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The layout of the new lodge was much the same as the lodge that had burned down in an attempt to murder his sister-in-law, Murine, two years earlier. He'd had it built a little larger though, and had two bedrooms put on the upper floor rather than just the one. Despite that spare room, Aulay carried the lass to his bedchamber. It was the nicer of the two, and larger. It was also the only one properly set up with furniture just yet. The other held only a small bed, while his room had a larger one with bedside tables, and a small dining table and chairs set up by the fire.
Pausing beside the bed, he peered down at the woman in his arms and hesitated. She was still soaking wet, her gown dripping on the floor with each step he took. He really should have thought to remove the dress before bringing her inside, he supposed. It would have saved his having to clean up the mess he'd just trailed through the house.
Grimacing, Aulay turned and carried her to the table instead and sat her on it. Supporting her back with one hand so that she remained upright, he began to tug at her gown with the other, and soon realized that was not going to work. Wet as it was, the damned thing was clinging to her like a second skin, and, apparently, he had lost all dexterity at undressing a woman. There was a time he would have made short work of it. He used to get a lot of practice, but that had stopped some years ago.
Pushing the thought away, Aulay pulled out his dirk, slipped it carefully under the neckline of the gown and quickly sliced the front wide open. A surprised grunt slid from his lips when the dress gaped, leaving a display of pale flesh. The lass was white as a swan and covered in goose bumps from her time in the ocean and the wet clothes. The only splashes of color he noted were the two round, cinnamon nipples that were presently puckered and hard, also from being cold. Although he imagined they would look much the same from passion too.
Swallowing, Aulay forced his gaze away from her body and peered at her face as he began to work the gown off first one arm and then the other.
"My apologies, lass, but there are no ladies here to tend ye at the moment," he murmured, working quickly at her sleeves. Much to his relief, they came off relatively quickly and the top of the gown dropped away to gather around her waist. That was when he saw the bruising that started just below her breasts and continued down to disappear under the gown. They were marks left by the rope that had bound her to the mast. The dark lines ran around her stomach and sides, while her back was one large bruise, he saw when he leaned forward to look at it. A result of being cast about on the ocean waves while tied to the mast, he supposed. Grasping her by the waist just above the cloth of her ruined gown, he lifted her off the table. The tattered dress dropped off at once to land on the floor with a wet slap.
"There, that was no' so bad, was it? I expected more o' a fight to get it off and--Oh, Christ," Aulay ended on a mutter as he turned his attention from the wet cloth on the floor to the woman he held and noted that he'd lifted her high enough that her breasts were now directly in front of his mouth. Aulay closed his eyes at once and counted to ten . . . twice . . . and then again. It had been far too long since he'd enjoyed the company of a woman and this was just . . . well, it was like a starving man having the finest ale waved before his nose.
"Control yerself, ye idjit," he muttered to himself. "Just put her in the bed."
Aulay peeked one eye open to look around to see where the bed was in relation to where they stood. He then started toward it, still with just the one eye open. He had crossed half the distance when it occurred to him that he could lower the woman and remove the temptation presently waving in front of his salivating mouth. She was nearly a foot shorter than him after all, and he was presently holding her a good two feet off the floor. He didn't need to hold her that high.
Rolling his eyes at his own stupidity, Aulay lowered her several inches and then allowed his second eye to open as he navigated his way to the bed. He quickly laid her in it, and tried not to look at her as he swiftly pulled the linen and furs up to cover her.
"There!" he said, straightening with relief once he'd finished the task. Aulay then looked down at her with a satisfaction that quickly turned to a frown as he noted her perfect white and bare shoulders above the fur. Bending, he pulled the furs all the way to her chin and straightened again, but then considered the lass. Rory would want to examine her, of course. He'd come in, pull the furs down and--
Muttering under his breath, Aulay hurried to his chest and retrieved the spare white linen shirt he'd brought with him. It was a little wrinkled, but freshly laundered. Returning with it to the bed, he reached for the furs and then hesitated. As ashamed as he was to admit it, Aulay didn't think he could look at all that perfect white flesh and those hard nipples again without touching and possibly tasting them as he dressed her. There was only so much temptation a man could handle and the devil in him was already arguing that it would not hurt to just give them a quick lick or suckle. She'd never know.
It really had been a long time since he'd lain with a woman. Too long if he was having thoughts like this, Aulay decided with self-disgust.
Setting his jaw, he bent to reach for the top of the furs again, and then paused as he had an idea. Smiling at his own cleverness, he left the furs where they were for now and instead worked at getting her head into the shirt, a much more difficult task than you'd think. Or perhaps he did it wrong. He started with the hem, lifting her up slightly, furs and all, and pulling the hem of the shirt over her head and then tugging and tugging the material down until her head finally cleared the neck hole.
Easing her back to lay flat again, Aulay carefully withdrew one of her arms from under the furs and then the other. Leaving them lying on the furs that now reached just to her armpits, he quickly found one of the sleeves and then stuck the nearer arm into it, feeding the limb in with one hand, and pulling it out with the other. After doing the same with the other arm, he grasped the hem of the shirt in both hands, then gathered the top of the furs in each as well with the cloth and simply pulled downward, covering her with the linen shirt even as he withdrew the furs.
Aulay was just congratulating himself for his ingenuity and was pulling the furs back up when he noticed that the shirt was backward on her. Even worse, while the cloth on top covered her from neck to past her knees, the back was still up by her shoulders, leaving the shirt covering only most of her. He briefly considered righting the shirt and making sure the back went all the way down too, but then shook his head and pulled the furs up to her chin again. Nay. He'd managed to strip and dress the woman without doing anything to shame himself, and wasn't risking mucking it up now.
Sighing, Aulay straightened to peer at her. His mouth tightened when he noted the blood on the pillow. From her head wound, he realized, and there was a lot of it. He'd meant to take a look and clean away the blood while he waited for Rory, but had forgotten all about it after getting her gown off.
Turning, Aulay hurried from the room to fetch water and fresh linens to cut into bandages. Within moments he had her upright, slumped against his chest as he leaned over her and gently cleaned the wounds on the back of her head. It was a difficult task with her hair in the way. Aulay could barely see what he was trying to clean through the long, thick strands, and what he could see looked pretty nasty. So he was more than relieved when he heard the pounding of horse hooves approaching the lodge.
After easing her back onto the bed, Aulay balled up the scrap of linen with which he'd been trying to clean away the blood. Tossing it into the bowl of now red water on the bedside table, he then stood to walk to the window.
"Thank God," Aulay muttered when he spotted his uncle and brothers riding up to the lodge. He watched them dismount and tether their horses before he moved out of the room to watch from the landing as they entered below.
"Aulay," Rory said, sounding relieved when he spotted him. "Alick scared the devil out of us. He rushed us all out here without even slowing long enough to explain what was amiss. I thought ye must be direly wounded or some such to account for th
e urgency."
"Me too," Conran said grimly, glowering at their youngest brother.
"Ye said no' to let anyone else ken what was happening, and they were in the practice field at Buchanan with soldiers everywhere," Alick explained when Aulay glanced to him. "Each one o' them was fighting a Buchanan soldier, and I did no' think I should take the time to take each one o' them aside to explain what had happened. The lass looked to need help quickly."
"Aye," Aulay agreed solemnly.
"Lass?" Uncle Acair asked, glancing curiously from Alick to Aulay.
Turning away from the rail, Aulay merely waved for them to ascend and moved back into the room where the woman rested. The lodge was immediately filled with the sound of pounding feet as his brothers and uncle rushed upstairs to join him. When the sound stopped abruptly, Aulay glanced back to see that Uncle Acair and Rory had stumbled to a halt just inside the door as they spotted the woman in his bed. They were presently preventing everyone else from entering.
"Move, man! The lass needs help," Aulay growled impatiently, and the words had Rory continuing forward again at once.
"What's wrong with her?" Rory asked as he hurried around the bed.
"The back o' her head took a terrible beating," Aulay explained as Rory sat on the edge of the bed and leaned over her to lift her eyelids.
"Who is she?"
"Who beat her?"
"Is that blood?"
"What happened to her dress?"
Aulay turned at those questions from his brothers and uncle as they fanned out in the room, examining anything and everything they could find, including the woman in the bed.
When he noted the way his uncle was scowling as he examined the wet dress he'd picked up, Aulay ignored the other questions and answered his first. "I had to cut off her dress."
"Is that blood?" Geordie asked again, moving closer to the bed to get a better look.
"Aye," Aulay grunted, noting that blood now stained both the pillow and linens. "She took some terrible injuries to her head. I suspect from it bouncing off the mast we found her strapped to when we headed out fishing. The storm last night was fierce."
"Did she wake again after I left?" Alick asked as he stepped up beside him to peer down at her pale face.
Aulay shook his head.
"So we do no' ken who she is?" Alick asked.
"Nay," he admitted, watching Rory pull the furs down so that he could turn the woman onto her side away from them. The position made it much easier for him to examine her head, Aulay noted, and shook his head at himself for not thinking to do that himself when he was trying to clean the wound.
"She was awake when ye found her?" Rory asked sharply, his gaze moving from Aulay to Alick and back.
"Aye," they answered together, and then Aulay rumbled, "She spoke a bit ere passing out."
Shaking his head, Rory turned to poke and prod at the back of the lass's head. "I am amazed she was awake, let alone spoke. Dear God, she took a beating."
