Page 81 of Her Highland Prophecy
He was a shadow in the night, nearly invisible as he scaled the fence onto the stable’s roof. He leapt across to the building that housed the kitchens, flattening his body onto the straw roof as he did so, and when he was certain that no one had heard him, he walked toward her with all the grace of a large cat.
Diana pushed herself backward giving him space to enter as he heaved himself through the tiny opening that passed as a window. It was a narrow fit. Gordain hissed as the wooden frame put pressure on the arm she knew was injured.
He practically fell into the room a moment later, bright red blood soaking the fabric of his shirt around his arm and shoulder. Diana was instantly at his side, her hands putting pressure on his wounds.
“We need to get these wrapped, before you lose any more blood,” she said, her mind already focusing on what she needed to do to achieve that. “Take off your shirt,” she instructed and then hurried across the room to their saddle bags.
She removed one of her clean shifts from inside and brought it back to him.
“Help me cut it?” she asked, casting around for something to assist them. Her arm was still throbbing from the slash the man had given her, and she didn’t think that she would be able to put that much force into it.
In the end, she made a small cut using his dirk and then they each took one edge of the cut and pulled. It wasn’t the straightest of bandages, but it would do for their purposes. She repeated the process three more times, making the shift utterly unusable.
They also didn’t have any water available to wash out the wounds, so the best she could do was wrap it around his shoulder, then his arm and finally his thigh, pressing a kiss to each cut as she went.
“Turn around,” he whispered as soon as she was finished, his fingers deftly untying the laces to her bodice.
When it loosened around her, he pulled at her sleeve, revealing the place where the sword had cut through her skin. Taking the last of the strips of fabric they had cut, he wrapped it carefully around her arm and then turned her to face him where she stood between his legs.
Gordain ran his lips reverently over the cloth covering her injured arm, his eyes communicating his remorse for her injury, but she didn’t need or want his remorse. She threaded her hand into his hair and kissed him with all the passion she could muster.
His kiss was desperate, his arms curling around her to pull her into his lap. She coaxed him to gentle the kiss, soothing him as best as she could until she reached up to cup his cheek only to find it wet with tears.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, instantly pulling his head against her chest. It always gave her immeasurable comfort when he did it to her, so it felt only right to try and soothe him in the same way.
His breathing was ragged. She felt him swallow heavily against her and could almost see how he was struggling to wrestle back his emotions. Curious and concerned she cupped his face again and turned it up to look at her.
“Me Faither is dead,” he said after a minute, his voice barely louder than a whisper.
She gasped.
“What happened? What did he say?”
“I dinnae ken what happened,” he said, his voice a bit louder now. “but there was a plot to wrest control of the Clan from us. Me accident during the hunt, yer illness…it was all a part of their plan.”
Diana looked at him with her mouth hanging open.
“Me? Someone tried to hurt me? But why?”
“They wanted to scare me or take ye out of the way so we couldnae use yer family’s money to help the Clan. They didnae ken that ye are nae truthfully from the family we said. If ye died and we had no other way to raise coin to pay the English they could claim us incompetent and try to take over.”
“That’s awful. And he just told you all of this? How long was he there before I saw you?”
Gordain’s face turned slightly sheepish and she had a horrible feeling.
“Truth be told, I kent that something was afoot since I was shot. Someone left me a note threatening to hurt us if we didnae ‘stop’ what we were doing.”
She wasn’t sure what her face looked like in that moment. She was feeling so many things at the same time that she hardly had more than a second to spare on each emotion: grief, betrayal, uncertainty, exasperation, fear…it was all a jumble in her head as she tried to set her mind straight. Whatever it was that Gordain saw, it made him continue talking hastily.
“They didnae threaten ye or say anything about ye in the letter, Diana. I wouldnae have put ye in danger like that if I had kent they would try to hurt ye.”
His face was pleading with her to forgive him, but the feeling of betrayal from being kept in the dark was quickly winning over all the others.
“Why didn’t you just tell me?” she asked.
“I didnae want to alarm ye. Ye and I were always together and when ye were with me sisters I had one of me men guard ye. It was safe.”
“Except for the entire time you avoided me. Is this the reason why?”
