Page 51 of Highland Treasure (Highland Brides 9)

The two men looked at each other, and then Alick sighed, and headed for the door.

“I’ll go back and see if the bag is still there. If no’, I’ll purchase ye more wolfsbane and comfrey. I remember the quantities ye got the first time,” he assured her, and then glanced to Simon. “I’ll be as quick as I can. Stay and guard the door until I get back.”

Simon nodded as he followed him out of the room.

Once they were gone, Elysande began to measure out the items she did have into the mortar. She had about half of the wolfsbane she needed, but no comfrey. She did have the willow bark and other weeds though. Once she’d added what she could to the mortar, Elysande stood on her good foot, picked up the pestle and began to grind the weeds into a fine powder. She hadn’t been doing it long when she suddenly stopped and called out for Simon. The door opened at once and he stuck his head in.

“Aye, m’lady?”

Elysande smiled apologetically. “I need you to fetch a bucket of water from the well, and then see if you can borrow a pot about yea big”—she used her hands to show him what she needed—“from the kitchen. One with a handle I can hang over the fire.”

Simon hesitated, and then pointed out, “I’m supposed to be guarding the door.”

Elysande grimaced with irritation. “I will be perfectly fine for a few minutes, Simon. Even if de Buci’s men did track us here to Ayr, they have no idea where we are staying, or what room I am in,” she pointed out, and when he shifted uncertainly, she narrowed her gaze and reminded him, “I am your lady, Simon. Please do as I requested. You may tell them I ordered you to do it should Rory or anyone else find out. But I should like to get the water warming before Alick returns with the rest of the weeds.”

Giving in, Simon nodded. “I’ll be back as quick as I can,” he said, and then warned a bit irritably, “But I will be blaming you if I get hell for this.”

Elysande went back to her grinding as he pulled the door closed with a snap.

“Spare horses we could switch to halfway through the day would certainly speed our journey along,” Tom commented with a nod, but then said solemnly, “But ’tis a large expense, and not to be indelicate, but I know you are not a first son, or even a second or third, and Lady de Valance did send coin with Lady Elysande. I think she should—”

“Ye can stop thinking,” Rory interrupted solemnly. “I do have the coin fer it.”

Tom’s eyebrows rose slightly, but then he shrugged. “Very well, then. Do you need any help picking or collecting them?”

“Aye,” Rory said, getting to his feet. “Tom, Conn and Inan with me. Fearghas and Donnghail will stay here to back up Simon and Alick.” Turning to the men in question, he added, “Replace them in an hour if we are no’ back by—” Rory’s words died in his throat when a woman’s scream rang out from the upper floor.

Rory recognized it as Elysande’s voice and was moving before he quite realized it. Racing out into the hall, he charged up the stairs, vaguely aware that the men were hard on his heels. As he reached the top step, Rory spotted Simon just rushing into the bedchamber where he’d left Elysande. It was a couple of steps later that his brain recognized that the English soldier had carried a bucket and pot, one dangling from each hand by its handle, and water had been slopping out of one or the other as he’d hurried forward.

“M’lady!”

That alarmed shout from Simon made Rory’s blood run cold, and while he was moving so fast that his feet seemed hardly to touch the floor, it still felt like it took forever for him to get to the room. He tripped over something inside the door as he rushed in, and glanced down to see the pot Simon had been carrying skitter away across the floor, and then his gaze found Elysande and everything else was forgotten. She lay splayed on the floor in much the same position he found her every morning—partially on her side, and partially on her stomach, her arm and leg thrown out as they usually rested over him—but he wasn’t there and now her hand was in the ashes at the front of the fireplace. Even more alarming than that though was the blood seeping out from under Elysande’s body.

Simon was kneeling next to Elysande. As Rory reached them, the soldier caught her shoulder and turned her onto her back, pulling her hand out of the fire. Rory wanted to look at her hand and see if she’d been burned, and if so, how badly, but as he squatted across her from Simon, his gaze was transfixed by the dagger sticking out of her chest and the wound bleeding freely on her forehead.

Rory’s heart was pounding a wild tattoo in his chest. He was a healer, used to seeing the injured and the ill. He was usually the calm one when it came to such situations, but seeing Elysande like this, so helpless and pale, made his gorge rise up his throat.

“I was only gone for a minute,” Simon muttered with what sounded like dismay. Shaking his head, he then asked anxiously, “Is she dead?”

The question galvanized Rory into action. Bending, he pressed his head to her chest briefly, and then picked her up.

“Is she dead?” Simon repeated, straightening to follow him.

“Not yet,” Rory said grimly, and carried her to the bed, barking orders as he went. “I need water, clean linens and my medicinals. Now!”

Vaguely aware that the men were suddenly running every which way, Rory laid Elysande on the bed and then glanced around, his gaze landing on the open window shutters, before continuing on in search of his brother . . .

“Where is Alick?” he asked sharply.

“He went to get Lady Elysande’s weeds,” Simon answered, rushing forward with the bucket he’d left by the door. “She dropped them when she fell and only realized it when we got up here.”

Rory’s mouth tightened at this news, but his gaze lowered to the bucket the man was holding out. There was water in it, but not a lot. Rory was guessing there was more of it on the floor by the door than remained inside, but there was enough for him to at least start on washing away the blood, he thought, his gaze moving to the knife in Elysande’s chest. He couldn’t remove it until he had linens to staunch the bleeding with and—

Turning abruptly as his mind processed Simon’s words and he recalled seeing him enter the room with the bucket and pot, he asked sharply, “Neither one o’ ye was guarding the door?”

“She ordered me to fetch her water and a pot to make her liniment with. She ordered me,” he repeated helplessly, still holding out the bucket.

Rory’s mouth tightened, but he made a mental note to himself that if Elysande survived, he would make sure he left only his men to guard her in the future. Men she couldn’t order away, he thought, and told him, “Set the bucket on the bedside table.”

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