Chapter Twenty-Two
Alan woke in his own bed, as he recognized when he pried his eyelids open. The chamber lay dim and dusky, and he had a vague sense of time lost. The order of events slipped away into a confusion of images—Annista bending over him, her eyes wide with distress. Himself on horseback. Blood and pain. The need to hold on. A flash of his brother’s face contorted in a vicious grimace as Evan leaped at him.
Och, aye—he remembered that.
Somehow, he had got safe home.
He stirred, and one of the shadows that occupied the room moved also, beside him. His mother it was, as he could feel as soon as she laid her hand over his.
“Son?”
Ah, but she rarely called him that. Alan, always, except when she wanted him to do something. Like wed the Catholic lass in Evan’s place.
Evan.
He eyed his mother. Small she looked in her gown and white cap, her face writhed with concern.
“Ye be safe,” she reassured him, perhaps glimpsing the panic in his eyes. “Ye were brought home safe, and the physician has been. ’Twas a near miss to your heart, so he says, and may ha’ nicked your lung, but ye will recover.”
The physician? How much time had he lost?
“Annista—” he croaked.
“She did a braw job o’ going after ye and getting ye home.”
“Where is she?” He was supposed to be keeping her, his wife, safe. Yet here he lay and she off somewhere.
“D’ye want her? I will call for her.”
Mother rose and moved swiftly to the chamber door, which she opened, and spoke to a maid.
Alan moved in the bed and groaned. He hurt all over—not just where Evan had stabbed him. Aye, he remembered that. They’d fought first. Fists and feet.
Mother came back, crossed the chamber, and went to the connecting door. The one he and Annista had promised to keep locked.
It opened readily to Mother’s touch and she leaned through to speak.
In only a few footsteps, Annista entered the chamber.
She looked a mere shade of herself, grim and worried, and he thought aye, she’s come from her maid’s side. To mine. I should ha’ let her be.
Annista shot a glance at Mother before moving to perch on the edge of Alan’s bed.
“How d’ye feel? Och, ’tis a foolish question, that. Only look at ye!”
“I’m told I will live.”
Mother laid her hand on Alan’s arm. “Since Annista is here wi’ ye now, I will go speak wi’ your father.”
Hastily, Alan said to Annista, “I do no’ wish to keep ye—”
“’Tis well enough. Bonnie is better now, and anyway she is sleeping. Cora is sitting wi’ her.”
Mother nodded and hurried out. Alan and Annista gazed at one another.
“I hear ye got me home safe,” he said then.
“I did only wha’ I could. ’Tis fortunate Chieftain did no’ run awa’. Or that—thathedid no’ tak’ him.”
