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Wiping a hand across her mouth, she somehow managed to make it to a chair by the fire. Sat down before she fell down.
The battle over, her energy drained in a whirlpool rush that left her light-headed. Or was that loss of blood? Hard to say.
She pressed her opposite hand to the wound in a feeble attempt to stanch the sluggish flow, gritting her teeth against a stinging pain she could see.
She’d sit here for a minute. Just long enough to catch her breath. Then she’d go in search of a tourniquet. Something she could use to bandage her arm.
She leaned back against the cushions. Just a moment more. It couldn’t hurt to lie back. Cam would be here soon. Or Susan and Amos. Gods, she hoped not them. That would surely lead to some unanswerable questions.
Warmth eluded her. Thought grew useless. Except for a voice—Cam’s voice that came at her from the not-so-distant past. Have you ever dealt death with your own hand? Looked a man in the face while his life drains in front of you?
She’d mocked Cam’s concern. Shrugged off his warnings. She could take it. She was the big, bad Amhas-draoi. The best of the best. How bad could it be?
She drew her knees up. Leaned her head upon them, squeezing her eyes shut tight. She knew now. And it was worse than she could ever have imagined.
Chapter 25
Cam found her there hours later. Curled in a chair by the dying coals of a fire, shoulders hunched, face pale and tight with pain.
He’d shaken off the determined flirtations of Mrs. Kennett-Homes, evaded his uncle’s evil eye, and pointedly ignored the disturbing friendship of Brodie and Euna. These were all problems to be dealt with another day. He’d done what was asked of him, albeit with little enthusiasm. If Uncle Josh chose to reveal his hand and Morgan’s identity, Cam would deal with it then. More terrifying and more immediate? A dead body lying impaled in his drawing room, his servants missing, and Morgan fevered and bloody.
He decided to forget the body for now. From the looks of him, he wasn’t going anywhere. And after casting a quick hope that Amos and Susan had been well out of whatever had happened here tonight, he gathered Morgan into his arms. She needed him now. The rest could wait.
Ignoring the cloying stench of death that clung to her, he carried her to bed. Undressed her. Tended to her wounded arm, ugly but clean.
All the while, he spoke to her. Nonsense phrases in the soft Gaelic of his childhood. Endearments any mother would use to soothe a grieving infant.
A red-hot fury held him at her side long after she’d drifted into a fractious doze. Fury that she’d been alone and vulnerable. Fury that he’d not been here for her. She’d trusted him. And he’d betrayed her trust. Again. It didn’t matter it hadn’t been by choice. The damage had been done. Had it ended with her death, he’d only have had himself to blame. Another death laid at his door.
Shadows crossed the floor as the moon dropped into the west, and he remained. Her fever rose, peaked, and fell away, and still he remained. By the time he made it back downstairs to deal with the losing half of the battle, it was well past four, his eyes gritty with exhaustion.
The corpse lay faceup and spread-eagle, blood pooling greasy and brown beneath it. Dark eyes stared unseeing from a long narrow face shadowed by new beard. A face Cam knew he’d seen before. But where? This sense of déjà vu was becoming increasingly annoying.
Yanking free the sword, Cam wiped it clean. A cavalry saber. Well used, but well cared for. He tossed it back on the floor to be dealt with later.
Kneeling, he searched the body for any hint of identity. Pockets revealed string, a pocketwatch, loose coins, a much-folded playbill from Drury Lane for a play held three nights previous. His coat held no tags or marks identifying the owner. He wore no rings. Carried no letters. No calling cards. The dead man’s past had been wiped as clean as his sword.
“Who are you?” Cam whispered to the empty room.
He didn’t expect an answer. He didn’t receive one.
Dreams and dreams of dreams.
These were the foggy images passing like ghosts through Morgan’s mind. “Fada siar air agh-aidh cuain.” A voice singing plaintive and low. “Se mo dhuan-sa cruit-mo-chrith.” Soft words sung in a language that conjured a shimmering winter aurora over Skye. A crash of icy surf. Stolen hours spent tumbled in an Edinburgh bedchamber.
A steady heartbeat sounded beneath her ear and strong arms wrapped her in a tender embrace as she was carried. The chill of air pebbled her bare skin, and skillful hands tended to the throbbing agony of her arm. “Guth mo luaidh anns gach stuaidh. Ga mo nuall-an gu tir.”
She swam in and out of these sensations, these pictures, cringing from the staring, accusing eyes of the dead man. A man whose waxen face morphed into Cam’s. Whose muddy eyes lightened to an eagle’s blue. She reached for Cam, needing to feel the safety of his touch. Knowing that if she could only hold on to him, she’d not fall back into the fevered tide pulling her away from shore—away from him.
But even as she touched him, his face changed again to the flat, challenging arrogance of Doran Buchanan, whose cruel laughter taunted her with failure. Changed again to Scathach’s disappointed black gaze. And on to the cool contempt of the Fey in the park. The shifting sands finally settling into the friendly, grizzled patience of an old man, his piercing blue eyes twinkling with amusement. Of them all, he was the only one who spoke. His words threading their way deep into her heart.
“Love isn’t a chain, lass. Sometimes ’tis within the arms of a lover we find our greatest freedoms. Our greatest strengths.” He laughed, shaking his head. “Remember, the Fey may hold the wisdom of ages, but in matters of the heart, they ken less than nothing.”
Like taffy, she felt pulled in all directions. Stretched and thinned until nothing of Morgan Bligh remained. Only an empty shell holding the assumptions and expectations of all of them. Knowing that however she chose, she’d be letting some part of her down.
She opened her eyes to darkness. Heavy blankets. An ache in her stiff and bandaged arm. The solid weight of Cam lying beside her in bed, still half clothed as if he’d fallen asleep in the midst of undressing.
She shifted positions, expecting a dagger slash of pain. Discomfort definitely, but beneath the taut constraints of bandage, the worst came and went.
