That thought struck deep and opened up a new wound.
If Farlan returned, Leith could ask about Rhian. Request that she might come. If she truly were a merciful angel, she would not refuse him.
He lay so, fist clenched against his pain, concentrating on breathing in and breathing out, until he heard another voice speaking to the guards outside. A sweet, steady voice he recognized.
Thank you, God.
She came in quietly, but he could not mistake her identity. He knew her step, knew the way she moved, and he at once caught her scent. Herbs. And woman.
“Ah, so ye ha’ come awake.” She crossed to his side. He had his eyes clenched shut against the pain. He wished… He wished if he opened them, he could see her.
“Leith MacLeod, how d’ye fare this morning?” Answering her own question, she said, “In a great deal o’ pain, as I can see.”
She came down beside his pallet. He felt her bend near.
Touch me,he beseeched silently, even while trying to form a smile on his lips, to find some quip to say. That would have been his way of old, to make light of the very worst situation.
He failed now. Instead he gasped against the pain. “I think I am dyin’.”
Touch me. Help me. Please.
She laid her hand on his head, across his eyes. It felt warm in the chilly air, felt soothing beyond measure. She whispered some words, just a few under her breath, words he could not catch despite how close to him she bent. The pain in his head eased. He wanted to stay like this forever, with her touching him. Instead he caught her wrist in his fingers and drew her palm away.
Slowly, slowly, he opened his eyes.
And her face swam into view, half hazy from the light that streamed in from all sides. A white oval just as he remembered, perfect in form. Wreathed by concern and filled with a beautiful mercy that rivaled the light. A pair of long-lashed, deep blue eyes. Lips pressed tight together. A cloud of dark red hair, half caught back, a glorious nimbus.
By God, her hair was red. And by God, he could see her.He could see.
“Rhian MacBeith,” he whispered.
She nodded, and her lips parted. “Ye can see me?”
“I can now.” Now that she’d touched him. “Wha’ magic is this?”
He still had hold of her wrist. He slid his fingers beneath hers, which were warm and slender, and held them tight.
They remained that way for a score of heartbeats, two score, gazing deep into one another’s eyes.
She was all he saw, and, from that moment, all he ever wanted to see.
Chapter Fourteen
“This wound inmy arm, it could kill me, aye?” Leith MacLeod asked.
“We shall try to make certain that does not happen.”
He had let go of Rhian at last, released her fingers from his. She’d risen from his side and moved around the inside of the pen, rooting in her basket for herbs and clean bandages.
She always held hard to her calm demeanor when treating a patient. But she felt shaken to the heart by what had passed between her and Leith at the return of his sight.
The charm she’d muttered had been that—a simple charm, and spoken more by rote than aught else. One frequently whispered such charms over hurts. That had not restored his sight.
Or mayhap it had, because she’d wanted it for him. She’d wanted it so.
She did not understand why this man affected her the way he did, what there was about him that tapped into the deep well of her compassion. But when that happened—and she could not deny it happened—she felt for the first time in her life just how bottomless that well was.
He watched her now as she moved around the space. How could she deny him that? He’d been recently blind, and she was all he had now to gaze upon.
