Page 51 of Outlaw Ever After

How did he ken to do that?

“What?” he asked at her curious stare.

Snapping out a clean linen, she tied it around her waist and pulled the rag out of the water with tongs. She wrung it, the warmth a blessing on her cool fingers. She dabbed clean his eye. His nose. His lip.

“They beat ye weel.” Her lips tightened.

Tonight, Seamus had gone too far. She saturated the rag, wrung it out again. Dabbed his shoulder, wiping away the drying rivulets of blood to reveal the edges of the angry knife wound.

He hissed, his muscles jumping beneath her touch, even as he remained still.

“Jesu, this stab…had ye nay been there—”

His paw snagged her wrist, silencing her. He brought her wrist to his nose. Inhaled as if just a breath of her was bliss.

“I’ve suffered worse these past months,” he murmured hoarsely, as if alluding to something more than a physical injury.

He pressed his lips to her skin, and God, it felt so good.

The crackling in the grate, chirps of floorboards settling, and the wind outside the shutters whistling were the only sounds.

“I often think on the laddie who once lived here,” she murmured, looking about the chamber and taking in the details. “I always wondered if he survived my brother’s anger.”

She cleared her throat at his stony silence. Slipped free of his hold so she could sprinkle a sprig of dried forget-me-not, clover, and hawthorn into her mortar, then ground them with her pestle.

“I met him…once.” A glance over her shoulder told her he was gazing at her worktable and the herbs she used for blessings, healing, and protection. She was certain she felt a draft from the window. But it was closed.

…

Clover. Hawthorn. Forget-me-not. It was her.

There was no doubt anymore that his songbird was the wee lassie that had set him free and blessed him with her kiss, the first he’d ever been given. He should hate a Grant. What would be the odds of Peigi Grant being the only woman he’d ever wanted to keep?

Those fickle fae. Whose fates do they play with now?

She mixed the herbs into flour and churned it to make a paste with a ladleful of water. She packed the poultice over his wound, and the heat both bit and soothed his irritated flesh. Then she held up a needle.

“Mayhap ’tis I who’ll punish ye this time, and ’twill nay be with tone-deaf singing. Ye need stitching.”

Alex’s fattened lip quirked up, drawing a tentative smile from her. She remembers our teasing . It might not be the glorious laughter he’d once worked hard to earn, but this smile was the first one meant for him since coming face to face with her again.

“If yer hands are doing the ministrations, I’ll suffer the punishment. Normally I burn my wounds on a swig of whiskeybae.”

“Indeed, ye’ll want that, too. Drink heartily.”

She handed him a flagon. His fingers grazed hers as he took it. Took in her empty ring finger again. A naked appendage that had once worn his promise.

She slipped away and the thread of teasing vanished as she rummaged through her supplies, digging out another clay pot and removing the lid.

Leeches.

Using a pair of tongs, she attached the beastie to Alex’s fattened eye. Then attached a second.

“Ye’re skilled at this for a lady, Marg…Peigi .” She unspooled the catgut as he tested the foreign name on his lips.

The leeches’ rasping took hold and they began to gorge upon his swelling.

“I’ve had ample practice. At one point, the reaves saw us evicted by the verra laird my sister later married.” He snorted. “We quickly learned the art of stitching a wound.”