As soon asthe woman called Rhian left the room, Leith turned to Farlan. He wished he could see his friend. By God, he wished he could see the woman. But her face danced in his memory, as he’d seen her out in the dark. A blur of a white oval and a pair of beautiful eyes.
For all that he could not see her, he felt her compassion. Whenever she touched him, it came flooding in upon him. He wanted her to touch him and never stop.
He groped across the blanket that covered him, and Farlan clasped his hand.
“Farlan, I’m afeared. Wha’ if I ne’er regain my sight?”
“Mistress Rhian is a fine healer. Do no’ despair.”
“Aye, but what use am I if I canna see? As a warrior, what use? As a man—”
“Gi’ it some time, Leith. Rest, as she says.”
“I do no’ want to return to that dream. I was but a wee bairn, lost in a forest—”
“We dream many troubling things,” Farlan told him. “Especially when we are ill or hurting.”
“Aye.” Leith thought on it. As a man, he tended to shrug off worry and troubles, preferring to keep a light spirit. He chose laughter over more serious emotions. Now he lay trapped in this foreign place, in the dark.
He did not like feeling afraid or admitting to it. But fear, like the pain, held him in its grip.
“Leith?” Farlan’s voice, warm and steady, came to him like a lifeline. “Can ye tell me—us—who attacked ye? Someone tried to smother the life from ye.”
“Us? Ye speak o’ your woman, then? The MacBeith chief?”
“Moira, aye.”
Leith thought about how Farlan had returned home to MacLeod before defecting and told Leith of his feelings for this woman. “Is she worth it?” he asked in a low voice. “Is bein’ with this Moira MacBeith worth giving up your birthright?”
“She is. I am no’ saying ’tis easy. Her choosing to be wi’ me has created no end o’ troubles. And I—I am like a man adrift, belonging nowhere. Save in her arms.”
It must be a love, Leith marveled, such as he himself had never yet known. Och, what man would want to be so enslaved?
“But tell me,” Farlan urged, “wha’ d’ye remember o’ the attack?”
“Verra little. I was asleep, I think. I came awake wi’ a great weight pressing down upon me. I struggled against it, to breathe. Then I fell senseless, fell into that dream. D’ye think, Farlan, I lay near death then? That the forest where I wandered was death’s borderland?”
“I think whoever attacked ye thought ye well dead. Beyond that, Leith, I canna say.”
Chapter Twelve
The draught Rhianmixed sent Leith into a deep sleep, despite his wishes. She could not tell if he once more slipped away into troubling dreams, but he lay quiet and apparently relieved of his pain.
Rhian remained there with him in the cowshed that smelled of its past occupants and admitted the chill, which could not be good for the patient. She stayed and watched him closely. She could not say why she stayed. God knew, she had scores of other tasks to perform and other wounded to visit. This man, this one man, did not warrant her exclusive attention. She provided care for those of MacBeith blood, who should come before one not her own.
Alasdair had stationed a new pair of guards outside before going off to run down Marc and Drachan and question them about having abandoned their duty. Ask what they’d seen and who might have attacked Leith MacLeod.
She should have left also, yet each time she approached the door to go, her newfound compassion for this man pulled her back. It felt precisely like a hook embedded beneath her heart, one that tugged hard. She’d never felt the like, and her mind spun over it.
Attachment. But why should she be attached to this particular man? Because she’d stumbled over him on a battlefield? But nay, for there’d been others lying out there in the dark. Plenty of others.
True, anyone with an ounce of pity in her soul might feel for one who lay in such perilous straits. Blinded, badly wounded, and far from home. Despite that, she should be able to walk away. It distressed her that she, a sound and practical woman, could not make herself go.
But she sorted through the contents of her basket at least twice, then thought of ways the miserable prison might be improved. It was the same place Farlan had been held when first he came to them, bleak and filthy. No wonder Moira had done all she could to relocate him.
Right into her bed.
Aye well, and that would not be happening again. For one thing, Rhian never fell victim to any man’s charms. For another, he was a MacLeod.
