“Are ye hurt, Miss Woodburn?” He pulled her closer to examine her. “Tell me, are ye hurt?”
Mr. Cameron’s voice was so welcome, she almost began to cry. “I am not hurt.”
But he checked her arms, her head and face. When he looked in her eyes, she thought she hadn’t seen such concern for her since she had a fever when she was sixteen and her parents sat by her bed every day for four days.
She smiled at him, though nothing had changed between them. They were still enemies. Weren’t they?
“Why did ye leave, lass?”
“Ye know him?” Helen ventured to ask.
“Aye,” Elspeth replied softly as he let her go. “The king granted him me and my home fer ridding Scotland of another Covenanter, my father.”
“Och!” Helen stepped back, tugging Elspeth with her.
“Miss Woodburn doesna belong to me,” Mr. Cameron said, looking around. “What are ye doin’ here?
“I dinna really know,” she told him honestly. “I canna remember much. I woke up a short while ago lying in the dirt with little or no memory of the last few days. Helen’s master was after her—and obviously found her. He…he drugged me or…I dinna know. Helen hit him with a rock.”
“Tis alright, lass. Are ye ready to return home?”
“Who is he?” Helen whispered as he started off and the lasses fell behind. “He is verra pleasing to the eyes.”
Elspeth blushed for some mad reason that left her feeling flushed.
“He is Logan Cameron of Lochaber, son, I am told, of the Lochiel of Lochaber.”
“Och, I have heard of the Lochiel. He is a fierce enemy to have.”
“So is his son,” Elspeth remarked, stepping over the dead man who had come upon him.
Elspeth watched him with seemingly casual interest. When he agreed that Helen could remain with them, she smiled with her new friend and then turned her dreamy gaze on him. Compassion stirred him.
She had searched for it in others for six years and never found an ounce of it in anyone—until Logan Cameron. For her.
It was mad, but madness didn’t change the truth of it. She liked Logan Cameron, the ghost of her past.
The Cameron holding wasn’t far and all downhill, so Elspeth’s feet did not hurt too much. Mr. Cameron walked on her right side and Helen, on her left.
They learned that Helen had been taken from Inverlochy. “’Twas a good thing,” Helen argued. “Else I woudna have been here to save Elspeth.”
Elspeth agreed.
“Thank ye fer savin’ Miss Woodburn,” he said, offering Helen a slight bow.
“He doesna seem so terrible,” Helen told her in a hushed voice close to Elspeth’s ear while they walked home.
“Hmm,” Elspeth answered, neither denying nor confirming it.
When they reached his house, he let them in and fed them at his table. When his cousins arrived, Elspeth could hardly make eye contact with them. They believed she had poisoned him.
“’Twas the mushrooms that poisoned ye,” she told Mr. Cameron, in front of them.
“Aye, I know, Miss Woodburn. ’Tis no’ as if ye were poisonin’ me slowly, or tryin’ to ambush me along the mountainside.” He smiled at her and winked his eye.
She had the urge to break out with laughter, as if he had just set free a thousand butterflies in her belly.
But…he wasn’t jesting. The poison in his food. He knew about it. Her blood ran cold. He knew and he did not seek revenge. He was clever. What true feelings towards his enemy was he concealing?
