He wanted the pain to stop. By God, he wanted to live.
He wanted to see her still more.
But aye, he could feel her, and that was almost enough. She leaned close above him, her hand still on his arm. He could smell the sweetness of her even above the reek of blood. He felt her breath course across his cheek, so close was she.
If only he could see her.
“Can ye save him?” someone asked. A woman. Nothiswoman.
Nay, for she still bent over him, mercy, kindness, and warmth flowing from her, into him.
He reached up with his good hand and seized her wrist. Immediately, sensation rushed in upon him. It was like she consisted of a tingling force that spread through him, combating his weakness and his panic.
She had not answered the other woman’s question.Can ye save me?He echoed it in his mind.
She did not move, there in his grasp. He said low, in an appeal meant for her ears alone, “Merciful angel?”
The breath rushed from her. He heard it, he felt it, but still he could not see her, save in his mind. The oval face he’d glimpsed out in the dark. Eyes of deep, bottomless blue trapped between thick, dark lashes. A mouth held tight, as if she shared his agony.
Mayhap she did.
“Be still,” she bade him. Her voice flowed over him like warm honey. He clung to it with his entire being.
“I canna see.”
“You have taken a terrible blow to the head. Your sight may yet return. I canna tell yet.”
“Merciful lady,” he muttered. If he lay under her care, all hope could not be lost for him.
She drew away slightly, though she still did not pull her wrist from his grasp. She spoke to someone else. “Perhaps I can save him after all, sister.”
She could. This woman could drag him back from the very brink of death with but her presence.
He tightened his grasp on her wrist.
Her voice full of warmth, she told him, “Ye will need to leave go o’ me if I am to tend this great wound o’ yours.”
He did not know if he could leave go of her. What would happen to him if he did? Would he slip away into the vast darkness?
Gently, she drew away. Reluctantly, he let her. It did not matter because he could feel her still, even as she stepped from him. He lay struggling to draw breaths against the pain that racked him.
The darkness in which he lay, aye, terrified him. But he could endure it and all the pain that accompanied it, so long as she remained near him.
*
“I saidperhapsI can save him.” Outside the door of the stock pen, Rhian spoke with her sister. “He is very weak and may not rally. I can make no promises.”
She had dressed the great wound in the man’s shoulder—again—a gaping maw of rent flesh where she glimpsed bone. Together, she and Moira had stripped the sodden clothing from him. Without his MacLeod tartan, he was just a man.
But och, what a man! Long of limb, with a great, deep chest covered with sandy hair, liberally marked by old scars. A warrior he was, and with a body like that, he should be naught else.
She’d washed what blood she could from him and tended the wound at the back of his head where he’d been struck down. She’d covered him with a blanket, all the while wondering at the emotions that filled her in the doing.
Och, why did this man—this one man—have the ability to affect her so profoundly? She could not tell, but that moment he’d seized hold of her by the wrist and held her to him had shaken her to the bone.
“Is he blinded?” Moira asked. “Will he regain his sight?”
“Who can tell? That blow to the head was a vicious one.” He could not see, nay, but he knew her. Beyond question, he did.
