Highlander Avenged (2 page)

The wren fluttered in a nearby holly tree, fussing at her now, as if to chide her for lingering in its territory. Jeanette looked about her to get her bearings and realized that she was very near the one place that had always been peaceful, had always reinforced her sense of calm—the sacred wellspring where she used to watch her mother make offerings and prayers to the power of the Targe. Tears she refused to shed clogged her throat. Visiting the wellspring would not be the same without her mum, but at least she might feel closer to her there and might be able to draw some small comfort from that.

She quickened her pace up the rocky trail and soon made it to the top of the path, where it turned left around the shoulder of the ben. She stepped onto an almost imperceptible track to the right that she knew wrapped around a large moss-covered stone outcropping. From there it ran a hundred feet or more to the shallow cave that sheltered the wellspring where crystal-clear water poured forth from a crack in the mountain, splashing into an icy pool before it ran down the benside to the loch.

Anticipation had her rushing down the track even faster than she had climbed the ben. She came round the last curve, hopped over the water that escaped down the ben, and skidded to a stop in the small cleared area just outside the cave.

It took a moment for her to understand what she saw there.

A man knelt in profile next to the pool of water. A shaft of sunshine cut through the shadows, turning his bare torso golden, and picking out strands of almost-white-blond hair on his head. He stopped, just as he was about to pour water over his right arm, and looked over his shoulder at her. He smiled and it was dazzling.

Jeanette blinked, and blinked again, as she started considering what she should do. Here was a stranger. Should she run or stand her ground? She slowly let her hand settle over her sgian dubh, her small knife.

“Are you mute, then, lass?”

His voice, deep and laced with humor, shocked her out of her thoughts. She couldn’t help but watch as he reached for the tunic laying by his feet, and pulled it over his sun-kissed skin before rising and facing her, grinning at her now. His shirt stuck to his wet skin, drawing her attention to his chest and rippled stomach, drawing her eye—

She gasped and snapped her gaze back up to meet his. He didn’t look English, with his shoulder-length dark blond hair, braided at the temples, and his well-faded plaid that he wore with ease. But neither had Nicholas, their new chief, looked English when first he came among them. Yet, somehow, Jeanette had always known Nicholas was an honorable man and that had proved true. She couldn’t say exactly why, but she had the same sense about this man.

And then she remembered what her mum had always told her: “You are a fine judge of character, my sweet Jeanette. I do not understand how, but you always seem to ken the truth of someone when first you meet.” The memory was both sweet and melancholy.

“Lass?” he asked, his grin even wider now, lending a twinkle to his green-and-brown hazel eyes.

Instinct warred with recent experience and instinct won out. He might be an honorable man, but that did not mean she trusted him. Not yet.

“What are you doing here?” she finally snapped, setting her fists on her hips. She would find no comfort here in the company of a stranger and she wanted him gone. “Who are you?”

“I could ask the same of you,” he said.

“Nay, you could not. This is my family’s land and you do not belong here. I ask again, Who are you?”

The man folded his arms across his chest and cocked his head at her, his grin firmly in place as if he thought it disarming. Which it was.

Jeanette notched her chin up and waited for him to answer her questions. He was the interloper here. He was the one shattering the serenity of the place with his skin and his smile and his eyes.

“I am Malcolm MacKenzie,” he said finally.

She nodded. “Where is your home?”

“In the north, west of Inverness. Now, who are you, and whose land is this?”

“Come away from the pool.” She desperately wanted him away from her mother’s place, and motioned for him to join her outside the sheltering rock, but as he passed her, the almost-transparent damp linen of his tunic revealed a large festering wound on his upper right arm. She grabbed his arm at the elbow, stopping him. “What happened?”

Malcolm looked down, a swear hissing from his lips.

“ ’Tis nothing,” he said, but when he went to pull away from her, she held him fast, already pushing his sleeve up, exposing the long, oozing gash on his upper arm.

She could tell, from the faint marks around the edges of the wound, that it had been inexpertly stitched at one point. But the stitches were gone now, and yet it still oozed and there were faint red lines leading away from it.

She looked up at him. The grin had been replaced with a scowl, the twinkle no longer in his eyes.

“You were here to heal this.”

He stepped away from her touch and jerked the sleeve down.

“ ’Tis none of your concern, lass.”

She would be damned if it was not. This she could do something about. This was something she was still useful for and she might as well embrace her healer duties right away. She dug in the bag of herbs and salves that always hung at her waist but realized she must have left the salve she searched for back at the castle. She did have a small linen pocket full of moss with her. It was good for dressing a wound like this, but also good at drawing the fester out. She looked about them, trying to spy anything else that might help his wound heal, but there was only the wellspring.

“Did you pray?” she asked.

“Pray? For healing? Aye, every day.”

“Nay, that is not what I mean. The water will not heal you without a prayer, a chant really, and even then ’tis not immediate. Come, let me show you.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him back to the little pool of clear mountain water.

“Take off your tunic,” she said.

“Lass, do you seek to take advantage of me?”

“Advantage?” Confused, she looked up to find him grinning again.

“You demanded I take off my clothes.” He winked at her but she just rolled her eyes.

“I am a healer. Take your tunic off—only your tunic. That wound is in a bad way. ’Tis trying to send out poison to your blood. You are lucky I came upon you when I did. A few more days and it might not be within my skill to heal you.”

His expression turned serious again and he took off his tunic, scowling a little as it pulled away from the wound.

She took his elbow once more, stunned for a moment by the warmth of his skin and the golden hue of it next to her pale hand. But she had a task to do, so she turned him so that his arm was illuminated by the sun, and began to press around the hot edges of his wound, bringing the greenish ooze to the surface.

“How long has it been like this?” She was aware that she had fallen into her “healing voice,” as her mother used to call it. A soft, reassuring voice, showing concern but not fear.

He did not speak, and when she glanced up from her work, she found his eyes fixed on his injury. He did not look to be in pain, but there was something in his face that told her he was as concerned as he should be.

“How long?” she asked again softly, as if he were a bairn she did not wish to frighten.

“It has been a while.”

“A battle?” She had seen similar injuries in her kinsmen after a battle. Swords sliced clean and deep and if the wounds were not tended properly, they did not heal well.

“Aye.”

She worked the wound a bit more, pleased that he did not make her stop, nor did he complain over her attentions, as some warriors were wont to do. The wound showed signs of partial healing. The stitches had been removed some time ago, from the looks of it, which meant his injury had not happened recently.

“This happened before winter set in,” she said.

“Why would you say that?”

“No one battles in the Highlands in winter.”

He raised an eyebrow as if he challenged her conclusion, but Jeanette held firm in her opinion.

“Aye, before winter set in,” he said.

Jeanette tried not to smile at his admission. It was almost summer, now. She thought back and determined the wound could be no less than six or seven months old, and still it was not healed. He would be in no shape to battle this summer, the high season for that sort of activity. She looked at the wound and his arm closely, then looked down at his hand. The muscles were weak from disuse. Even if she could heal his injury, it would take even longer before he could wield his claymore, the large two-handed sword she had noticed leaning against the wall of the cave.

’Twas too bad. He looked to be a braw warrior and her clan could use a few more of those if the English really did send more soldiers, as the clan expected. Jeanette shuddered at the thought of what it would mean to her beleaguered clan if they were set upon again before they could rebuild the castle wall.

If they were set upon . . .

She stilled and looked up at him. Here she was, with a half-naked stranger who claimed to be a MacKenzie but whom she knew nothing about, regardless of what her instincts said. She did not know his loyalties, nor his true reason for being on MacAlpin land, for she doubted he had come so far from his home just to wash his wound in the wellspring. Why would a Highlander be wandering alone in the wilderness with a wound such as this anyway? Why would he not have gone to his home to be nursed back to health, or have asked for help from any chief he might encounter? He would not if he was hiding, and he would only be hiding if he should not be here.

“Did you fight for the English?” Though she tried to hold it in, all the hatred she felt for the English rolled out with her words, along with the disgust she felt for those Scots who fought with them against their own countrymen.

“I fought with Robert the Bruce at Methven and Dalrigh.” He once more pulled free of her grip, thunder in his eyes. “There are Scots who would fight with the English devils, but I am not one of them. Are you?”

“I have more than one reason to hate the English king and the men who fight for him.” She glowered at him.

“Then we have that in common,” he said.

She watched him, gauging the truth in his words by the evidence of his body. He met her eyes without hesitation. His feet were planted firmly on the ground, as if he held fast to his assertions. His hands
were unfisted at his sides and he seemed genuinely insulted that she called his loyalty into question.

Jeanette let out a long breath.

“Come, kneel down by the pool and let me finish caring for your arm, Malcolm MacKenzie.”

M
ALCOLM COULDN
’
T HELP
but smile at the beautiful woman. The turn of events this morning was stunning. He had heard there were healing wells in this area, though he’d only stumbled across this one, following the nearly hidden path on a hunch. And then an angel had found him. He wondered at his own excessive language but it was apt.

“Will you kneel?” She motioned for him to resume his place by the pool of water, then she knelt beside him and began to move her hands in the air over the wound as she whispered something. The words meant nothing to Malcolm, nor did the fluid motions of her delicate, long-fingered hands. When her hands stilled, she closed her eyes and kept whispering, and he took the opportunity to look at her more closely.

She was perhaps twenty years old, no more, with flaxen hair and, though they were closed now, her eyes were the color of a clear midsummer sky. When first he saw her, the sun had outlined her gentle curves for a long moment, and then she’d spoken—
nay, commanded. There was no shortage of confidence in her as she stood there, her hands on her hips, demanding answers to her questions.

And she was a healer.

Saints be praised.

When her whispering was finished, she took a small wooden cup from the fold of her arisaid, dipped it into the icy water, and poured it over his wound as she returned to her whispering again. Malcolm’s skin prickled against her hand where it cradled his elbow, but the numbing water was a welcome respite from the pain that had seared through him when she had poked and prodded at his arm. As she poured the water over his arm, again and again, he was captivated by the way it flowed down his skin, rippling over and around the angry wound, then running off his elbow and her hand and splashing back into the pool.

“Why did you not return to your home when you were injured?” she asked, breaking his reverie.

She released his arm, shook out the cup, and put it back where she carried it, then grabbed his tunic and used it to carefully dry the area around the injury.

She looked up at him and raised her eyebrows. It was only then that he realized he’d been so busy watching her graceful movements, he hadn’t answered her question.

“I . . . I was too ill, and then winter set in.” He sat back on his heels and reached for the tunic in her hand.

“Do not don that yet.” She pulled a handful of dried moss out of her healer’s bag. Deftly, she arranged the moss into a thick layer that would cover the length of the no-longer-oozing gash. She dipped it in the water, squeezed it out, and laid it over the site. “Hold it there a moment.”