Torn Between Two Highlanders (Sword and Thistle 2)

“Suit yourself,” he said, calling after her. “But it’s still warm. Straight from the cow. And I’m offering you the cream!”

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Chapter Six

The eggs were burning and there was no help for it. And in adding salt to mess, Arabella only made it worse. “Where are the laird’s men?” she asked. “Shouldn’t they have come by now?”

“Maybe he couldn’t spare any men,” Davy said, his legs up on the table as if he was as bored and restless as she was. “Or maybe they got waylaid by a band of warriors along the way.”

“We can’t just stay here waiting to be discovered,” Arabella said.

I can’t just stay here with the two of you, she thought.

“Likely the Donalds have greater ambitions than to avenge themselves upon the us. Probably, they intend to take the castle then kill us at their leisure.”

“Cheerful,” Arabella said, with a frown.

“Well, I don’t plan to let them do it, lass. I just said it was their intention!” She didn’t see what Davy could possibly do to stop the enemy, holed up in this cottage. He must’ve been thinking the same. “How long before Malcolm can ride?”

“He’s lucky to have lived through the night,” Arabella replied, poking mournfully at the eggs. “But his color is back now. We might get him into a saddle tomorrow, but if we try it now he’s like to swoon—”

Her words were cut off by Malcolm’s irritated shout from the other room. “I hear you talking about me like I’m an cripple, ye ken.”

Arabella rushed to the doorway. “You shouldn’t shout. You shouldn’t strain yourself at all.”

“Can’t laze about either,” he groused, making another attempt to get up.

Arabella hurried to his side, trying to push his shoulders back down, but even in his weakened state, he was too strong for her, so she scolded, “You’re going to open up your stitches and faint again.”

He glared with genuine outrage. “Do you take me for a distressed damsel? A man doesn’t faint!”

“Aye, right!” Davy said, sarcastically, coming up behind her. “A man just falls to the ground, smashes his noggin and naps with the faeries for a spell…”

“Help me up,” Malcolm insisted. “I can nap with the faeries as easy in a chair as in a bed.”

They did as he asked—a torturous endeavor that proved he was in no way capable of riding a horse. No way capable of caring for himself at all. He was decidedly weak and thirsty, and even though they were in danger, Arabella knew they couldn’t leave him. She gave Malcolm as much hot water as he could stand, then served the men their burned eggs.

Davy was too polite to say the obvious—that Arabella was a disaster when it came to cooking. Or perhaps he feared that she’d spiced it with some poison. Either way, he pushed the food around his plate and said, “Give it to Malcolm. He needs the sustenance more than I do.”

“It’s bad, I know,” she said.

Davy nodded. “Aye, but he doesn’t have a choosey palate.”

Arabella worried they weren’t talking about eggs.

She couldn’t imagine that Davy didn’t mind what he’d seen that morning; couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t hold it against her that she’d been intimate with Malcolm after being intimate with him. And because she was so utterly confused by her mounting desire for both men, she needed a moment alone to think.

So when Davy fussed about near Malcolm where he slumped and shivered by the fire, she slipped out of the cottage to find more eggs. Pulling the plaid around her shoulders, she thought the weather was unseasonably cold. The wind bit at her nose and the sky was grey in a foreboding way that made her hurry to the hen house.

It was there, amidst the clucking that Davy found her, and actually snapped at her as if in panic. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?”

“Looking for eggs in case you missed any,” she said.

“I didn’t bloody well miss any, you silly woman. It’s not safe outside.”

“It’s not safe inside the cottage either, if a war band should come across us.”

“Aye, but at least you’d have my sword to defend you. And Malcolm’s too, because that stubborn bastard would still try to wield one, even in his state.”