to her as it used to, whispering promises of the for ever. Once the system of lairdship had ruled this place, the great estates handed down through the generations, like treasured possessions and always nurtured. Until King David had come with his fealty and his barons, taking the land by force and granting it to his own vassals for their allegiance and loyalty.
Now possession was tempered by blood and war and betrayal. Sweat beaded beneath the hair at her nape and if she had been alone she might have lifted the heavy mass away from her skin and simply stood there.
But she was not alone.
She could feel his eyes on her back like a hawk might watch a mouse crossing a field. Waiting.
Had he not said exactly that to his friend as he sat there against the tree, his hose tight in places that made the blood in her face roar.
‘Alisdair.’
The name came beneath breath like a prayer or a plea, invoking what was lost and would never be again. She was glad when Angus reappeared from the forest with a bundle of dry tinder and a good handful of blaeberries.
Chapter Two
The fish and rabbit were tenderly cooked and when the one she called Ian might have given them only a very small portion she had gestured him to ladle out a full plate, with a crust of hard black bread in the juice.
The boatman had eaten nothing, his head lolling on to his chest in a way that was worrying. Marc saw the woman bring an extra blanket and lay him down on it with care. He also saw that she did not bind him again, but left him free. To die in the night without fetters, he supposed. Perhaps there was some folklore from this part of the world that a man should meet his maker unconstrained.
After she had finished with his comfort she came to him, loosening the ties at his wrists and directing him to come to the fire.
There was a flask of whisky waiting and she motioned him to drink. The brooding in her eyes lent him the thought that she had not meant to do this at all and he swallowed as much as he could before she took it back. He was pleased to feel the burn of it down his throat as an edge of calm settled.
He would need it. Already she had lifted her knife.
‘I have to remove the bad skin.’
He had not even answered before she poured whisky across his gash, fire against the hurt and his heart beating as fast as he had ever heard it.
Flames lightened her eyes into living gold and her fingers on the blade were dextrous. He saw she had another scar running from the base of her smallest finger right across the foot of her knuckles to the thumb. He wondered if she had got that at the same time as she had received the one on her face.
‘If you stay still, it will help.’
The message in her words was plain. Move and the agony will be greater. Like a challenge thrown down into the heart of mercy.
He wished he had a piece of leather to bite upon, but she did not offer it and he would not ask.
‘You are experienced in the art of healing?’
At this question both the men behind her began to laugh.
‘The art of killing more like,’ one of them muttered.
He saw her grasp tighten on the blade, an infinitely small movement that suggested wrath a hundred times its size. He trusted it also signalled care or humanity or just simple expertise. At the moment it was the best he could hope for. Marc was surprised when she spoke again and at length.
‘From experience I find healers are women with little mind for the ordinary. My opinion of them is tempered by their need to eke out some existence in a world that might otherwise be lost to madness.’
This train of thought was to his liking. ‘So you are not of that ilk?’
‘Witches and fairy folk are born into the lines that whelp them.’
As Isobel raised her blade into the light the dancing flames were reflected in silver.
‘But your line was different?’ Suddenly he wanted to know something of her. With her mind distracted by his pain and hurt, she might be persuaded to answer him.
But she remained silent, her lips firm as she cut into his flesh, the roiling nausea that had been with him since the rescue at the beach rising up into his throat as bile.
‘Lord Almighty.’
‘You are a religious man, then?’
‘If I said that I was would it help my cause?’
‘With your God or with me?’ she countered, turning the knife into live tissue and watching as blood filled the wound.
He swallowed.
‘There is sand and grit in the furrow and it must be removed.’
‘Grain by grain?’ He visibly flinched and she stopped for a second to watch him, a measured challenge in the tilt of her head and so close he could feel the warmth of her breath.
He shook and hated himself for it, but even as he held his hand to anchor the elbow to his side he could not stop it.
Shock, he thought; a malady that men might perish of as easily as they did the cold. On an afterthought he glanced over to the boatman on the blanket and saw that he had stopped breathing.
‘He left us as I poured the whisky across your arm.’ Isobel Dalceann’s words held no whisper of sorrow even though she had tended him. ‘Tomorrow would have been too hard for him to manage, so our Lord in his wisdom has seen him walk along another path.’
Two things hit him simultaneously as she uttered this. She was a spiritual woman and she was also a practical one. For some obscure reason both were comforting.
The pain, however, was starting to war with the numbness of whisky and he stayed quiet. Counting.
By the time he had got to a hundred and she placed her knife back on the hook across the fire he knew he was going to be sick.
She turned away and did not watch him throw up even though she had promised herself that she would. But this man with his bruised green eyes and gilded surcoat was … beguiling. No other damn word for it.
As long as he did not look as though he might fall over and mark the wound with the earth she would wait; patience had always been her one great virtue, after all.
‘Are you finished?’ She wished she might have inflected some empathy into the query, but the others were watching her and they would not expect it.
Nodding, he straightened. He still shook, though not with the fervour that he had done before.
‘The poultice I have prepared will numb any pain you have.’ God in Heaven, now why had she said that?
A slight smile lifted his lips. ‘Do I dare hope that the Angel of Agony has a dint in her armour?’
‘The needle that I
