“Thank the Good Lord,” his mother said. “I’ll go to her. Och! Logan, did ye eat? Everything contaminated is gone, including food, pots, bowls, everything. Hmm? I can bring ye something.”
“Nae, I will get somethin’ from the kitchen a wee bit later.”
“Verra well, dinna ferget.” She went to Elspeth and tucked her blankets tighter around her. She left the room after a quick kiss to Elspeth’s forehead.
Logan was happy his kin liked Elspeth. Once they found out that she wanted to kill him, they set their minds against her. But they were quick to forgive her when she proved that she would not hurt him. “My kin worry over ye, lass,” he told Elspeth whenhis mother left. It made him happy that they did and he smiled like a fool.
He sat in his chair and set his eyes on his beloved.
She was looking back at him!
“Elspeth!” he bounded out of the chair and onto the bed with her. “When? How?”
“Yer voice awakened me,” she told him huskily.
He pulled her into his arms while she was stretching and kissed her.
She giggled and tried half-heartedly to push him away.
“Och, Elspeth,” he pulled her closer and whispered into her hair. “I should be angry with ye fer scarin’ me to death and keepin’ me awake all night listenin’ to ye breathin’.” He stopped to take a breath of his own. “I know ye fought hard, Elspeth. I knew ye would. Thank ye fer comin’ back to me, my love.”
“Logan, fergive me fer making ye and yer kin worry.”
He withdrew an inch or two and shook his head. “Lass, ye returned to me. There is nothin’ to fergive. How are ye feelin’?”
“Surprisingly well.”
He cupped her face in his hands and examined her bones. He soaked in the clarity of her big, bonnie, cerulean eyes staring back at him. “Aye, ye look surprisingly well.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to hers, tasting her, breathing her. When he deepened their kiss, he drew back. “Nae! Nae. Ye just opened yer eyes. What am I, some untamed, undisciplined beast?” he asked himself and stood up off the bed and away from her.
“Logan?”
He held up his hand. “I promised May I would bring her to ye when ye woke. I will go get her.”
When he left the bedroom, he shut the door and then leaned against it, disgusted with himself. How could he desire her a moment after she woke from the sleep of the dead?
He rubbed his palm down his face and made his way toward May’s chambers.
His sister and his mother squealed with delight when Logan told them Elspeth had awakened. His mother hurried out of the room, pulling his father along. Logan hefted his sister on his back and wrapped his arms under her knees.
“Och, Logan,” his mother said on the way. “’Tis a good thing Jamie found yer physician so quickly. We must buy theriac from him.”
“Why do ye keep callin’ him my physician?” Logan asked her. “I dinna know him. I thought he was Tor’s physician. How will we pay him?”
His mother began talking, but Logan didn’t hear what she said. The physician! It was a man with dyed black hair and a limp. Logan knew his hair was dyed because the edges of his bonnet were stained black. Logan did not think anything of it at the time. But now…No one knew who this physician was.
“Son,” his father said, stopping him when he saw the panic in Logan’s face. “What is it?”
“The physician,” he said, “’twas her brother.” They all stopped and then watched him run off to Elspeth’s rooms with May on his back.
*
Elspeth’s smile waswide when Logan burst into her bedroom with May’s face over his shoulder.
“Put her down here on the bed,” Elspeth told him gently.
“I am perfectly capable of standing on my own two feet.” May gave her older brother a light swat on the arm when he bent to set her down on the bed.
The instant her eyes fell on Elspeth’s, she seemed to forget her ire at her brother. “Och, Elspeth, I was so afraid we would lose ye. We were poisoned! Och, when I think of someone poisoning my mother or father—”
