“Better than you, son,” Magnus said.
Blair came rushing into the chamber and said, “Oh, goddess, no. Come. Lie down, and I’ll take care of your wounds. No more guard duty for you for a while.”
Hamish said, “He’ll have a more important role to play.”
Aisling kissed Coinneach and helped her mother care for his wounds.
“The chief said we will have a chamber to ourselves.”
Aisling blushed to high heaven.
“Aye,” Hamish said. “I have other duties to tend to. If you need me, Blair, just send Niven.”
Niven moved out of the shadows as if he knew he shouldn’t have been eavesdropping. His eyes were wide when he saw all the injuries that Coinneach had sustained.
“We’ll move you to your chamber once I’ve tended to your wounds. Aisling can look after you. Niven can wait outside your chamber door, and Aisling will send him to come for me if Coinneach becomes feverish during the night,” Blair said.
“Aye,” Niven said.
Aodhan appeared in the doorway, solid as an oak, and after a moment’s hesitation—perhaps weighing the wisdom of touching so battered a man—stooped to wrap one arm gingerly around Coinneach’s waist and the other under his uninjured shoulder. He smelled of leather and the wind off the loch.
Together, with Coinneach limping and cursing in a half-hearted, exhausted way, they made a slow, shuffling journey past the main hall, up the narrow, spiraling stairs, past the laughing shadows of the torch sconces and the lingering, acrid scent of burning pitch.
The corridors emptied as they passed, news of Coinneach’s wounds perhaps preceding them, or perhaps it was merely respect for the sanctity of his pain.
Aodhan guided him to a thick wooden door at the outer bend of the tower. He opened it with a flourish and stood aside. “Hamish thought you would like your own place for the night,” he said. “No more sleeping in the barracks for you or the couples' quarters that you had been destined for.”
The room was large and opulent, but mostly it was private—a courtesy Coinneach had not expected. The walls, built of massive stones quarried from the same hill the tower stood upon, were mortared so tightly that not even the breath of winter could pry its way inside. The single window was narrow and arrow-slit high, but it let in a shaft of silver light and the distant tang of rain. The bed—he wondered if Hamish himself had arrangedfor it—was newly made up with woolen blankets and furs folded neatly at the foot. On the bedside table, someone on the staff had left a shallow basin of steaming water, a rag, and a single flagon of ale.
He sat at the edge of the bed, easing his battered body down with a hiss. His wounds were bandaged tightly—Blair’s and Aisling’s doing. The pain in Coinneach’s side and thigh throbbed in time with his pulse, but it was a pain he could wear, like any other piece of clothing.
He took an experimental sip from the flagon. It was a local brew, sour and pungent, with the aftertaste of thistle and peat. His mind drifted, as minds are wont to do in the aftermath of violence, to the question of whether Aisling would come to him tonight or whether she would keep to herself, seeing to his family instead. He would not blame her if she did because she loved them as much as he did.
He lay back, staring at the ceiling, listening to his own breath and the faint drip of rain from the windowsill. He thought of his mother’s croft and the stories she’d told of Highland ghosts that haunted the hours between dusk and dawn, and he wondered, not for the first time, which of the many dead he might find waiting for him if he drifted off now and did not wake again.
The handle turned, and Aisling stepped into the room, her red hair braided tightly, and her face scrubbed clean—paler than he remembered, but just as beautiful. He smiled and held his hand out to her, ready to sleep with her, glad she had come to him.
“If you need anything, just call me,” Aodhan said. Then he left them alone and shut the door.
Aisling sat beside him on the bed and put her head against his uninjured shoulder. “You couldna let Aodhan take Osmond on as a wolf, could you?”
“It was my task.”
She nodded and kissed his shoulder.
“You know we’ve talked about no’ keeping secrets from each other.”
“Aye.” She looked up at him, waiting expectantly to hear the news.
“Rupert, before he died, said that his da killed your da while they were in battle against a common enemy. He did it to ensure that Blair never gave up Morag’s secret. But your mother never knew?”
“Nay. She thought he had died in battle honorably. I dinna want to share the news with her.”
“We willna. I just thought you should know.”
“I’m glad you did, and I’m even gladder that my da’s murderer is dead.”
“I agree.” Then he began to caress her breast and kiss her mouth.
