Averill was passing Brodie's room when the door suddenly opened beside her. She swung her head around with surprised alarm, but he didn't even look at her. His eyes were focused on the whiskey she held as if it were screaming his name. Before she could even say a wary, "Good eve," he snatched the mug from the hand nearest him and slammed the door closed.
"Enjoy," Averill murmured dryly, and continued on to the laird's room, with the two still clutched in her other hand.
Averill almost carried both into the room, but then thought better of it and set one on the floor outside the door before carrying the other in.
"Oh, there ye are." Kade's father sat up in bed with relief when she entered.
"Aye, and I have brought you your whiskey. Howbeit, I really do not think you should drink this," Averill said as she crossed the room. "I have seen this before and fear it will not go well."
"Seen what?" he asked, licking his lips and reaching for the mug when she paused beside the bed, but Averill held it just out of reach.
"This reaction to drink," she explained calmly. "Some can drink all the days of their lives without effect, but a very few grow a distaste for it in body and can no longer handle it after indulging for a long time. Judging by how ill you have been, I fear it is that way with you."
"Doona be ridiculous, lass," he scoffed. "Gi'e me the whiskey."
"Very well. I did warn you," Averill said, and handed it over. She then turned to head back across the room, eager to get the food to Will and Aidan before it grew cold. Even so, at the door she paused and glanced back. "Are you sure you would not like some stew, too?"
The Stewart did not even lower the mug pressed to his mouth, but shook his head, mug and all in response.
Shaking her own head, Averill stepped out of the room and pulled the door closed. She then grabbed up the last mug of whiskey and moved on to the next room.
She had expected to find Gawain asleep, or at least that was what she'd hoped for. However, when Averill eased the door open and crept inside, it was to find him flat in bed, wide-awake, and staring at the ceiling. His unguarded expression was a mask of misery before he became aware of her presence and jerked his head in her direction.
"Who are you?" Gawain asked with a small frown.
Recalling her tussle with Brodie, Averill hesitated, but then moved cautiously forward. "Kade's wife."
"Kade is back?" The man sat up at once, revealing his bare chest, and Averill paused a good six feet from the bed, eyeing him warily as she nodded.
"Aye."
"An' yer his wife?" he asked, looking her over curiously.
"A-aye," Averill answered, suddenly self-conscious.
He smiled faintly. "He's lucky, yer pretty."
Averill blinked in surprise at the compliment, then noted his eyes shifting to the mug she held.
"Is that fer me?"
"Aye." She stiffened her spine a bit, and moved slowly forward. "Your father requested whiskey, and I brought some for you as well in case you wanted it."
"Nay." Gawain grimaced with distaste and turned his head away as if he could not even bear to look at it, but then remembered his manners, and added, "Thank ye though."
Averill tilted her head and eyed him curiously. He was an attractive man, or would be were he not looking so rough. Like his father's, his long hair was a tangled mess, and he sported several days' growth on his face, but his hair was a little darker than Brodie's, and he had eyes as fine as Kade's. She was pretty sure he must be an attractive man when cleaned up. He also wasn't gasping for the drink like his father and brother appeared to be on first awaking.
"Are you sure you do not wish the whiskey?" she asked at last, testing him.
He shook his head grimly. "I am sick unto death of the stuff."
Averill nodded, but after a hesitation, set it on the table. If he was truly over it after vomiting for two days, well and good. If not, and this was just a hiccup in his desire for it, a third day would probably seal the deal.
"In case you change your mind," she explained when she saw him watching her.
Gawain grimaced again, but merely asked, "Where is Kade?"
"He was struck by two arrows this afternoon on our way back from Donnachaidh," she admitted unhappily. "He is abed for now, mending."
"Struck by arrows?" Gawain asked with alarm, then tossed his linens aside to stand. "Will he recover? Which room is he in?"
Relieved to see he had braies on, Averill moved forward to catch his arm and steady him when he stood and swayed weakly.
"Why am I so weak?" he asked, sounding frustrated.
"I would imagine that is due to consuming little more than whiskey for several days and spending the last two retching that back up," she said, not unsympathetically.
"Aye," Gawain said with self-disgust. "I need food, but there is none in this miserable, forsaken place."
"No place is forsaken," Averill said quietly. "And there is food. We collected it from Donnachaidh today. I shall bring you some if you wish it?"
"Aye. Thank ye."
Averill nodded. When he pulled free of her hold and crossed the room on shaky legs to kneel before a chest and open it, she found herself watching him curiously. She knew none of them very well, but Gawain seemed different than his father and Brodie. He also had kind eyes, and she wondered how much of the drinking he had done was from a true desire for it and how much was simply to be included with his brother and father.
"Why do you drink?" she asked suddenly.
Gawain glanced at her with surprise, then smiled wryly. "All Stewart men drink."
"Kade does not," she pointed out.
"Aye. He was the lucky one," Gawain murmured distractedly as he sorted through the clothes in the chest. "Sent away as a lad...I ha'e often wished I had been, too." Longing flashed briefly across his face, and he shook his head. "But I wasna. Only Kade."
Averill was silent, wondering if Gawain resented Kade for that, and if so, was it enough to make him try to kill him? She doubted it. Gawain seemed like a good man who had merely lost his way, and she had heard no tales of cruelty about him.
On the other hand, Brodie was one to keep an eye on, she thought. There was a cold indifference and cruelty about Brodie that made her naturally wary, and that would have been the case even without the stories she'd heard about him.
"There." Gawain sighed with relief once having chosen a tunic and donned it, then turned to Averill. "Will you take me to Kade?"
"Aye," she murmured, and ushered him to the door. Gawain seemed a little steadier on his feet as he walked up the hall beside her, but she noticed he held one hand out toward the wall as if in preparation for catching himself should he fall, and Averill knew he did not feel as well as he appeared.
She was aware that Gawain watched curiously as she stopped and bent to retrieve the tray of food she'd left by the door to the room she and Kade shared, but didn't comment, and he opened the door for her to enter once she was upright again.
Murmuring a thank-you, Averill slid past him into the room and led the way to the bed as the men stopped talking and took note of their entrance.
Will and Aidan both noted Gawain's presence at her side with narrowing eyes, but Kade actually scowled and, uncaring of how his brother might take it, barked, "I told ye to stay away from me father and brothers unless I was with ye!"
"Aye, but he wished to come see you," she said simply, as Will stood to take the tray from her. The moment he had, she ushered Gawain into the chair her brother had vacated, worried the man might fall down if left standing.
Will scowled at her for it but merely settled on the side of the bed with the tray, his eager eyes moving over the offerings.
"One is for Aidan, and I brought you both some mead," Averill announced as she moved around the chair Gawain now sat in to step up close to the bed by her husband's head. She bent to press a kiss to his frowning forehead, and said, "I am glad to see you awake, scowling or not. How are you feeling?"
Kade g
rimaced as she pressed the back of her hand to his forehead to feel for fever, and grumbled, "Heartily sick o' findin' meself in bed is how I feel."
Averill smiled faintly and straightened. There was no sign of fever, and if he was well enough to complain, he would soon be up and about. As far as she could tell, both arrows had lodged in muscle and missed hitting any organs or bone. He'd been very lucky. Her gaze slid to the empty bowl, and she asked, "Have you had enough to eat, or shall I bring you more?"
"I wouldna trouble ye," he muttered.
"'Twould be no trouble," Averill assured him. "I am fetching Gawain some, and 'tis little effort to fetch two rather than one."
That just made him glare. "Yer no a servant. Ha'e one o' them bring it up."
"The servants are busy," she said with exasperation. "Do you wish for more, or not?"
When Kade grimaced but nodded, she smiled, and said, "Then I shall be right back."