Page 79 of Sweet Home Highlander
“Not as terrible as you would expect,” he said, in softly accented English though it was clear he was a Scot. “I’ve given you some laudanum for the worst of the pain.”
“Ah,” she said with a soft puff of laughter that made her torso ache slightly, though not unbearably. “No wonder I feel so remarkably pleasant.”
“In addition to a worrisome head injury, you’ve sustained several bruised ribs, and a sprained ankle.” He smiled wryly at her. “Though I know it does not sound quite so minimal, you could have broken your neck with such a fall. You were lucky, my lady.”
“Lucky,” she murmured, immediately thinking of Dougal’s pistol. If he hadn’t been such a poor shot at longer range, she would not have been so lucky. Poor Fenella. How she had managed to crawl from the mines to get help was both miracle and mystery combined.
Doctor Stewart packed up his things into a small portmanteau. “We will have to keep an eye on the head wound, but if all goes well in the next few days, I expect you to make a full recovery. You’ll need to stay off that ankle and let it heal properly, but I foresee no complications.” He gave a short bow. “And refrain from any strenuous activity that will put unneeded pressure on your ribs. I’ll be back tomorrow to check on you.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
After the doctor took his leave, Aisla’s spate of energy flagged, and she felt immediately fatigued. It did not escape her attention that her husband was not in the room. She did not want to seem ungrateful to those who were there, however, so she pasted a smile on her face.
“What happened to you?” she said to Makenna, trying to remember beyond the past few days. “Did the Campbell’s men take you?”
Makenna bit at her lip, her gaze sliding away. “Nae, Dougal Buchanan took me. The Campbells had naught to do with it, and did no’ know of the man’s plans.”
Aisla gasped. “Good Lord, if I ever see that lout again, I will murder him myself.”
“No need,” Makenna said with a wry twist of her lips. “Dougal challenged Niall’s honor, and Niall offered him a chance to prove himself by sword. He lost, and then tried to kill Niall after he’d fairly won. Dougal’s dead.”
Aisla couldn’t even summon up a puff of remorse for the man after everything he’d done and how many people he’d hurt, manipulated, and killed. “Good. I’m glad.”
WherewasNiall?
It had been four days, she reminded herself. Perhaps he had been here, and had needed to return to see to business at Tarbendale. He was a laird, after all, and couldn’t be expected to drop everything to mind a bedridden invalid.
Certainly, he would care if she lived or died, but he wouldn’t have put his life on hold for a woman he probably loathed. Her throat clogged up unexpectedly with a burst of emotion. She needed to see him, and speak to him. The desire she’d felt when she’d first woke to tell him exactly how she felt, whether he wished to listen to her or not, came back to her in a rush. Aisla blinked back the useless tears that were suddenly stinging the backs of her eyes.
“Do ye remember what happened?” The question came from Ronan, his normally booming voice quiet.
She cleared her throat, swallowing the tears. “Not fully, no.”
“If it’s too much, ye needn’t try to remember.”
“No, it’s fine,” she said, knowing those in the room would all be wondering what had caused her to go missing. “The laird and I had parted ways just that morning, and it was not…exactly on good terms.” She paused, her face growing hot as she realized they all likely knew that part of the story by now. “Fenella, being Fenella, thought it best to see me out, and she said some odd things about Dougal. That he’d been fishing for information about Makenna, myself, and the mines. When I confronted her about whether she’d mentioned Makenna’s early morning rides, she admitted that she had. It was too coincidental. I had to tell Niall, and she insisted on telling him herself about her part in it. Once we’d ridden out to the mines, I noticed there was no one there.”
“’Twas a Sunday,” Makenna murmured.
“Yes, I realized that soon afterward,” Aisla said. “We did not find Niall, but we found Dougal with a barrel of powder and a fuse rope. He shot Fenella and then came after me. I hurled my dagger at him, and then fell through some rotted boards in the tower house. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up.”
“’Twas a miracle ye did no’ break yer neck, lass,” Ronan said, his tone full of compassion. “And ye got him in the shoulder with yer dagger.”
“I aimed for his black heart.”
Aisla’s eyelids felt heavy, her bones lethargic. It was probably the effect of the laudanum and the effort of speaking. Her throat felt somewhat raw. Soft hands held hers, and she opened her eyes to see Lady Dunrannoch sitting beside her on the bed.
“My God, Aisla, we were so worried about you.”
“I’m sorry.”
Her mother-in-law smiled through her tears. “Don’t be sorry, dear. I was just glad when Niall found you. I’ve never seen my son look so crazed. You were black and blue, and he would not let you go, not to another until you were safe here in bed. Oh, my dear, had I known what sort of danger it would put you in, I never would have insisted you stay on instead of returning to France.”
Aisla frowned. “Youinsist? I thought it was your solicitor…”
Lady Dunrannoch squeezed her hands and another tear fell. “I may have meddled a bit, thinking more time together was all the two of you needed to reconcile. Oh, but it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
She broke off after a quelling noise from Ronan, her eyes wide with horror as if she’d said something she shouldn’t. Aisla’s eyes slid to Julien and Makenna who both wore a strange expression that bore a marked familiarity to the one on Ronan’s face. Something like dread scattered in her heart.
