Page 105 of The Falcon Laird
He glanced at her quickly and felt a lightning sensation slam through his gut as the meaning of her words took hold. “My hands,” he repeated.
“You can do it,” she said. “I know that you can. You healed me once before.”
He shook his head. “I only held you. You recovered, but I did not heal you.”
“I think you did, Gavin.”
He drew a deep breath, and another. Then he put the blood-soaked cloth on the ground and loosened the strip he had tied above the wound. “Lay back,” he whispered.
She stretched out on the floor, straightening her legs. Gavin laid his palm over the freely flowing gash above her knee. The blood was sticky and warm against his hand. Her blood, he thought; her life. Resting his other hand over her heart, he felt its sweet thunder beneath his fingers. He closed his eyes.
Unike Christian, he was not certain that his touch could make a difference here. But she had asked him, and he was willing to do anything for her. Even this.
Christian touched his arm, and the gentle contact sent a shiver of warmth through him. He felt the perfect breath of her love through her fingers. And he wondered, then, if she knew how deeply he loved her. He did not know if he had truly expressed it to her. Words and courtly gestures of love were not easy for him. But he wanted her to know. He wanted to convey it to her.
His mother had possessed a true gift, and he had long doubted his ability to do the same. As a child, whenever he hadbeen sick or injured, his mother had laid her hands on him. Her touch had been a soothing comfort that had always healed.
Now he wanted to give that same sustaining love to Christian. But he had not endeavored to use what his mother had taught him since the day that Jehanne had died in his arms.
He closed his eyes and drew a long breath. Long ago, his mother had described to him the simple method that she used in her healings: a hand on the head or over the heart, and a hand on the source of the pain. A prayer, any prayer, and breath. That was all, she had said: the gift itself, the touch itself, she had told him, was simply love, shining through the healer.
Gavin knew that the power his mother had possessed was truly rare. He had inherited her Celtic blood and her angelic features. But he had come to accept that he did not share the gift that permeated his Celtic lineage like the traces of gold in these walls.
But he was not entirely the same man as the one who had stood on a windy parapet, looking down at a sick waif trapped in a cage. He had been hardened then, from loneliness and anger and sadness. A true diplomat, neutral about all matters, he had been unwilling to involve himself wherever deep feelings were demanded from him.
And Christian had stirred very deep feelings in him. At first, she had reminded him of his lost wife, raising both sadness and sympathy in him. Then he had begun to admire her strength, her depth of feeling, even her willfulness. Loving her had opened him up to a heart and a cause outside of himself.
He knew himself better now. He knew that compassion and desire were more essential to his nature than anger and sadness. The truth of that stirred his blood, touching his very spirit.
When Christian had been near death in the abbey, Gavin had only held her. Jehanne’s death had taught him a lesson in humility that the Angel Knight, adored and favored and proud,had learned well. He had not actually tried to heal Christian in the abbey, though he remembered wishing that he could.
Now, in this golden, beautiful chamber, Gavin wanted to give Christian the fullest flow of his love. And that, he knew now, was the truest essence of healing.
He held his hands serenely still over her leg and her heart. At first the warmth that gathered in his hands was subtle. He waited, letting whatever stirred there flow unimpeded by thoughts or pride.
And he suddenly understood the damage that lay beneath his hand. As if he could see it, he knew how deep into the muscle the slash had gone, how close to the bone. He sensed that she had not lost a great deal of blood, but he knew that she could spare no more. There were other demands within her body.
Though his eyes were closed, he could see, in his mind, when the blood flow diminished, then trickled, then finally seeped beneath the cover of his hand. He waited, breathing slowly.
A cloud of stars seemed to swirl over his head then, spilling down to flow through his body like liquid fire. The heat became a pulsing flood of radiance. He was drenched in beads of sweat that dampened his hair and slid down his face.
His hands trembled, not from fatigue, but from the extraordinary rush of heat and light that was like fire, and yet like flowing water. Swirling through his body, the sensation pooled in his palms like a sphere of light.
He took in the fire and the flow. Filled with it, he could not hold back its force. He let it go on a shuddering breath.
“Dhia,” Christian said,the merest breath. She lifted her head and stared.
Gavin’s hands hovered a little above her chest and her leg. Beneath his palms, she saw tiny blue sparks glimmer, then spread like a halo around his hands. The colors changed as shewatched. Blue shimmered through green into gold, and gold spun into white; shining brighter than candleflame around his hands, the delicate bands of light were there, and yet were not there.
The glow of the lamp and the glitter of the golden ore were heavy and coarse compared to the exquisite luminescence that radiated from Gavin’s hands.
The heat from his touch spilled into her like sunlight, life-giving and sweet. She felt as if her body and her soul were brimming with peace and comfort. Breathing in rhythmic harmony with him, she floated on that deep, slow, cadence.
She had felt like this months ago in the abbey, wrapped in Gavin’s embrace. And she knew that he had healed her then, just as he was healing her now.
In the abbey chamber, she had seen an angel in a dream. His face had seemed so familiar, his strength what she had needed. His arms had surrounded her with love.
Watching Gavin now, she suddenly understood: in that healing angel, she had encountered the purest essence of Gavin’s spirit. When her own spirit had drifted out of her ailing body, her soul had touched the very soul of the man who had held her. And he had drawn her back.
