Page 32 of My Warrior
Young Graham caught her eye then, entering the clearing with an armful of kindling. He glanced first at her, then Lord Holden, and challenged her with a look that said he had no intention of seeing to the prisoner’s comforts.
Muttering a curse, she soaked a clean rag in the spring and brought it, dripping, to Holden’s lips. Eagerly as a nursing babe, he sucked at the wet linen, craving the meager moisture even in sleep. Again and again she dampened the cloth and let him gradually slake his thirst in that way. She untied his bonds and noted that his wrists were badly chafed from his fevered stirring in the night.
“Do you think that’s wise?” It was Robbie, returning with a brace of coneys he’d snared. Jamie followed at his heels.
“God’s blood!” she snapped. “The poor bastard cannot even rouse to relieve himself! Have you lost all sense of humanity, Robbie?”
Robbie’s eyes grew flat. “He’s the enemy, Cambria.”
“You wouldn’t leave adogin its own piss,” she bit out.
Robbie only stared belligerently.
“Jamie,” she called, barely controlling her ire, “remove his hose and rinse them. The blanket will have to do for cover now.”
Jamie didn’t obey at once, but looked to Robbie for approval, which made Cambria livid. At his nod, Jamie gave her a disgusted grimace, but moved to do as he was bid.
She stalked off through the wood before she could lose her temper. Damn them! She was laird now. How dare they question her commands? This had the makings of treason. Her father had been right. She should never have welcomed them back to the clan. They would turn on her as quickly as they had Laird Angus.
Still, for now she needed them. She would just have to proceed carefully then, placate them until she could join with her allies at Blackhaugh.
When she came back to camp, her emotions in check, Holden was properly covered. She slipped the top of the blanket aside to inspect his wound. Again, she had to sponge the linen bandage loose. This time, beneath the bandage, there was an angry red swelling around the perimeter of the gash. Her heart sank. She recognized the sign of infection, but she had neither the time nor the skills to do anything about it now. Cautiously, she applied a new bandage and rinsed the old one, and, although she had strong feelings otherwise, proclaimed him fit to travel.
The sun had at last appeared through the thick clouds, looking like a grim yellow eye, when the party stopped again to rest. By her calculations, they’d arrive at Blackhaugh the following morning. The weather had been arguably kind of them, waiting in a strange misty limbo between rain and sun.
Their prisoner, however, hadn’t fared well. He was too debilitated to eat the food they’d brought with them. The most Cambria could get him to swallow were a few bites of bread soaked in wine. Then, when she inspected his injury, her earlier suspicions were confirmed. A foul smell came from the wound. Damn, she should have abducted the physician. What did she know about healing?
She’d have to do something. She couldn’t just let him die. Taking a deep breath to steady herself, she gently pressed the edges of the cut. A yellow liquid seeped out, and Holden came alive like a scalded kitchen boy. He cried out and flailed his limbs violently, striking her more than once with a stray fist—on her cheek, on her ear, on her shoulder.
“God’s hooks!” Jamie swore, ready to beat their hostage to a bloody pulp.
“It’s all right,” she groaned, rubbing her cheek where a bruise was no doubt already forming. “He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Hold him still, lads, will you? He’s not going to like what I have to do.”
The men complied under duress, but only by great effort could they restrain the Englishman. Swallowing down the nausea that crept up the back of her throat, she drained as much of the wound’s infection as she could while Holden thrashed wildly. She finished applying the new bandage and, depleted, sat back gracelessly on her haunches to stare hard at the man for whom she was going to so much trouble.
It was difficult to believe that she was actually dressing her enemy’s wounds. Still, gazing at the sword tucked into her saddle, she knew her father would have been proud of her. She had recovered his weapon, she was on her way to reclaim Blackhaugh, and she had his murderer at her mercy.
What, then, was this underlying shame she felt when she looked at her captive, writhing in torment as he fought unknown demons? Damn it, she shouldn’t feel a pittance of remorse for this assassin. He’d come into her life and destroyed…everything. Yet she couldn’t look upon his face without feeling pity.
By nightfall, beside a creek that ran through Gavin land, that pity had turned Cambria into a mass of jangled nerves. Holden hadn’t improved. In fact, he’d taken a turn for the worse.
Robbie had left to fetch reinforcements from the Blackhaugh renegades hidden in the hills nearby, and she was again reminding Jamie that the Englishman was of no use to them dead, when Holden began convulsing.
Graham stumbled backward from the litter and crossed himself. “He’s possessed by devils!”
Jamie warned, “Aye, he’s done for.”
Fear stabbed her like a dagger. “Nay!” she denied harshly, threatening with a desperate glare any who would cross her. She forced down the lump in her throat and sniffed back the stinging in her nose. “Nay! He cannot die! I need him!”
She cast about, looking in vain for some kind of inspiration from the dismal wood. Curse his English hide! She’d be damned if she’d let him die here, not now, not after all the trouble she’d gone to.
Some deep-rooted instinct made her reach down and tear the covers from Holden. His nude body quaked in the silver-blue moonlight, and he was as hot to the touch as new-forged iron. She had to cool him. Now.
If she could get him to the water…
The others gaped on in half-hearted protest while, with a strength born of necessity, she reached beneath his arms and dragged his heavy, trembling body across the forest floor, toward the gurgling creek.
The cold water stabbed like needles into her ankles as she pulled him with her into the stream. She shrieked at first with the shock of it, but waded further until the bulk of his body lay submerged. It was pure torture. The icy waves wrapped around her body as if to freeze her where she stood, and soon she shivered uncontrollably.
