Lachlan opened his mouth to answer, something defiant, but the effort slipped away with the leather strap onto the floor before the words could take shape, and darkness pulled him under.
Something cool pressed against his skin. A cloth. Soft movement followed, light, deliberate touches that skimmed over him, careful where before all was torment.
Lachlan groaned. The crushing weight of men holding him down was gone. No hands gripped his limbs. No bodies braced him to the table. Only the lingering ache remained, a deep throbbing, but somehow distant as if he were not inside his own body.
The hard table still pressed to his back and there was a candlelit chandelier above his head. He had the oddest thought that hot wax might very well drop on him, and that soon he’d be glued to the spot.
Turning his head from side to side, he noted that nearly everything had changed from when he’d woken sometime before. How long ago, he couldn’t say. He’d been drifting in and out of consciousness for hours, maybe days. The light had dimmed to a wavering glow. The clamor of the room had quieted. No longer did he hear the injured being tended, their cries sorrowful and pain filled, but instead scattered murmurs and the occasional groan. Some of the men lay still. Others slept, their wounds bandaged like his.
Lachlan drew in a breath and tried to sit up. Pain flared, sharp and immediate, and a hand pressed firmly on his chest, until his back hit the wood once more.
“Ye will no’ be getting off this table, sir. Have ye lost your wits?”
The same woman who’d tended him stood over him now, with a glare that could have felled a lesser man. There was a crease between her brows, and wisps of blonde came loose of her plait to frame her face. Her lush pink lips were pursed at him as if she’d only just realized something distasteful. He had the distinct impression that she found him to be the biggest oaf she’d ever met in her life.
“Ye’re on the brink of death, sir,” she went on, pressing him back when he tried to rise a second time. “So lie still, or I’ll send ye there myself.”
A slow, pained smile tugged at his mouth. He liked her fire. “If death looks like ye, lass, I’ll no’ complain.”
Her eyes narrowed more, the fringe of thick lashes practically kissing her cheeks. “Ha. Keep talking like that and I may yet help it along.”
Lachlan huffed a laugh, then sucked in a ragged, pain-filled breath. Everything hurt. “A fine way to go,” he murmured. “At the hands of a bonnie tyrant.”
She let out a groan and rolled her eyes. “Imbecile,” she muttered, though there was the faintest shift in her expression, the hardness softening.
An aching chill sweat through him then, the tell-tale sign of a coming fever.
The lass started to walk away. Without thinking, without sense, he reached for her. His hand closed weakly around her wrist. Though she could have easily shaken him off, she stilled and glanced over her shoulder at him. And was that a… Lachlan blinked his vision into focus. Aye, there was a ferret popping its head out of what he’d thought was her ample bosom. He smirked.
“Stay,” he murmured, the word more breath than voice.
“Say again?” she asked, leaning closer to hear him.
For the briefest of moments, neither of them moved. The lass stepped closer to the table, his grasp still on his wrist. She looked ready to say something. Likely to rebuke him for touching her. Then, driven by what could only be madness, for he would not have done it if he’d been in his right mind, he shifted, dragging himself up just enough, and then pressed his mouth to hers.
It was clumsy. Fleeting. More instinct than intention. More teeth than lips. And over almost as soon as it began. There was a sharp nip on his chin from her ferret, and the lady jerked back, pulling free of his grip.
“Ye’re impossible, sir.” She dabbed a linen against his chin. “Freckles does no’ tolerate me being manhandled.”
Lachlan sank back against the table, the mad effort of kissing her costing him. “Ye’re beautiful,” he whispered, eyes already slipping shut. “And I like your ferret.”
There was an irritated grumble from the lass. “Fool.”
He barely registered her leaving or returning.
“Drink. Ye’ll need it for the pain, and the fever that’s coming whether ye like it or no.”
Lachlan tilted his head as she poured a bitter draft between his lips. It burned all the way down his throat, the pungent and unpleasant scent and taste of feverfew, and he coughed weakly.
“Swallow,” she said gently, steadying him with a firm hand.
Lachlan managed it enough to satisfy her. Through his haze, he felt her thumb brush the corner of his mouth, wiping away the dribbles of what he’d missed, tender and efficient.
“Will ye stay with me while I sleep?” he questioned.
“I’ve been here the whole time, sir.” And as if to punctuate that statement, he felt movement at his arm and noted her ferret had curled up there.
That pulled the faintest grin from him. “Then I shall have happy dreams.”
