The Saint (Highland Guard #5)(26)

He stopped when he saw her, his eyes hard with something dark and forbidding that sent an icy chill through her veins.

“You’re hurt,” she said softly.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine.” Gently, she placed her hand on his arm. “Your arm—”

He jerked away from her, gritting his teeth against what must have been a blast of pain. “Leave it, Helen.”

Tears of concern filled her eyes. What was wrong with him? Why was he acting like this? “Is it broken?” She placed her hands on him again. “Let me see it.”

He flinched as if her touch scalded. “Damn it, Helen. Have you no care?”

Helen blinked up at him, taken aback by the fury in his voice. By the passion. Indeed, she’d never heard such passion from him. “Of course I care. I’ve been so worried. I was so scared when I saw you—”

“Me?” he boomed. “I don’t want or need your concern. But what of your husband, Lady Helen? What of the man you married not four days ago? Have you no care for him?”

Helen stepped back, the lash of vitriol so unexpected. “William?”

An icy drop of trepidation slid down her spine.

His soft golden-brown eyes turned as hard and black as onyx, pinning her to the snow-covered ground. “Aye, William. Remember him? Your husband. My friend. The man you took to your bed a few nights ago.”

“I didn’t—”

“He’s dead.”

She let out a gasp of horror, her eyes widening with the shock of his harsh pronouncement. Dead?

She murmured a prayer for his soul.

The look he gave her was full of such hatred and pain it seemed to burn her insides. He turned away, but not before she saw the disgust. “He deserved more from you than prayers. But you’ve never been very devoted in your affections, have you?”

Helen felt a stab of guilt and despair that drained the blood from her body, leaving her as cold and empty on the inside as she was on the outside.

He was right.

For nearly eighteen hours—since he’d stumbled out of the collapsed tower from one hell into another—Magnus had existed in a state of barely repressed anger and torment. Seeing Helen had been the final blow. He’d snapped, giving way to all the emotions lashing inside him.

She’d married Gordon, damn it. It was he who deserved her compassion and concern.

Perhaps it wasn’t fair, but it didn’t matter. Gordon’s death had finally succeeded in severing the connection between them. Magnus would never be able to see her without thinking of his friend. His dead friend. She belonged to Gordon. Not him.

Magnus pushed aside his anger, knowing he needed to focus on doing for MacGregor what he’d been unable to do for Gordon: saving his life.

By necessity if not inclination, Magnus had become the de facto physician of the Highland Guard. A rudimentary knowledge of healing coupled with “gentle” hands (laughable, given their size and strength) had earned him the position. But it was one thing to press some moss in a wound and wrap it, boil a few herbs for a tincture, or even press a hot iron on a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding; it was another to remove an arrow from the neck of a man who’d taken it to save your life.

When Magnus had emerged from the collapsed tower, it was to find that the English had overtaken the bailey. Only MacRuairi, MacSorley, Campbell, and MacGregor remained. Waiting, it seemed, for Gordon and him.

Leave no man behind. Part of the Highland Guard creed. At least it had been—until Gordon.

Magnus tried to fight his way toward his friends, but the injury to his arm hampered him. Unable to hold a targe or a second weapon, he couldn’t adequately defend himself, and his left side was left vulnerable to multiple attackers. When the English surrounded him, he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold them back for long.

Recognizing that he was in trouble, MacGregor and Campbell had come to his aid. They’d almost made their way back to the safety of the gate when MacGregor had gone down, ironically felled by an arrow from a longbow. Magnus had seen the arrow protruding from his neck and thought he was dead. He’d let out a roar of pure rage, attacking the English around him with the half-crazed vengeance of a berserker.

He heard the murmurs of “Phantom Guard” rolling through the enemy soldiers, saw the fear in their eyes beneath their helms, and eventually he also saw their backsides as they turned and ran. “Tail” was a slur often directed at the English—and it was well earned.

The English, realizing their prey had already been lost (Edward Bruce had escaped), had decided that taking the slighted castle wasn’t worth dying.

From the moment Campbell realized MacGregor was still alive, Magnus’s only thought was getting him to safety. Riding was out of the question. MacGregor needed to be kept as still as possible. Somehow a small boat had been procured, and with MacSorley at the helm they’d raced back to their own ship, and then on to Dunstaffnage.

Edward Bruce was safe, but at what cost?

Gordon, and now MacGregor? Magnus would be damned if he’d lose another friend this day. It seemed inconceivable that the team could survive intact through two and a half years of war, major battles where hundreds had lost their lives, and even exile, only to lose two of the greatest warriors in Christendom—hell, in Barbariandom as well—in a skirmish.

Every warrior knew that death was part of war. To their Norse forebearers it was the ultimate glory, a philosophy that had lived on in the successive generations. But in his years fighting alongside the other members of the Guard, seeing what they could do, and then hearing the stories of their feats, which had taken on almost mythical proportions, Magnus had started to believe their own legend. Gordon’s death was a brutal reminder that they weren’t invincible.