The Saint (Highland Guard #5)(49)

“What must I do? Get down on my hands and knees to beg your forgiveness?”

Oh hell. For that was where he was surely going. The image of her on her knees before him …

It wasn’t begging that he was thinking about, but her mouth wrapped around him. His hands sinking through the soft silk of her hair as she took him deep into her naughty mouth and milked him. Heaviness tugged in his groin, his c**k thickened.

Damn it, he was losing all rationality. Her nearness was like a sensual drug. She had no idea what she did to him. How one look, one touch, one whiff could send him into a mindless, lust-induced stupor.

Suddenly, one more day seemed like forever.

“There is nothing to forgive.” Their eyes met and seeing her earnestness, a little of the hardness inside him softened. “You don’t even know me anymore, Helen. I’m not the same man I was four years ago.”

It was the truth. They couldn’t go back to the way things were, even if he wanted to.

“Neither am I. I’m stronger. I would never let my family persuade me to go against my heart. Won’t you give me—us—a chance?”

He was more tempted by her words than he wanted to admit. But guilt was a powerful antidote. She’s not yours, damn it.

The sound of footsteps behind him proved a welcome interruption. He turned, surprised to see MacGregor racing toward him through the trees.

His instincts flared, immediately sensing that something was wrong. He reached for his sword.

“What is it?” he asked as MacGregor came to a hard stop before him, the heaviness of his breath testament to how fast he’d run.

The look on his face made Magnus brace himself for the worst. But still it wasn’t enough.

“It’s the king,” he said. His gaze shot to Helen. “You’d better come, too, my lady. He’s ill. Terribly ill.”

Ten

Helen had never been more scared in her life. The realization that the King of Scotland’s life rested in her hands was terrifying, to say the least. A messenger had been dispatched to try to find Muriel, but the situation was too dire to wait. Robert the Bruce was dying.

She worked tirelessly through the day and night, doing everything in her power to halt the deathly plague that had overtaken him. Feverish, violently ill, and unable to keep anything down, the king came close to dying so many times she lost count.

Magnus was by her side the entire time. He told her of the king’s illness the winter before last, where he’d nearly died after a similar malady. He’d suffered a few recurring bouts since then of fatigue, weakness, and aches, but nothing like this violent vomiting and flux.

Magnus’s description matched a common malady that typically affected sailors and nobles. Farmers and peasants, however, rarely suffered from the sickness. Some suspected certain foods were the cause; poorer folk couldn’t afford as much meat and subsided on less expensive foods like fruits, vegetables, eggs, and pottages.

She’d asked Magnus to describe the king’s diet and found that like most noblemen, he favored meat, cheese, fish, and bread.

But so far, her efforts to combat the illness with pottages and mashed-up vegetables and fruits had not worked. It wasn’t surprising, as the king couldn’t seem to keep anything in his stomach. But part of her wondered whether it was something else.

Late on the second night—or early the third morning—the king became delirious. Helen mopped his brow, squeezed drops of whisky in his mouth, and tried to keep him calm, but she didn’t know what to do. She was losing him, and never had she felt so helpless.

She gazed at Magnus, who had taken a position opposite her at the king’s bedside. The stress of the situation had caught up to her, and tears of frustration and exhaustion gathered in her throat. “Where is Muriel? Why isn’t she here?”

Magnus detected the threat of hysteria lurking behind the despair. He took her hand in his as he used to do when they were young, and gave it an encouraging squeeze. It was so firm and strong. The king’s illness had toppled the wall Magnus had erected between them—at least temporarily.

“The king can’t wait for Muriel, Helen. He needs you. I know you’re tired. I know you’re exhausted. I am, too. But you can do this.”

There was something about his voice that calmed her fraying nerves. It was how he’d been the entire time throughout his own ordeal. It was as if the direness of the situation, the pressure, the stress, never reached him. He knew the king was dying, but his confidence in her never wavered.

God, had she really thought him too temperate? He was solid—a rock. An anchor in a stormy sea.

She nodded. “You’re right.”

With a burst of renewed energy and determination, she asked him to describe the king’s previous illness for her again, wondering if she could have missed something.

He spoke of the king’s pallor and weakness, the sunken eyes, the violent nausea, and the lesions on his skin. All common characteristics of the sailors’ illness.

Helen could still see the scars on the king’s legs where those lesions had been. But so far, no new ones had appeared.

“Was there any swelling of his limbs?” she asked.

He shook his head. “There could have been; I don’t remember.”

Helen knew that was a common trait of the sailors’ illness.

“What is it?” he asked.