Page 69 of Here in Your Arms
From the moment he was laid in the bed at Dunmara, bloodied, pale, and weakened again from the ride, to the moment he insisted he could get up and walk on his own despite an arrow having just been extracted from his body, it was clear to everyone in the keep that the laird of Druimlach had no intention of being coddled, and that he intended to question the methods of Dunmara’s household staff.
He argued with Maud before she even touched him, objecting to the very notion that she would remove the arrow by pulling it through the way it had gone in. His voice, hoarse but stubborn, filled the chamber with sharp rebukes and gritted-out instructions, as though he imagined himself the expert on such things.
But Maud, not so easily intimidated, did not waver. She barely blinked as she gathered her tools, muttering under her breath about "stubborn Highlanders who think their manhood's tied to their wounds." Then, more loudly: “I’ll nae be snapping it off and withdrawing it both ways, as if I’ve nae business beinganywhere near a wound. It’ll come out cleanly, yanked from the front in the same direction it traveled—and ye can piss and moan all ye want, laird, but ye’ll sit through it all the same, if ye want it done right.”
He scowled but yielded, albeit grudgingly.
Then came the cauterization debate. He argued for burning the wound shut, claiming it was faster, more effective. Maud countered that it was messier, riskier, and that if he didn’t want to lose the use of that arm entirely, he’d stop flapping his jaw and let her stitch the flesh properly. She won that round too.
When offered something to ease the pain, to dull the sharp edge of the withdrawal of the broken missile and the needle, he refused it outright.
“I’ll nae have my brain muddled,” he said, jaw clenched, sweat already gathering at his temples. He flinched while Maud worked to eject the arrow, his hands gripping the furs beneath him so tightly his knuckles went white, and still he refused Agnes’s subsequent offering for something that might soften the experience.
When it was done, he then refused to rest as both Maud and Agnes suggested, causing both of them to thin their lips when he sat up in the bed and put his feet on the floor.
“It’s midday,” he muttered darkly. “I’ll nae be sleeping.”
Rose lingered near the hearth, not quite close enough to be in the way, but near enough that she could watch—though she kept telling herself it was only out of concern. The truth was messier. Her stomach was in knots, tight with anxiety, her thoughts locked on the images of the arrow jutting from Tiernan’s shoulder, and the way he had looked when they found him: pale, bleeding, too still.
Now, he sat on the edge of the bed, stripped of his tunic and breacan, the fabric lying in a bloodied heap nearby. The wound had been cleaned, though it still looked terrible—angry, raw,ringed in bruising and dried blood. She winced just looking at it, her hands worrying the folds of her skirts. She had never seen so much blood before. Not like this. Not in real life.
But despite the queasiness in her gut and the biting concern for his well-being, her eyes lingered, drawn against her better judgment to the expanse of his chest. It was absurd, really, that she could feel both revulsion and fascination in the same breath. The scarred skin of his shoulder stretched taut, the muscles beneath shifting as he reached for something, the lines of his torso a study in hard-earned strength. His chest rose and fell with deliberate slowness, as though each breath was measured and weighed before being taken. Even injured, there was something so undeniably... male and magnificent about him. Not just his size, but his stillness. His control.
She hadn’t realized how noticeably she’d been staring until a dry voice cut through the quiet.
“Never seen so much bluid, lass?” Agnes asked, gathering clumps of bloodied linen strips. “That what has yer jaw gaping?”
Rose jumped, heat flooding her face so quickly it made her dizzy. She blinked, snapping her gaze away as if she’d been caught spying through a keyhole. Her mouth opened in protest, but nothing came out except a mortified little breath.
Tiernan’s head turned slowly toward her, his eyes narrowing, his gaze briefly speculative.
Rose felt the heat of a flush creep all the way down her neck, blooming across her collarbone. She wouldn’t be surprised if Tiernan could read her thoughts, if he could know it wasn’t only the sight of his injury that attracted her ardent attention. She busied her hands with the edge of her cloak, suddenly very interested in the floorboards.
“I wasn’t—” she began, then stopped. Possibly it was best to have it believed the sight of blood had been what held her faithful gaze and flustered her now.
When Maud had finished and Tiernan stood, donning the same bloody tunic he’d only removed a quarter hour ago, and while Maud and Agnes renewed their arguments for him to rest, Rose quietly slipped from the chamber, easing the heavy oak door closed behind her. The image of Tiernan’s bare chest—scarred, solid, alive—was seared behind her eyes, as vivid as the rasp of his voice when he argued with Maud and Agnes about resting. He was so clearly miserable, gritting his teeth against their fussing, half-naked and glowering, yet too worn down by blood loss to put much fire behind it. Rose felt as if she needed to escape that room before the way she looked at him became obvious to more than just Agnes.
She reached the top of the stairs just as Emmy came bounding up from the lower landing, skirts hitched and eyes wide.
“There you are!” Emmy exclaimed, her arms thrown open as though she’d half-feared Rose might vanish again before her eyes. She stopped abruptly at the top, her expression shifting from relief to scrutiny. “Holy hell, Rose. You look like shit.”
Rose let out a breath that was half a laugh, half a sigh of exhaustion. “That’s... not surprising,” she said, brushing her hair back from her face. She probably looked every bit as awful as she felt—dirt still streaked her sleeves and skirts, her hair was tangled and caked with dust, Tiernan’s blood spotted her right hand, and her nerves were frayed nearly to breaking.
Emmy stepped forward and took her hand without ceremony, pulling her away from the hall. “Come on. You’re telling me everything. I’m so sorry I missed you earlier when you came for Brody. I was in the village with Mildred, who just gave birth to her fourth son.”
Rose didn’t protest. She let herself be led through the corridors and into Emmy’s solar—an airy room on the west side of the keep with a high arched window and a scatteringof medieval comforts, fur throws, a cluster of fat pillar candles, and a thick wool rug. The light outside had dimmed, but a fire burned warmly in the grate, casting the room in soft amber.
“Sit,” Emmy ordered, guiding her into a cushioned chair near the hearth. “Talk. What the hell happened? Why were you even coming here in the first place?”
Rose stared into the fire for a moment, mesmerized by the small flames. “Because I didn’t belong at Druimlach,” she said quietly. “Because the situation there was becoming... impossible.” Her voice was steady, but her fingers curled into the fabric covering her knees. “I didn’t know what else to do. I just knew I couldn’t stay.”
Emmy sat down across from her, her expression sober now. “Did something happen?”
Rose nodded slowly. “Kind of. Margaret’s father publicly called me a ghost. A wound that would never heal. So that was awkward. I just... I don’t belong there.” She paused, swallowing thickly. “I was going to send you a message, begging you—or Brody, actually—to come get me. Tiernan obviously agreed with me, that I didn’t belong. He said he would escort me. But there were bandits in this narrow section, a pathway between two large cliffs. They caused a rockslide, ambushed us. We were separated from the escort and Tiernan...” Her voice faltered. “He fought them all. Killed them.” She shook her head, hoping Emmy didn’t ask her to recount that. “But Tiernan was shot—Emmy, he was shot by an arrow andthenkilled the third reiver. With an arrow sticking out of him.”
Though her expression revealed her surprise at the tale, Emmy nodded as if this last part was expected. “They’re built differently in this time,” she said, with a half-hearted laugh.
“Obviously,” Rose concluded. “Anyway, he said we needed to keep moving, but then he really couldn’t after a while. Oh, my God, he scared the shit out of me—I thought...” she let thatthought trail off, not wanting to revisit that she’d thought he might die. “He didn’t like it, but we had no choice, and I ran here to find Brody, to get help.”
