“If ye promise no’ to doubt me in turn. I ken how hard it maun be. There are so many influences upon the both o’ us.”
He tightened his fingers on hers. “Ye might ha’ been sent to seduce me.”
She gave a snort. “They would ha’ sent a better seductress than I, were that true. Leith, I am a simple woman, interested in only the tasks before me. I never—I never expected this.”
“Nor I.” He gave a rueful grimace. “I ha’ always been a man to skip fro’ woman to woman. They touched me all, but never laid claim to my heart.” He seemed to struggle for words. “Ye ha’ done just that, Rhian. My heart lies in your keeping, whether ye will ha’ it or no.”
“I will ha’ it, Leith MacLeod.” Softly she kissed him again. “We will trust one another, aye? No matter what else may happen around us. Whether they decide to send ye awa’. Whether or no’ ye become chief o’ my enemies.”
“Wha’ever may happen,” he vowed. “Do no’ doubt me, Rhian.”
“Do no’ doubt me, Leith.”
They sealed the promise with a kiss, a strength, Rhian thought, against whatever might come.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Leith dozed andwoke and dozed again, and tried to convince himself what had happened had been more than a dream. Rhian, holding him in her arms. Taking him to her bosom. Shedding kisses upon him like separate shards of brightness. Wrapping her fingers around him as if it were the most natural of things, and she could do naught else.
He had to believe it. Though she’d left him now to go about her duties, she had been here. It had all happened. He could feel her still.
That was the truly uncanny part of it. He could feel her in the lingering touch on his skin. In the ache beneath his heart. He’d even had a glimpse of what lay in her mind.
A quiet woman, Rhian MacBeith. One used to giving to others. She did not make waves, and she took little for herself.
Leith would have said she was the last sort of woman to suit a man like him. Yet from the moment she’d found him on the battlefield, they had fit. She filled up the empty places inside him. His need for her frightened him.
Big, strong warrior,he marveled, half mocking himself. With this flaming need for a gentle woman.
Ah, but he would be a strong warrior no more if he did not regain the use of his right arm. And anyway, he could not deny her.
Rhian MacBeith—what she meant to him had the power to change his world.
Bonded with her, he was. What did that make of his loyalties? Those he owed to Rory, and to MacLeod.
Nay, he’d never expected such a thing to happen to a man like him.
The door rattled, and a voice called to him from outside. “Leith? Lift the bar, man.”
Farlan. Leith had placed the bar across the door after Rhian left. He got to his feet now and padded across the chamber to let Farlan in.
Anxious and unhappy, Farlan entered the chamber, which at once felt too small with the two of them in it, and replaced the bar with his own hands. He turned and surveyed Leith through narrowed eyes.
“Ye look better, man.”
“I feel it. The fever is gone and the pain has lessened. If only this accursed wound would close up for good.”
“Ye’d best lie back down. We need to speak together.”
Leith eyed his friend. “We ha’ talked and talked. ’Tis enough.”
Yet he returned to the bed and eased against the bolsters, since there was no place else in the chamber to sit. Farlan perched at the foot, facing him.
Gravely, he said, “We maun discuss wha’ is to be done, if Rory be dead.”
Their eyes met, and they shared the impossibility of it. Surrounded as the two of them were by strangers—even those who might no longer be strangers—only they experienced the weight of that possible grief.
In the past they’d weathered other terrible losses together. That of Ainsley, who’d been Leith’s little sister and Farlan’s child bride. Of any number of friends lost in skirmishes. Of Camraith, with his bottomless kindness and wisdom. People went from the world, unbearably and unfairly.
