now peaceful expression. More tears had come, traced a crooked pattern down into the hair at her temple, nearly undoing him. Otherwise, she appeared as bonny as ever, perhaps more so with the serenity that came with oblivion.

  By now, all tasks having been completed, a crowd formed around again.

  They concurred with Alec’s conjecture, unanimously deciding that the process had indeed enlarged the originally tiny laceration and would now require stitches. With that, Alec pulled one long silk thread and the bone needle from another of Katie’s pouches and tried to recall exactly how she’d sewn up Malcolm so efficiently and expertly two days earlier.

  Despite her slumber, the sewing of the lass’s smooth and otherwise unblemished skin was not a chore he was keen to assume, the undertaking made more unbearable by the fairly universal opinions of those watching that he was doing it wrong.

  “Smaller seams, I would think,” Aymer had suggested, peering over his shoulder.

  “Dinna crisscross them,” John advised, “or the removal of the threads will be made worse.”

  “Get that end there,” Malcolm said.

  “I’m getting it,” Alec hissed through a tight mouth. “Jesu, back off!”

  They did, but only for a moment.

  “Should you space them closer together?” Ranald wondered then.

  Alec stopped sewing, letting his fingers rest against her warm skin, and glowered up at Ranald. The glower had turned to exasperation when Henry, opposite Alec and watching, had chimed in.

  “He’s right, though. Mam’s stitches are closer.” When all eyes had turned toward the lad, he only shrugged and added quietly, “And neater.”

  When finally he was done, and happy to remove any prospect of more recriminations from his own men—and now Henry!—Alec gently lifted the still sleeping Katie into his arms and followed Malcolm’s pointing to where the wagons had been brought nearer.

  “And that’s that, lads,” Malcolm called out. “We ride in five!”

  Alec passed a silent Eleanor, near the wagon and watchful upon her steed. She’d not been party to the ogling crowd that had gathered ‘round Alec as he’d tended Katie, and now gave him only a hard, unfathomable glare as he walked by her. She spared not one glance to the woman in his arms.

  Henry bounded up in the wagon bed just as Alec reached it. The lad scrambled around on his knees, moving items out of the way to make room for his mother’s prone form. Malcolm climbed up as well, reaching down for Katie as there was no way for Alec to take such a high step onto the bed with Katie in his arms. He acknowledged but did not examine the slight hesitation that made him withhold her from Malcolm for the space of a second.

  When she was settled on some of her own linens from her cottage, still sleeping, Malcolm said, “Henry and I’ll take care of her now,” which also did not sit well with Alec, though he couldn’t have said why.

  His brow still wrinkled, Alec nodded. And, left with no other options, he searched out his abandoned horse and led the small army once again along the road, leaving all
the dead English where they had fallen.

  He spent the first quarter hour making internal notes of improvements to this unit’s training, that so many proper and necessary procedures seemed to have been neglected in and after the fray. He began to give further thought to Elle’s most recent aggression and whatever that seething resentment was that she donned as a cloak but then dismissed Elle completely, considering any conjecture in that regard not worth his time or energy. Let her have her snit; he’d advise Malcolm to straighten her out if she didn’t come around in the next few days, certainly if she remained hostile once they reached Swordmair.

  The next hour of the steady but slow drive was mostly spent trying not to think, or overthink, the whole situation that was Katie Oliver. Yet twice he circled back from his lead position to check on her, only to be told each time that she slept still. The second time, Malcolm showed some concern for her lengthy slumber, his orange brows knit.

  For a while, he managed to convince himself that any ridiculous thought he may have had about kissing Katie Oliver was borne of circumstance—hearts pumping, danger seething, the enemy threatening, and all that—and had nothing to do with any actual desire for her. After all, she wasn’t exactly the sort of female he would normally be attracted to. Too lean, too severe, too anxious and angry for his tastes.

  I’ve had already my life’s love.

  Too...unavailable?

  Alec shook himself. Enough!

  She’s nobody and means nothing.

  A light bark sounded near, reminding Alec of that damn hound, who apparently had survived the skirmish and trudged along still with them.

  What a bluidy day!

  Eight hours ago, he was scolding Boswell for trying to steal the laundry. Before he’d so clumsily knocked Katie onto the ground, she’d been laughing, chasing the fool of a hound around him, her hand at his waist while she’d circled him. Mayhap, it was only his complete infatuation with the sound of her laughter, and her hand so innocently but familiarly upon him, that had rendered him senseless momentarily, that he’d yanked at the apron and had inadvertently struck her.