Page 44 of Highlander's Sinless Nymph
“Don’t go to sleep just yet,” Charlotte told him sternly. “I need you to drink the rest of that water skin. By that time this raspberry leaf tea should have cooled and I want you to drink that too. It’ll help get you on your feet quicker.”
She thought that Edward would ignore her, as so many of the men she tried to help in the English army camp did, thinking that a woman could not possibly know better than a man. However, the Highlander merely opened his eyes up again, peered at her blearily, and took another pull of water from the skin.
“I promise to take me medicine, Sassenach,” Edward said, “but ye must promise me that ye’ll trust me to do it. Whilst I do it, ye’ll need to keep a watch out. Sound fair?”
Charlotte nodded.
“I will watch for pursuit,” she said.
* * *
The night passed slowly. The skinny moon rose like a nail paring in the clear, velvet sky.
Edward had drunk his water and his tea and now sat dozing, with his eyes half open and his bare toes pointing at the stars. There was not a breath of wind. He took comfort in this, as it meant that he could at least hear the sound of pursuing hooves coming from a mile off, even if he could not do any watching.
The crunch of approaching footsteps and the swish of skirts through the long grass told him that Charlotte was approaching. He opened his eyes wider so that she did not think he had been napping on the job.
“I told you that you could sleep now,” she said to him in a reproving voice.
“Aye, that ye did, but I found that I could nae drift off. Nae kenning that ye would be left awake on yer own,” Edward replied.
Charlotte came and sat down by the fire. She had found the dried meat that Edward had wrapped and put in his saddlebags. She tossed him a strip of the venison. Edward picked it up and looked at it without much enthusiasm.
“Eat,” Charlotte said to him. “Your body needs nourishment.”
She filled his water skin with some more of the cooled tea and passed that over to him too.
They chewed in a companionable silence for a little while, Edward washing down little mouthfuls of venison with the raspberry leaf tea. Every now and again he would shoot a surreptitious look at the vision across from him. Whether, it was his weakened state, or the fact that he was seeing past Charlotte’s last name finally, he found himself softening mightily towards the girl.
“Seems that ye saved me life, Sassenach,” Edward said.
Charlotte looked up at him. “It was my pleasure,” she said. “It was nice to be able to help. I feel that I’ve been nothing but a burden to you since I took you up on your offer to take me on this journey.”
“Ye have nae been a burden, lass,” Edward said. In truth, though she had started out in his eyes as little more than luggage, he had quickly become accustomed to her presence.
More than that, I’ve come to enjoy every moment we spent together.
“That’s kind of you to say, Edward,” the woman said. The way that this half-compliment made her smile so, made Edward glad to have said it, but it also made him a little bit sad. It was clear that Charlotte Bolton was a woman who was not used to receiving many kind words.
“I wish I could do somethin’ fer ye in return, Sassenach,” he said. “I do not think poor old Cogar would have been able to do half as good a job as ye did carin’ fer me.”
Charlotte gave him a shy smile and nibbled at her own strip of venison. “I told you,” she said. “You did enough in freeing me from the prison that I had helped build around myself.”
Edward continued to regard her, not knowing quite what to say to that. The gnawing guilt he had been feeling about harboring his ulterior motive had been doubly exacerbated by the way that the young woman had spent the last few hours looking after him. He chewed his lip thoughtfully, and twirled the strip of dried meat between his fingers.
“Actually, perhaps there is onelittlething that you could do for me,” Charlotte said.
Edward looked up and saw that there was a twinkle in her eye.
“And what might that be, Sassenach?” he asked.
The pale lapis lazuli eyes pierced him from the other side of the fire.
“Tell me a little of yourself,” Charlotte said in a meek voice. “I feel like you know all there is to know about me––everything that might indicate how I came to be the person I am, anyway. I feel that I know only of you what there is to see on the surface. You are a closed book to me.”
Edward held her eye, captivated. He could not deny to himself that a part of him wished to unburden himself of his subterfuge. The sheer openness and friendliness of the woman made him want to confide in her, to tell her things that he usually kept tucked away safe inside of himself.
“Come,” Charlotte said, “we are friends now, are we not?”
