Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(15)
Her breath caught. Sporting only his linen braies, his skin was burnished by the firelight. A long furrow defined the valley of his spine, from between his shoulders to just above his braies, a narrow hollow she couldn’t help but linger upon. Such was the shape of the legendary Fenian warriors, she thought, of Cú Chulainn, and of Deirdre’s handsome Naoise. Her experience was limited, but surely there wasn’t another man in the world who looked like this.
She glanced up and felt his gaze like a rough hand on her throat.
“You didn’t have to brave the rain.” He turned his attention back to the fire. “Your father left me enough food to last days.”
“It’s not dinner I’ve come to deliver.” She glimpsed an uneaten loaf of oaten bread and a pot of fish stew warming upon the swing arm. “There’s a gale coming.”
“I hear it.” He planted a hand on the stones above the hearth, leaning in. “It reminds me of the winter storms of my home, the way the wind and rain shiver the air.”
An image came to her mind of a cold, shroud-covered place, but the image was born of his words, not of his mind. If she did not believe the evidence of her eyes, she would think she stood in this room alone.
She mustn’t brood over that now. “We’ve made a place for you at our table in the kitchen.”
“I’ll do well enough here.”
The muscles of his outstretched arm tightened. She had more than an inkling about why his words were short and his voice tense. Her father had given Lachlan a talking-to after he’d caught them at the peat-pile yesterday. It frustrated her that she didn’t know the full of the discussion, for she’d only caught fragments from Da. Da, having Sídh blood like everyone else in her family, could sometimes be hazy to read.
Well, Da might want this Scotsman to keep his distance from her, but Da had also demanded that she look after the man.
“I don’t think you understand,” she said. “The gales sweep in from the far edge of the world. Even the easiest of them can rip the thatch from the roofs.”
“A bit of rain won’t do me harm.”
“I won’t leave a guest here while the storm rages. It would bring shame upon my family—”
“I’m an intruder. Not a guest.”
“You’re my father’s patient, and thus far more important than the cows, and we’ve already brought them in under a roof.”
“I’d prefer this pallet than sleeping among cows—”
“Don’t be foolish. The cows are in the storeroom that opens to the lee side. We’ve got a pallet made up for you in the main room with the rest of us.”
Heat rose to her cheeks, for in the silence after she’d spoken she realized that they’d be sleeping in the same room together. Her mother would insist that she and her sisters stay on one side of the room and Lachlan and her brothers on the other, but now she couldn’t help imagining blinking her eyes open in the night and catching his gaze across the space that separated them.
“I cannot join you,” he said, “wearing nothing but my braies.”
Lightning flashed bright, painting his all-but-naked body in silver. She stood still while the image burned into her mind until the thunder followed, startling her into breathing again.
“My father,” she said, feeling strangely tingly, as if the lightning had hit close, “keeps some of his clothing here in case his tunic gets—” bloody “—soiled.” She walked behind the table to a chest pushed against the wall. The wet hem of her tunic slapped against the rushes as she kneeled. She pulled out a linen shirt and an overtunic. “You’re of the same height, so these should fit.”
His shadow fell over her. She handed the linen shirt up to him blindly. When he didn’t take it from her, she dared to meet his eye.
He tilted his head toward his injured shoulder, his face grim.
Da had told her that it would take weeks for Lachlan’s shoulder to heal, weeks before the man could even raise his elbow to the level of his shoulder. Her heart did a skip-jump as she realized she’d have to help him dress.
Better he be clothed, she thought, than standing above her with the firelight gleaming off all those naked, swelling muscles.
She stood to face him, feeling very small in the dark corner of the room. She smelled the pungent herbs from the salve her father used upon his wound. She shook out the linen shirt. The armholes were generous, but she loosened the drawstring to make the neckline as wide as possible. Rolling the shirt up from the hem, she stepped closer.
She raised her arms as he ducked. She swept the linen over his head. His soft hair brushed her cheek as he straightened. His gaze was a blade, inches from hers. She didn’t need to see into his thoughts to know that he was remembering that moment out in the sun.
She fell back on her heels, stuttering, “The bad arm first.”
She tugged the shirt down his arm as far as it could go so that he could slip his hand into the armhole of the sleeve. She couldn’t meet his eye, but she saw the tightness of his jaw, and the way a pulse throbbed under the crescent scar on his temple. The muscles of his neck strained as his hand caught on the seams, but with a grunt he slid his arm through.
His other arm slipped through with less trouble. The linen strained across his shoulders and outlined the muscles of his chest. She reached for the overtunic but he snatched it away from her.