Page 92 of Anice’s Bargain

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The sun shone on James’s face, drawing him from the darkness with its brilliant heat.

“James,” a soft feminine voice cried out.

One he knew better than any other.

Anice.

He turned his head toward the sound, the back of his skull grinding against something firm beneath him. Pain engulfed him all at once, burning, white-hot pain. His chest, his back, his side, every bit of him.

“James.” Anice’s voice again.

He groaned, a rasping snarl of a sound and blinked his eyes open. His gaze was waist-level. On his side. Confusion wracked through him. “What—”

“Nay, do not move.” Anice’s face appeared in front of him. Her eyes and nose were red, as though she’d been crying. She grasped his hand and lifted it to her mouth in a gentle kiss. Tears ran down her cheeks. “I thought…”

His fingers moved over the softness of her lovely skin, sweeping away the tear and savoring her.

Her eyes closed as more tears slipped silently from beneath her lashes. “I feared I might never feel such a caress again,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry, my love.”

He shifted on the hard surface beneath him and pain screamed through him.

Anice leapt to her feet. “Don’t move.” She glanced about anxiously. “Isla, please come.”

He frowned, not able to recall what happened to bring him to this hard table. A glance at his torso revealed two rows of neat stitches lining his stomach and side. “I was injured,” he stated.

Anice pressed her lips together and lowered her head. “I stabbed you.”

“Ye stabbed me?” he asked.

“And so did yer da,” Isla replied as she approached. “Though it was yer da’s blade which nearly did ye in.”

It rushed back to him then, searing through the fog of confusion with startling clarity. His father had attacked Anice with the intent to kill. Except Laird Graham was now dead and James was laird.

“The reivers coming to attack.” He wriggled on the table in an attempt to stand.

Isla gave a sharp hiss and put her hand to his arm to still him from moving.

“It was Lord Bastionbury.” Anice smiled. “He came. Because of you. We are all alive because of you.”

Not everyone. There were soldiers who lost their lives. Soldiers, and reivers too. But he did not state as much. “Together we have saved as many lives as was possible to save,” he replied instead.

A man strode up behind Anice. Nay, not just any man. Lord Bastionbury. James tried to sit up.

Bastionbury shook his head. “Rest easy, lad.”

“This is disconcertingly familiar,” James grunted.

The earl smiled at that. “You’ve got a penchant for putting yourself in front of others to save them.” His head nodded with approval. “’Tis the mark of a good man.”

The praise warmed through James and settled over his wounded soul, a balm for the hurt put there by his own father.

Bastionbury placed a solid hand on James’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you.”

The words glowed through James and filled a deep, wounded part of him that had always longed those words. Emotion caught at the back of his throat. So many years had gone by for James where he’d been told he wasn’t good enough, strong enough, man enough.

I’m proud of you.