So great was Bradana’s relief, she felt as if the hard fist clutching her heart had released its grip.
“Let me look at your wound before we move on,” she told Adair.
He had bled through the bandaging, which she removed and washed out carefully. The wound looked pink and angry. More blanketing was sacrificed.
He insisted the pain was bearable.
But she could feel his agony when they hoisted Wen back onto the pony. And she ordered him to ride.
“You tak’ a turn,” he suggested. “I can walk.”
She fixed him with a flinty eye. “No’ yet.”
They moved on, Bradana with her hound on the lead pony, growing dizzy and tired. Long before nightfall, and moving by sheer will alone, she began looking for a place to spend the night. She found it in an outcropping of rock that pierced the trees.
No fit place to lay one’s head. It would have to serve.
*
Adair dreamed. Agood and happy dream it started out to be, for he was back in Erin, land of his birth.Home.
He took comfort in the sweet roll of the hills, the sweeps of green, and the way the light spilled over it all. He stood high upon the breast of the brae and watched the stretch of river below him, a winding track of beaten silver. Relief flooded his heart. Some terrible ordeal had ended. He was back where he belonged.
And yet another emotion came, stealing up through him persistently. Here in this beautiful land that supplied all his wants and was all he’d ever asked…
He was missing something. Someone. As vital and fundamental to him as his own heartbeat.
“Adair? My love.”
The voice came curling softly through his dream like a hint of song. Aye, and there was a song he could hear in the distance, very nearly out of his ears’ reach.
“Adair?” Lips touched his forehead. “Ye be dreaming.”
He opened his eyes. Saw that for which he’d been longing while asleep.
Her face hung just above his, lined by fatigue, blue eyes shadowed by worry. The most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.
“Bradana.”
“Ye were having a nightmare, I think.”
“Nay, ’twas a good dream. I was back in Erin. Looking for ye.”
“I am no’ in Erin.”
He knew that. At least, when he was in his right mind he did.
Washe in his right mind? Had he been, since his father tore him from his life and sent him to this land? Since first he’d set eyes on this woman?
“Maybe,” he told her, “this is all a dream. Mayhap I’ve fallen asleep in the warm sun back home and I will soon go back to the hall for supper.”
She frowned with concern. “Nay, but ye feel awfully warm. I fear ye may be starting with fever.” Disconcertingly, tears flooded her eyes. “I ha’ naught to give ye. Nay medicine. Nay food. We are starving.”
“Hush. Hush.” Her misery pulled him out of himself and snapped the last threads of dreaming. He drew her down into his arms, held her tight and tighter.
She wailed, “’Tis all my fault. If I am punished by losing the two I love most in all the world…”
She loved him.
