Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(12)

CHAPTER FIVE


The palm of her hand had tasted like pepper.

It seemed right that she would taste of a spice that had been harvested in India, carried by camels across Arabia, and shipped to Venice, so that flecks would end up here, flavoring the palm of a woman who did not look like part of this world.

He watched a pulse jump in her wrist where her hand lay in his lap. He glanced up to see a look in those sea-green eyes that spoke of wanting, yearning.

Then a shadow fell over them and Cairenn yanked her hand away.

“You disobeyed my orders.”

The doctor loomed before them. The man had a sack slung across his shoulder, and his eyes were as cold as glacier ice.

“Yes, I rose from my pallet.” Lachlan kept his voice even because this father, with his anvil of a jaw, looked capable of committing murder. “I thought it would do me good. A man gets soft lying about all the long day.”

“Straining what’s left of your stitches will delay your healing, and your departure.”

“I’ll venture no farther than this peat pile.”

“You’ve ventured too far already.”

The doctor’s nostrils flared. Lachlan realized they weren’t talking about his stitches anymore. It had been a long time since Lachlan had had to deal with an angry father, yet he knew the doctor had reason for his fury. Just a moment ago Lachlan had been thinking about unlacing his daughter’s sleeves. Just a moment ago, he’d been imagining the feel of her long, white throat and the softness of her skin below the neckline of her blue tunic.

“Cairenn,” the doctor commanded, “your mother needs help in the kitchen.”

She was up with a rustle of wool and gone across the courtyard like a bird darting out of cover.

To him, the physician barked, “Inside.”

The doctor pushed open the door to the surgery, not waiting as Lachlan eased himself up from the peat-pile with a wince. Lachlan figured he would get no sympathy today. He wasn’t looking forward to the doctor poking around the sore, itchy wound.

“Sit by the hearth.” The doctor settled the sack on the table and pointed to the two stools by the fireplace. “Pray the stitches didn’t split from your disobedience.”

Using the doorframe and the furniture to brace himself, Lachlan made his way toward the hearth. Moments later the doctor strode up behind him and clattered a tray full of tools on the floor by his feet. They rattled and gleamed. Lachlan felt the cold edge of a knife as the doctor slid a blade under his linen bandages. He flinched from memory rather than pain. He knew this doctor wouldn’t finish the assassin’s work, even if the man was furious that he’d found Lachlan flirting with his daughter. The doctor was just making his fury known by destroying perfectly good, washable linen.

The doctor flung the bloodstained cloth into the fire, peeling down to the layers closest to the skin. Feeling resistance, the healer tugged on a piece that stuck to the scabs with nothing that approached gentleness.

Trickles of warm blood slid down Lachlan’s naked back.

“As I suspected.” The healer grunted. “You’ve split two stitches. And there’s new swelling around the needle-wounds.”

Lachlan stayed silent, figuring that anything he said would only inflame the situation more.

“The stitches have to go.” The doctor leaned down to pick up a tool. “That means that, from here on, nothing will keep the edges of this wound together but the thin skin that’s formed in the gap over the past week. A wise man would stay still if he doesn’t want to wake up in a puddle of his own blood.”

Lachlan tightened his jaw as he felt the tool press against his flesh, tugging a stitch until it burned.

“And now that you deem yourself healthy enough to sit in the sun of my courtyard,” the doctor continued, tugging and pressing and yanking, “we’ll talk about you writing a letter to the father you’ve been worrying about, to send a ship to fetch you home.”

The words were out of Lachlan’s mouth before he even thought of speaking them. “I meant your daughter no harm.”

“We’re not talking about my daughter.”

“She found me on the beach and brought me to you. I am not a man who would repay courtesy with dishonor.”

“Lofty words. Easy to say, hard to live up to when the blood runs hot.”

Lachlan flinched, for already in his mind lingered an image of the gap of Cairenn’s neckline, where he’d seen the soft rise of her white breasts.

“There are a half dozen ships,” the doctor continued, “now anchored in Galway Bay, but they are from Castile, Aragon, and London. There are no galleys from the Western Isles of Scotland, but there are bound to be some soon.”

Lachlan curled his hands into fists under the relentless probing of that iron tool, but he couldn’t avoid noticing that the doctor had pinpointed his homeland. Had he slipped and said something to Cairenn? He didn’t remember doing so. Considering the man’s facility with languages, the physician may have identified his upland accent to within a few roods of Loch Fyfe.

The thought made him uneasy. “My clansmen trade primarily with Ulstermen,” Lachlan said, though this wasn’t completely true. “Ulstermen wouldn’t take kindly to me doing business with the Galway Tribes.”

“So you know Ulstermen?”