Page 6 of Lost with a Scot
With tender hands, he removed her wet leather boots and rolled the stockings off her legs before he gently turned her over to undo the back laces of her gown and remove it. The clothes she wore were finely made, those of a highborn lady, and yet they were not overly extravagant.
He averted his eyes as best he could. It was impossible to ignore the beauty of her body as he revealed it, but his mind was focused on ridding her of the wet fabric. Then he peeled back the covers of his bed and tucked her naked body beneath the sheets and added a few logs to the fire to warm the room. He removed the soaked top blanket and retrieved another that was draped over the back of a nearby chair. He was used to the cold in Scotland, had spent his whole life in a drafty castle and often didn’t need as many blankets to sleep at night, but this woman needed as much warmth as he could give her. The blue tint began to fade as her cheeks warmed, losing that fearful white cast to her skin. Her mouth moved as if she was trying to speak, and she stirred fretfully in the bed.
“Rest now. Ye’re safe.” He placed the backs of his fingers against her forehead, checking for any sign of a fever. He remained at her side, frowning slightly as he studied her features over and over, trying to understand how the woman of his dreams, whose name he didn’t even know, was here with him now.
Molly came in once during the wait for the doctor and set a nightgown down on the bed and helped him hang the woman’s clothes by the fire to dry.
A quarter of an hour into his silent vigil at her bedside, the doctor arrived with the stable lad on his heels. When the doctor set his black leather case down at the foot of the bed, Aiden tucked a shilling into the boy’s open palm and ruffled his hair before sending him on his way.
The doctor was a younger man, perhaps only a few years older than Aiden. He offered his hand to Aiden.
“I’m Arthur MacDonald.”
He shook the man’s hand. “Aiden Kinkade.”
“Now, tell me what’s happened. I’ll look her over while ye talk.” The doctor reached for the sheets, about to pull them down, but Aiden caught his hand.
“I removed her clothes. She’s as bare as a newborn bairn.” He released the doctor’s hand. “I found her washed up on the shore with water in her chest. I cleared much of the water out, but she was drenched and her lips were turning blue.” He released Dr. MacDonald’s hand.
“Dinna fret. I will endeavor to examine her carefully.” The doctor lifted only parts of the sheet as he worked and kept his gaze averted whenever the woman had to be bared more openly for his examination.
“She has a nasty bruise on the back of her head. I see no other injuries except some bruises from a rope or some other binding on her arms. It’s her lungs I am most concerned with. It will be easy for her to catch pneumonia. She must be kept warm and dry and sleep elevated with her chest up. Feed her hot broth for the first day or so, and if she’s feeling better, she may have more substantial food. Avoid letting her have too much milk or cheese. They will make her cough worse when she starts to clear her lungs out. When she is feeling better, ye must get her up and walking. I’ve seen my patients do better when given exercise rather than staying in bed. The movement clears the lungs.” The doctor stroked his short, dark beard thoughtfully. “Ye dinna ken who she is?”
“No,” Aiden said quietly. “I was riding along the shore when I noticed debris from a shipwreck washing in. That’s when I spotted the lass in the shallows.”
“A shipwreck, eh? Any other survivors?”
He shook his head. “If there were, I didna see them.”
“Well, I’ll leave ye to see to her when she wakes. I’m only a short distance away. My home is the last house at the end of this road. Dinna hesitate to summon me.”
“Thank ye, Doctor.” Aiden shook the man’s hand again. Once Dr. MacDonald was gone, Aiden sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the beautiful woman from his dreams who had washed up on the shore. He couldn’t help but wonder if she was a selkie princess. He smiled at the thought. No, she was a fae princess. Only the fairy folk could make a woman this beautiful.
“Who are ye, lass?” he asked again, but the woman slept on, oblivious to him and his concerns for her.
Color was continuing to return to her skin, and her breathing was deeper. Her face, which even in sleep had seemed so strained before, had eased and her lovely features softened. He traced her dark eyebrows with a fingertip and then touched her lips, wishing he could warm them with his own in a burning kiss. In his dreams, he was always reaching for her, wanting to hold her, to kiss her, to love her until the world ended and began again and new stars burst forth in the night sky. But it was madness. Surely a woman in his dreams whom he’d never met couldn’t be real, couldn’t be this woman. His brothers would have insisted it was a mere coincidence, but Aiden believed in things his brothers did not, things like fate and destiny. This woman... was both.
“Whoever ye are, I will protect ye, always,” he vowed.
The woman gave a soft sigh, and her lips parted slightly as she murmured words too soft for him to hear.
* * *
Anna’s head throbbed.She wondered vaguely if she had drunk too much wine at dinner. She moaned and rolled, then winced as she rotated her head on her pillow. The twist of her body released something in her lungs, and she coughed hard as she lay on her side. She tasted salty water in her mouth and licked her dry lips. When she moved again, the pain on the back of her head twinged again.
“Ouch!” she hissed, and her sore throat burned at the single exclamation of pain.Sore throat?Why did she have a sore throat?
“Easy, lass, ye’ll hurt yerself.” A deep, rich voice spoke softly from somewhere nearby. She flinched and opened her eyes. For a second her vision blurred, and then she realized she was in a strange room with a strange man. But this realization was worse when she didn’t know what sort of room sheshouldbe in. The man was dark-haired, and his stormy blue-gray eyes were fixed on her in obvious concern.
“Who... who are you?” she demanded. She thought she had a vague memory of him and terrible, cold black water and then him again... in pale gray-blue water like the sky and how the sunlight had formed a ring of light around his head as he looked down at her.
“I canna understand ye, lass. Can you speak English?”
“Yes—yes, of course,” she said in English. Had she been speaking Danish? She knew the difference between the two languages and made the jump to English when he asked her.
“So ye speak more than one language,” the man mused. “Do ye have a name, lass?”
“Anna. My name is Anna...” Her voice trailed off as her memory came up with nothing afterAnna. Why couldn’t she remember her own name?
