Honor Bound(28)

"Gene, come quickly! He's—"

The doctor rushed toward the cot and shouldered Lucas and Alice aside. He placed his stethoscope against Joseph Greywolf's bony chest. Even from where she stood near the table, Aislinn could hear his rattling, struggling respiration. It sounded like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together. The abrasive sound didn't cease until daybreak.

When it did, the sudden silence was louder than the racket had been. Aislinn covered her trembling lips with her hand and turned her back to the three keeping vigil at the cot, affording them a modicum of privacy. She, being the outsider, didn't want to intrude on their grief. She sat down in one of the chairs and bowed her head.

She heard the shuffle of feet on the packed-dirt floor, the quiet sound of Alice's weeping, whispered murmurs of consolation. Then her ears were met with the heavy thud of boot heels. The front door squeaked as it was shoved open. Aislinn raised her head and, through the door, saw Lucas stalk off down the rocky path.

His powerful body was as fluid and graceful as ever, but the sinewy muscles were stretching his skin, straining it. He seemed able to hold himself together only by sheer willpower. Since his back was to her, she couldn't see his face, but she could imagine it—tense, hard, unrelentingly stern.

Aislinn watched him stamp past her car and the four-wheel-drive truck she assumed belonged to Dr. Dexter. With that same determined stride, he crossed the floor of the canyon, then took a rocky, uneven path up the side of the hill.

She never remembered moving. She didn't consciously make up her mind. She simply stood up and rushed toward the door, some subconscious area of her brain directing her. She quickly glanced at Alice. Gene Dexter was holding her in his arms, crooning words of comfort into her midnight-black hair.

Aislinn ran through the door and out into the still morning. Dawn light was just peeping over the ridge of the mountains that ringed the hogan. The air was considerably cooler up there in the mountains, particularly at that time of day, when the sun hadn't had time to bake the rocks to a grilling heat.

Aislinn noticed nothing, not even the gorgeous, ever-changing violet hues of the eastern sky as the sun rose higher. Her eyes were trained on the man who was no more than a rapidly shrinking speck against the rocky terrain as he climbed, seemingly without effort, higher.

Her progress wasn't as rapid. The boots he had chosen for her came in handy now, but the borrowed skirt kept getting snagged on brush and wrapped around her legs, impeding her efforts. Innumerable times she skinned her knees; her palms bled from stinging scrapes.

Before she even reached the halfway point to the summit, she was winded and laboring for every breath. But she kept climbing, driven by an emotion she didn't stop to contemplate. It was something she simply had to do. She had to get to Greywolf.

At last the plateau, which formed a tabletop crest to the rocky incline, no longer seemed unreachable. She took heart and began climbing faster. Looking up, she could see Lucas standing at the summit, his body a dark, lean silhouette against the cloudless lavender sky.

When she finally reached the top, she virtually crawled the remaining distance. Once there, she slumped down on the level rock and hung her head in exhaustion. Her breath soughed in and out of her body. Her heart was beating so fast that it actually hurt. She stared down at her hands in disbelief. Rocks had been cruel to her palms. Her nails were broken.

Ordinarily, she would have been horrified by such injuries. Now, the pain meant nothing. She didn't even feel it. Its significance was reduced to nothingness when measured against that of the man.

Greywolf remained motionless, his back to her, staring out over the opposite cliff. His feet were braced a shoulders' width apart. His hands, bailed into fists, were held rigidly at his sides.

As she watched, he threw his head back, squeezed his eyes shut, and released a howl that echoed eerily off the walls of the surrounding mountains. The animal wail came straight from his soul. It was an outpouring of grief, despair and frustration, so profound that Aislinn felt his pain as her own. Tears coursed down her cheeks.

Leaning forward, she stretched out a hand as though to touch him, but he was standing several yards away. Her offer of solace went unseen.

She didn't know why she wasn't repulsed by his soul-rending display of emotion. In her family such exhibitions were forbidden. If one felt sadness, rage, even joy, demonstrations of the emotion were kept restrained and refined. Self-expression, just as everything else, was governed by rules. One kept one's feelings bridled. To do otherwise was considered bad taste and vulgar in the extreme.

Never in her life had Aislinn witnessed such an honest, boundless expression of emotion. Greywolf's raw cry opened up a secret pocket of her heart and left a wide and gaping wound. A spear couldn't have pierced her more thoroughly. The impact was that jarring, that sharp, that deep.

He sank to his knees, bowed his back and hung his head low, covering it with his arms. He rocked back and forth, keening and chanting words she didn't comprehend. She understood only that he was a man totally disconsolate, made alien and alone by the measure of his grief.

Still sitting, she inched her way over to him and touched his shoulder. He reacted like an injured animal. His head snapped around and he made a snarling sound. His eyes were tearless and icy on the surface, but the black centers burned from within like the fathomless pits of hell.

"What are you doing here?" he asked disdainfully. "You have no place here."