The Recruit (Highland Guard #6)(64)

Before the soldier could object, Kenneth started to pull her toward the nearest storeroom but changed direction when he heard her mutter “stables” under her breath.

“Give us a few minutes, lads,” he said to the stable boys. “This won’t take too long.”

The boys snickered and moved outside.

The moment the door was closed, Kenneth turned to her in fury. “What in God’s name do you think you are doing here? And why the hell did Saint let you come alone!”

“He didn’t,” MacKay said, jumping down from the rafters above where bales of hay were stored. He was dressed as a peasant, and Kenneth detected the strong whiff of fish. “And keep your voice down, Ice, unless you want half the English army to come investigate.” He glanced angrily toward his wife. Though he’d called Kenneth by one of the “ironic” names MacSorley had coined to prod him about his hot temper, MacKay seemed to have forgotten his own. “And pull up your damned gown!”

Helen ignored the directive, put her hands on her hips, and looked at them both angrily. “If you two would just relax—”

It was the wrong thing to say. Both Kenneth and MacKay exploded, expressing the depths of their very unrelaxed anger at seeing her acting the jade in a yard full of Englishmen. Apparently, MacKay had caught quite a bit of her performance.

Helen let them have their say, but she clearly paid it no heed. “If you are both finished acting like overprotective nursemaids, perhaps I can see to what we came for?”

Before Kenneth could bark out another “why the hell are you here?,” MacKay explained, “She insisted on seeing to your arm herself.”

“And you let her?”

MacKay shot him a deadly glare. “I’d like to see you stop her. She said you were part of this now, and it was her duty.” He spat the last word, mumbling under his breath that he must have been crazy to let her do this—a point to which they were in agreement. “That it was my fault you were hurt in the first place, and if you lost your arm, she would blame me.”

Kenneth turned to his sister, eyes narrowed. “You’ve been hanging around Viper too long.” She was learning to fight dirty.

Helen lifted her chin. “It worked, didn’t it? Now, let me see it.”

MacKay handed Helen a leather bag, and she removed a few things as Kenneth shrugged off his surcote and unwrapped the linen bandage that the doctor had used to bind the cut. She gave a soft cry when she saw the ugly-looking mass of bloody, singed flesh, but went immediately to work on it.

MacKay distracted him from the pain of her examination by asking him about what had happened. Kenneth gave a quick explanation, hearing MacKay’s muttered oath when he learned the identity of the soldier he’d almost killed.

“It was too dark to see his arms.”

Kenneth nodded. “I figured as much. It was just bad luck that your blade found a gap between my mail shirt and gauntlet.”

He winced as Helen poked and prodded the wound, then applied a salve. “Ouch,” he said, pulling his arm away. “That burns.”

“You think nothing of putting yourself in the line of a blade, but whinge about a little medicine? By God, you men are all alike. I don’t know why I don’t wash my hands of the lot of you.”

He could see her blinking away tears and realized how worried she’d been about him. He took her in his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I’m fine, Angel.” He used the war name the Highland Guard had taken to calling her as the team’s healer. “Thank you.”

She blinked up at him, nodded, and then proceeded to give him a long list of instructions on how to care for the wound and what to look for, and extracted his promise to send for her if it festered. MacKay gave him the name of a friendly barkeep in town who could be trusted with a message, though they’d previously devised other ways of communicating should the need arise.

Kenneth took the opportunity to apprise MacKay of what he’d learned from the English warriors. So far, it wasn’t much—which bothered him. “I would have expected more activity by now. More supplies going north to bolster the English-held castles for the additional men.”

“There is still plenty of time.”

“Aye.” It was true. He frowned.

“What?”

“I don’t know. I guess I would have expected Clifford to be more involved. He and Percy are close, and with his interests in the Borders”—Sir Robert Clifford had vast holdings in the North of England and had been given James Douglas’s lands in Scotland by Edward—“I would have expected him to stick close to Percy. But he seems to be coming and going from Carlisle Castle quite a bit. I was thinking of volunteering on his next—”

“Let us worry about Clifford. Your job is to stay close to Percy. Stay on task, Sutherland. You don’t want to screw this up.”

Kenneth’s jaw clenched, hearing the warning he didn’t need: he was on probation. He nodded. Message received loud and clear.

Realizing the stable lads wouldn’t stay away for long, Kenneth said, “You need to get out of here. I assume you have a plan?”

“I will go out the way I came in,” Helen said.

“Striker and Hunter are waiting outside,” MacKay said before Kenneth could object. “I came in up the postern gate from one of the fishing boats.” That explained the smell. “I left a very pungent bag of salmon near the kitchens to retrieve for my descent.” He smiled. “The stench should be enough to prevent too many questions.”