Page 13 of Lost with a Scot
“I’ll see it done,” William vowed and left. Alexei joined the rest of his men at the fireside while they sang songs and shared stories of the old days. He said nothing himself, but raised his mug of ale and drank whenever they toasted.
He kept a brave face for his men, but deep inside, he was a broken man, a man who’d seen his parents murdered, and he’d had to send his twin into exile. He knew very well he might never see Anna again.
He bid his men good night. A thousand fears plagued him as he pushed the flap of his small tent back and stretched out on the blankets on the forest floor.
He lay awake until the fires turned white with ash and the smoke faded into the predawn sky. His last thoughts before sleep claimed him were of his sister and whether she’d reached England safely.
CHAPTER4
Anna sat by the fire, staring at the flames. Small flashes of fear and pain kept darting across her mind like shadowy wraiths. The small fire in the hearth didn’t scare her, but she remembered a great fear of fire. Her body remembered it more than her mind. It was a strange thing for one’s body to carry memories that one’s mind could not remember.
Made restless by her memory failing her, she got up to splash cold water on her face. As she looked into the porcelain basin, the surface rippled when she saw... No, what she saw was impossible. It was as though she was looking through the inside of a wishing well and seeing the canopy of a dark forest stretching over the tops of smooth, water-worn stones. She knew that place, didn’t she? Anna blinked, and the strange vision was suddenly gone.
“Trust me, lass...,” Aiden’s voice whispered in her mind. Anna dipped her fingers into the water, and the knot of tension within her bled away.
“Stop being such a ninny,” she chided herself.
She washed her face and grimaced at the sight of her russet hair all in tangles. She searched Aiden’s travel case and found a brush and, with some effort, she finally managed to tease the knots from her hair. The brush was coarse, the bristles reminding her of a boar’s hairs. She ran her thumb over them and smiled a little as she thought of the brush’s owner. She returned the item to his case and tried to ignore the urge to examine the clothes inside the valise.
Anna gathered the long, wavy mass of her hair at the nape of her neck and bound it with a leather strap she’d found in Aiden’s valise. Once that was done, she settled by the window to watch the townsfolk below. All the while, she secretly hoped she’d get a glimpse of Aiden. As a stranger in this land, he was the only person she really felt like she knew. Whenever he was near, she felt warm and safe. She pulled her hair over her shoulder and played with a strand of it while she observed the people below. It was drawing close to dusk when she was startled by a knock.
“Anna, it’s Aiden. I brought Dr. MacDonald to see you.”
“Come in.” Anna rose from the chair to greet them. But more than that, she sought the comfort of Aiden’s face. He was the one person she trusted in this strange land.
“Ye’re looking better,” he observed. His eyes softened a little, and his lips formed a hint of a smile. That single expression made her belly quiver with excitement.
“I feel better,” she confessed in a slightly roughened voice. The seawater she’d swallowed had made her a little hoarse at first, but she was feeling so much better. “Molly brought me some food.”
“That’s good to hear.” The doctor followed Aiden into the room and closed the door behind him. “Miss Anna, I am Dr. MacDonald. I am the physician Mr. Kincade summoned to examine you. May I see how ye are doing now?”
She nodded and sat patiently while the doctor examined her. He was younger than she’d expected. Older than her—at least she thought so, given how she looked in the cheval mirror—but he wasn’t a gruff old man with a temper. She had vague memories of such a doctor treating her when she’d broken her arm.
“I broke my arm,” she blurted out in sudden excitement and shared a smile with Aiden. She was remembering things, and even if they seemed small and unimportant, they were at least memories.
“No, ye didna, lass. It was only a bit of bruising,” Aiden reassured her as he came to stand beside the doctor.
“No, no, what I mean is IrememberI broke my arm long ago. I was thinking about how nice Dr. MacDonald is and not at all like this doctor who once treated me when I broke my arm. I must have been a child then. I remember feeling so very small.”
“Her memory is coming back,” Dr. MacDonald said. “This is good. Things she does or sees in the next few weeks may bring back even more memories if we’re lucky. It’s possible the trauma of the shipwreck caused her mind to hide from those memories. The mind sometimes does that when an event causes enough trauma.”
The doctor then lifted Anna’s chin and studied her eyes while moving a finger back and forth as he instructed her to follow it with her gaze. Then he spoke haltingly in Danish. It was a relief to hear a language that was as familiar as English to her, perhaps even a little more so. It also explained why her own English when she spoke had a hint of an accent—it was a Danish accent. She still answered his questions, despite being rather confused as to why he was speaking Danish and not English.
“Excellent. Well, we’ve established this for certain, Miss Anna.” Dr. MacDonald winked at her teasingly like an older brother might. “Ye are from Ruritania,orye have extensive knowledge of speaking Danish.”
“I’m Ruritanian?” Aiden had mentioned that she had spoken another language to him, but he hadn’t known what she’d said. Now she had an answer. But what did it mean?
“Do not fret, my dear,” Dr. MacDonald soothed. “The memories will come with time. The more anxious ye are, the more energy it will require for yer mind to fetch them from where they’ve been buried.”
Anna tried to calm herself, but it wasn’t easy.
“Let’s see yer scalp and yer arms.” He gently touched her head and looked over her arms. The bruises had turned a dark purple in the last few hours. “Once yer feeling well enough, I suggest ye walk a little, with Mr. Kincade, of course. Not alone, lest ye become dizzy. I dinna wish ye to fall.”
Walking did sound nice. Anna was tired, but she was far more tired of being cooped up in this little room. She hadn’t even been here a full day and already she was wanting to get up and move about.
“How are ye feeling overall? Any other aches or pains?” Dr. MacDonald asked her.
“No, not really. It just feels as if I was battered about on the sea, and my body must need time to recover from that.”
