Torn Between Two Highlanders (Sword and Thistle 2)

She blinked. “I’m only speaking about herbs and their medicinal properties. Whatever you think I did to those men in the clearing…it wasn’t witchcraft.” Would they burn her more readily for poisoning men or for practicing witchcraft? The latter, she decided. Definitely the latter. “It was the stew they made me cook. I put berries in it—toxic ones.”

“So you brewed up a deadly potion…still sounds like witchcraft to me, lass.”

She stiffened, insisting. “I’m not a witch!”

Davy sighed dejectedly. “That’s a shame, if true. You see, I’m pinning all my hopes on your being a witch. Because I fear it will take nothing short of magic to bring Malcolm through this night alive…”

She was surprised by the emotion in his voice. “Is he a very close friend?”

“Very,” Davy said, his eyes misting a bit as he spoke. “Close as brothers, we are. Truly. Not that I’ve ever said as much to him. And suppose he doesn’t wake up… then I never will have the chance to say it, ye ken.”

He needed her to heal his friend; to rouse Malcolm from his stupor. She wished she knew how. “I’ll do all I can for him,” Arabella promised. “But you mustn’t keep saying that I’m a witch. If such talk got back to the laird, he’d have me burned alive.”

At that, Davy snorted. “You don’t know our laird well, I see. Because trust me when I say that if John Macrae knew he had a witch in our clan, he’d never burn you. He’d want you at the castle using your witchcraft to defeat our enemies. Our laird is a practical man, and so am I. So if you must smash up eye of newt or speak in tongues or make bargains with the devil to make Malcolm well, then you do it. Because I’d rather lose my soul than let him die.”

~~~

Lorna.

The wounded warrior moaned this name when Arabella tried to rouse him to sip at the bark tea. But he didn’t wake to drink it. He only whispered again, and again, through chattering teeth. Lorna. Lorna. Lorna.

“His wife,” Davy explained, and Arabella’s heart squeezed with grief at the thought Malcolm might die calling so pitifully for a woman who couldn’t hear him.

“Is she nearby?” she asked, wondering if they might risk trying to fetch her.

“She’s dead.”

Oh. That made Arabella even sadder.

Davy checked his friend’s bandage to find that Malcolm was still bleeding—bright red blood was seeping through his bandages faster than they could change them. And Arabella worried that the bark tea would not help that; in fact, it might make it worse. Having lost so much blood, Malcolm was very cold. His skin chilled and clammy. But Davy piled atop him all the blankets they could find, then said, “I think we have to sew it closed.”

“His wound?” Arabella asked, mildly horrified.

“Aye. I’ve seen it done on a battlefield.”

“Just sew together rent flesh like a torn garment?” She didn’t know whether the idea filled her more with nausea or curiosity. But she wasn’t going to let a man bleed his life away if she could help it. “I’ll look for a needle and thread.”

At her father’s cottage, Arabella would’ve known where to look. Her sister Heather always kept the sewing items in a basket by the hearth. Thankfully Conall kept some thread in the bottom of his trunk; he must have used it for mending, a job that would have certainly been hers if she had married him. Which confirmed again that she wasn’t so very sorry to have broken off the betrothal after all.

Davy frowned at the delicate needle. “Can you thread it for me? My fingers aren’t so nimble.”

She did as he asked, then stood by the side of the bed, watching curiously as the freckled warrior prepared to sew up the wound. But the moment she saw the angle at which Davy held the needle, she protested. “Should you really be jamming it into him like a spear?”

“I’ve never sewed a stitch before today,” Davy said, swaying a bit as if his knees were spongy at the thought of what he meant to do.

“I’ll do it,” Arabella said, surprising herself.

Davy eyed her, warily. “I can’t have you swooning away at the feel of piercing human flesh.”

Arabella reached for the needle, defiantly. “You look more like to swoon away than me. Besides, our clan motto is with fortitude, isn’t it?”

At that Davy let her take the needle and thread, watched her knot the end. He swallowed audibly when she pushed the sharp end deep enough into Malcolm’s skin to hold, but not so deeply as to penetrate the muscle. It took only three stitches before the pain brought Malcolm awake, and he cursed, thrashing.

“Keep still, Malcolm.” Davy wrestled his friend still so that Arabella could finish her grisly task. “Unless you mean to bleed to death.”

Meanwhile, Arabella sewed swiftly, making tight, clean stitches. Or as neat as she could make them anyway. Malcolm stopped struggling somewhere in the midst of the stitching, lapsing from consciousness again, which made it easier for Arabella to do her work. And while it was a sickly feeling to experience a needle sink into living flesh, she ignored it. She ignored the blood. The gore. The fact that she saw parts of Malcolm—deeply impressive parts—below the waist she ought not to have.

All she knew in that moment was this man’s pain and her need to heal him. And when she’d washed up and Davy went to fetch firewood, she lay down beside the wounded man on his straw mattress in utter exhaustion, telling herself she meant only to keep him warm.