Page 70 of Marry the Highland Villain
The awareness hurt, almost as much as the knowledge that he had no idea how to ease her fears.
A knock on his door pulled his attention away from his brooding. His stomach lurched with hope, remembering how Brigid had sought him out once before.
This time, however, the person who opened the door in response to his call was Emily, bearing her healer’s bag. Conall sat back, striving to keep his expression as neutral as possible.
Emily smiled in that gentle, knowing way of hers. “Nae who ye were hopin’ to see at yer door, I suppose?”
“I…”
“I ken what happened, Conall,” she said, saving him the trouble of attempting to explain himself. “Oliver told me and asked me to pass along a message.”
Emily stepped forward and set her bag on the desk, then unlaced Conall's shirt and gestured for him to remove it. Conall did as she bade him, too tired and sick at heart to fight.
“What’s the message?” he asked dully.
“That he’s fair sorry for all he did,” Emily said, her hands quick and careful as they moved over his body, examining his wounds before she started to clean them. “He says he didnae mean to cause ye further grief, and he regrets that he hurt ye. He wants to have a long talk with ye tomorrow after he returns from havin’ his own words with Devon.”
Emily’s words were kind, but the healing paste she applied to his wounds stung, and Conall closed his eyes as she applied a second lotion, then carefully wrapped his arm and shoulders in bandages.
“I’ll be waitin’ for him whenever he wishes to speak to me,” he said, once she had finished tending to him.
Emily nodded her agreement as she smoothed the last of the bandages into place, then touched his uninjured shoulder in a comforting gesture.
“The lass will come back to ye, Conall,” she said kindly. “Give her time to think and to sort her feelings, and she’ll come back to yer side.”
“Or run straight to her sisters,” Conall muttered darkly, finally voicing the thought that had been tormenting him the most as he sat here alone—that of Brigid choosing to go back to her family and leave him behind. “Ye ken she has reason enough, especially now that Laird Auchter’s dead. She’ll want them to ken what happened, and, kennin’ her, she’ll want to tell them in person.”
“She also has reason to stay,” Emily pointed out reasonably. “And if ye are patient and kind, and give her the time and space she needs, then ye’ll only give her more reasons to stay.”
“I’m nae sure.”
“Well, I am.” Emily smiled at him. “Trust a woman’s intuition on it, My Laird. She’s a smart lass, and she cares for ye. The fact that she ran to her rooms here, and nae the front gates as soon as she was released from that cell is a good sign. An’ if she doesnae leave within the next day, then ’tis only a matter of time before she comes to ye. Ye’ll see.”
Conall considered her words as he shrugged back into his shirt and vest.
“Do ye truly think so?” he asked, wincing as his injured shoulder made contact with the rough fabric of his vest.
His sister-in-law was right about most things, it was true. He just couldn’t quite bring himself to believe she would be right about this, too.
“Aye. I’m certain of it.” Emily packed away her medicines. “Just give it time.”
Conall took a deep breath and finished his glass of whiskey in a single gulp. He was still tired, and both his body and soul ached, but Emily’s words had given him a measure of peace, and a measure of hope.
“Aye,” he said, looking up at the woman gratefully. “Aye, I’ll give her time.”
Brigid’s sleep was restless, broken by nightmares of the dungeons beneath MacKane Castle and the cruel expression on Laird Auchter’s face the last time she had seen him. The crimson color of his blood seeped into her dreams and dyed everything red, until she woke up with a start, sick and shivering. Even the light of dawn appeared tainted by death.
She couldn’t face the morning meal. Just the thought of it made her stomach roil unpleasantly, and as for the thought of seeing Conall…
Shewantedto see him. She wanted to seek the comfort of his strength and the safety of his arms. But doing so felt like ignoring the truth she’d seen at other times.
Conall was dangerous. Not to her, but to anyone who might harm her. Conall might do anything at any time. The safest thing for the denizens of MacKane Castle would be for her to leave at once so that he no longer had reason to act so violently to defend her. And yet, despite that, something stopped her from leaving.
Despite her best efforts, she’d broken her mother’s rule, at least in part. Nothing, though, could change how she felt when she remembered Conall’s defense of her—even against his brother—or the way he’d touched her on their wedding night. The tenderness of his hands and his mouth on hers haunted her dreams, and yet those hands were the same ones that had killed four men on her behalf—one of them her own kin.
That should enrage and terrify her, she knew, but it didn’t. She’d seen enough of Laird Auchter in that one brief encounter to know he’d been a danger far more perilous and twisted than any rage Conall might experience.
Conall had his anger, but Auchter had been coldly cruel, without even the brief glimmers of honor that Brigid recalled seeing in her father’s men, or the warmth that filled her memories of Magnus Blackwood.
