Page 15 of The Highlander's Dangerous Bride

She jolted awake, opened her eyes, and looked around her. A simple room, a fire in the grate, light outside the window. And a man with his head resting on a bed, which she was occupying. He seemed to be asleep, and as she looked at him and recognized his short, white-blond hair and strong, chiseled features, she realized she must be dreaming or dead.

To test her theory, she tentatively reached out her hand and gently brushed his hair with her fingertips. It felt soft, just as she remembered it.

She jumped and retracted her hand when he raised his head with a sudden start, and their eyes met. His ice-blue gaze pierced her like arrows as he stared at her.

“Arne?” she said, already confused but more so when no sound came out of her mouth. Frowning, she tried again. “Arne? Is it really ye? Are ye real?” But still no sound came, and her throat felt terribly sore. Her head ached badly too.

He sat up in his chair. “So, ye’re awake at last, are ye?” he said, his voice hard and honed by anger, sharp as a sword’s edge. It was that which convinced her she was awake and not in some strange afterlife. She watched him as he shook his head, his face a cold mask. “I cannae believe that after these past three years we meet again like this, after ye almost died in a shipwreck, sailin’ on a boat at night with a bunch of fugitives.”

A shipwreck?Fugitives?Memories of the voyage on the birlinn and terror she had experienced flickered through her mind, but it was hard to make sense of the scattered fragments. Arne had been in her dreams, she recalled, carrying her in his arms, making her feel safe, yet at the same time afraid of his wrath. There was a little boy there too. Thorsten? No, Thorsten was too young, so it could not have been him, she thought sadly, her head thumping.

“Was it ye who saved me?” she asked, but again, nothing came out, and she almost cried with frustration as well as the pain in her head and her lungs and her throat.

Arne reached over and took something from the table next to the bed, a horn flask, and poured some liquid from it into a cup. He handed it to her, unsmiling, his glare icy. “Drink this. The healer left it fer ye.”

Raven reached out and took the cup, but her hands were shaking so badly, the contents threatened to spill. With a look of annoyance, Arne helped her drink it, gently putting an arm around her back to raise her slightly and holding the cup to her lips. Her throat was so sore, she choked on the liquid, unable to help coughing as it went down. Some spilled down her chin and onto the covers. With stony patience, he put the cup aside, took out his handkerchief, and mopped up the spill, tossing the hanky aside when he was done.

She tried to speak again, to thank him, but it was no good, and she saw he shared her frustration at her inability to use her voice. “The healer says the seawater has harmed yer throat but that it will get better in a few days. Ye just need tae rest and take yer medicine. ’Tis probably best if ye dinnae try tae speak anymore until then. She says ye should sleep.”

She nodded, the movement sending waves of pain lancing through her skull. Already, she felt exhausted and was glad when he laid her down again.

“I have tae go tae work now, but I’ve arranged fer a maid tae come and check on ye throughout the day, tae help ye with yer needs.”

Raven nodded her thanks, watching while he donned his jerkin, his coat, and his boots. Then, he buckled on his sword belt and, without a backward glance, left the room.

As soon as she was alone, the tears came like a merciful release. She mopped them up with his damp, discarded handkerchief, having nothing else to hand. She cried and cried, wishing she had the strength in her limbs to get up and fetch a paper and pen and write the words that were engraved upon her heart:When can I see Thorsten?

The next few days and nights were long for Raven as she slowly recovered from her ordeal, waiting for her voice to return. The concoction the healer had left for her to drink made her sleep and made the pain in her body go away, but not the pain tormenting her mind.

Arne’s coldness was not surprising—she thought she had reconciled herself to the fact that he would hate her—but since she had never stopped loving him, the reality was proving rather more difficult to bear than she had imagined.

He stayed out for most of the day and only returned in the evenings, bringing dinner, which he would help her to eat with the same chilly efficiency she had come to expect. He dutifully made sure she took her medicine, that she was helped to wash and change her nightdress and use the chamber pot, that she had all she wanted to drink or eat. Not that she could eat much. Her stomach was too twisted into knots.

She was truly grateful for all he did for her but fancied herself to be rather like a condemned prisoner being nursed back to health after an illness only to be executed.

At night, he slept on the floor by the fire, wrapped in blankets, leaving her with guilt to add to her collection of heart wrenching, troubling emotions before she slept once again.

Knowing the man she loved despised her was bad enough. But the longing to see Thorsten bordered on torture and seemed to grow stronger with every moment she lay helpless in the bed, gnawing at her insides like a rat. Sometimes, she felt so despairing, she asked God why he had spared her in the wreck, if it would not have been better for all if she had just been left to perish. Only the thought of seeing her little boy again kept her going.

On the fourth day, she awoke during the afternoon while Arne was out and found she could speak again. Her voice was hoarse but back. With an increasing sense of trepidation, she stiffened her resolve and awaited his return.

CHAPTER SIX

His business had dragged on until late into the evening, and he was cold and weary when he opened the door to the room.

“Arne,” she said from the bed as soon as he stepped inside. The thrill that shot through his body to hear her voice again, hoarse yet soft as of old, made him sway and grip the doorjamb tightly for support, for it shook him to the core.

Its soft cadence brought so many memories flooding back to him, tender, intimate, loving memories of happy times. Times he had spent the last three years struggling to forget.

But the memories were quickly replaced by the anger and burning need to know the truth, which had become his lifeblood, his means of survival those last three years.

Their eyes locked, and he found himself completely unable to tear his gaze from hers. The air simmered between them with unspoken words.

He nodded, assuming a cold mask, wrapping himself in his anger and pride for protection against the confusion Maeve was evoking in him.

“I got me voice back at last.”

His mind screamed silently.Why, Maeve? Why did ye dae it?But he said, “So it seems.” He took off his weapons belt and laid it over a chair.

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