Page 43 of Beyond Dreams

“Duncan? Duncan, look at me,” she said with some firmness, pleased when he complied almost immediately. “You have to stay awake, okay? Don’t go to sleep.”

“I’ll nae leave you, lass. We’re safe here.”

“I’m not worried about that, Duncan. I’m worried about you having a concussion. What were you hit with?”

“Axe,” he said, his voice low but seemingly strong. “But nae the blade of it.”

“Holy shit, are you serious? Okay, it doesn’t matter. But you have to keep your eyes open, all right?”

“Aye.” And he did. “My horse did nae come back?”

“He did not. He’s going to be grounded when we get home,” she said lightly. “Duncan, I think you either have to stand or lay on your stomach so that I can get at and bandage the gash in the back of your thigh.”

“It’ll keep, lass,” he said. “Graeme will come.”

“He might, Duncan,” she allowed plaintively, “but he might not, or he might not quickly enough. There was a lot of blood back there. I need to wrap it up.”

When he balked at this, and looked about to argue further, Holly played dirty. “Seriously, Duncan, for such a big, strong guy, you’re kind of acting like a weakling right now.”

While she didn’t think there was any prize for her spot-on ingenuity, she was secretly tickled by how fast he actually did comply then. In fact, after giving his head a slow shake, he leaned over and managed to get to his feet without Holly’s assistance, though she did use her one hand to steady him.

“And what is that grin for?” He asked, his voice sharp, which she took as a good sign.

“Nothing, husband,” she soothed him, even as she drew out the word husband to further rile him. “Simply learning what makes you tick.” With more levity than she actually felt, she directed him, “Up against the tree, buddy.”

Though he’d had to duck under the canopy of the pine boughs, the branches at the trunk were a bit higher up that they were able to stay under the umbrella of the tree and mostly out of the rain. Duncan lifted his good arm, laying it against the tree and his forehead against his forearm.

On her knees once more, Holly sliced away at the fabric at the back of his thigh. She didn’t cut away his pants and long johns completely, but made such gaping slits in them, she was able to examine and wrap his injury by sword—a turn of phrase she would have guessed she’d not ever have cause to use—pretty quickly, simply by sticking her hands inside the gaping holes she’d made in his clothes. His thighs were massive, as hard as the rest of him, his flesh warm under her fingers.

When she was done, she decided that though the gashes looked awful, they might be the least of his problems. With the bleeding hopefully stopped now, she was truly more worried about his head wound.

She rose to her feet again and Duncan turned around, slanting an appraising glance at her, seeming to once again inspect her for injuries.

Holly distracted him. “I don’t think you can or should walk all the way back. Should I go back to Thallane and bring back Graeme?”

“Nae, I dinna want you walking about by yourself,” he said, his voice less sluggish than it had briefly been. “One of them got away.”

“I saw that. Do you think he’ll come back?”

“Nae, but I canna ken that for sure. You’re safer here with me.”

“They won’t be long, right?” She pursued. “Graeme or someone else will notice our absence or your horse returning without us, right?”

“That is my hope. Of course, nae one has any idea where we’d gone. I canna imagine they’d guess to look near the wildflower glen.”

“But theywilllook, right?”

“Aye, and they will nae stop. But I begin to suspect we might be stuck here a wee bit.” With that, he leaned against the tree and slowly lowered himself to the ground, wincing and favoring his right leg as he sat.

“That’s not...awful,” Holly allowed, sitting down as well under the tree. The trunk was not so very broad that when she leaned up against it, she was facing a different direction than Duncan, though she was determined to keep an eye on him. “As long as you assure me that you feel all right now, that you were only stunned earlier by the smack to the head. As long as those other injuries don’t start bleeding again.”

“Aye, I’m fine now, lass. But we ken nothing of the future, do we, or what might come?”

“No, we do not,” she agreed, releasing a sigh. Possibly more than most, she understood how the future you imagined was never promised.

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