Chapter 12

Chapter

Twelve

F or that one moment, time seemed to freeze in place as the needle-sharp dagger point entered the thick muscle of his heart. This was the first time that he felt the wounding, the first time the strong beat of his heart faltered. The shock of the pain alone was enough to make Bruce wince and groan. Clutching the wicked hole under his ribcage, he bent and staggered.

Mackenzie stepped back, a triumphant smirk on her face. “How do you like that now, Highlander? An injured heart is something to fear, is it not? Let’s see how your miraculous healing abilities handle that.”

His instinct was to run away and hide. This time, no berserker rage boiled inside him, urging him into the fray with sword held high. This time, Bruce felt the bite of mortality.

There was no breath to spare in his lungs and when he hacked out a weak cough, flecks of blood covered his hands.

The look in Mackenzie’s eyes held no pity as she watched the big man stumble. But then Bruce seemed to rally and the light of life came back into his eyes. When she saw his fighting spirit slowly beginning to return to him, Mackenzie thought it was best for her to run away and hide from what she had done. Leaving Bruce to make do on his own, she fled the scene of her crime.

He needed to return to his small cottage and hide too. Bruce felt in his bones that the magic that had made him invincible for so long was slowly starting to unknit inside him. Love had set him free from the curse, but it had also endangered his life. Breathing steadily and stopping the blood from flowing out of the wound by pressing his hand against it, Bruce headed home to Esme.

The evening winds were blowing over the cliffs, sighing through the long grass and whistling in the eaves. The cool air was very refreshing and it seemed to put some life back into him. Hugging the walls and using them for balance, step by step, Bruce made his way back to Esme. The beating of his heart was getting stronger. It galloped like a wild stallion trying to escape the halter. And then, where the small cottage was in sight, suddenly it stopped.

The strong pulse of his heart had been with Bruce for so long, that he was at a loss how to carry on without it. Looking down at his hand clutching the wound, the Highlander was in shock when he realized how meaningless his life had been up to the point where he was saved from the ocean by a wee slip of a girl dressed in rags.

Like a tall tree in the forest that has been hewn with axes, Bruce Sterling fell to the ground with a rumbling thud.

Esme was lying on the bed, staring up at the wooden beams spanning the rafters and thinking about what it might be like to leave the island. She was not keen to go back to Clyde’s house and kept delaying her return. She had listened to rumors of life on the mainland growing up and they never failed to fascinate her.

To her, the mainland represented the most amazing pastimes and amusements; fairs, market squares, merchant shops, and castle courts. Beautiful places where one could buy trinkets and gewgaws with which to prettify oneself.

Her sunny outlook on life had helped see her through the darkest hours. Esme tried to imagine how wonderful it would be to hold a penny in her hand and then use it to buy a sweetmeat or adornment from a stall at the market.

“Mmm,” she sighed and closed her eyes, writhing on the mattress with a sensual twist as she dreamed what it would be like to wear a bonny chemise for her lover in bed. What it would be like for him to pull the soft lace off her shoulders, exposing her breasts for his hungry mouth to nuzzle and lick…

A loud thump broke into her dreams. “Who is it?” Esme knew that no one would dare to approach the Highlander’s house without calling out a warning from the hitching post. Had one of the sheep wandered into the village and banged against the wall?

Gingerly stepping to the window, she looked out into the twilight gloaming. Nothing. No movement or sound. But something did not feel right when Esme looked inside herself. It felt like there was a missing part and she would not be complete until she went outside to look for it.

Pulling an old arisaid around her shoulders and using the flint to spark a rushlight, Esme stepped outside. “Hie, who is it? Is anyone there?”

The sound of the wind was the only reply she got, but Esme was not satisfied. Walking all around the cottage, she peered through the dense brush trying to see a shadow or shape. Kicking a path through the long grass, her eyes scanned from right to left and then back again, searching for the source of the thudding noise.

In the dark dusk, she nearly fell over the large body lying amidst the grass. Esme did not need to bend down to see the face; she knew who it was already. “Bruce!” The rushlight fell to the ground and went out as she clutched at his arm, trying to get him to roll over. “What is wrong?”

Under the light of the rising moon, Esme could see his unnatural pallor. He was pale, almost bloodless. And when she managed to turn him over by heaving on his arm, she saw the fatal wound. A tiny whimper came out of her mouth, the same sound a frightened animal would make when it saw another caught in the snare.

“Bruce!” This time, her need was more urgent. He must wake up now and be her braw, fearless, indestructible Highlander once more. “Ye must rise, me love. Please!”

Sitting on the damp grass beside him, Esme tried to stop the black blood oozing out of the hole under his heart. The flow was sluggish but persistent. Clamping her mouth to his, she could taste the scent of iron in his breath. “Me love, me darlin’ Highlander. Please wake up and be with me again. I cannae live withoot ye.”

No matter what mistakes he had made by choosing to live in peace with her enemy, he was still her braw lover at the end of it all. And together, they must pull through this.

Bruce groaned, but the effort of communicating with her seemed to reopen the wound even deeper. “Hush, love!” Wrapping his heavy arm around her delicate neck, Esme heaved herself up, trying to support him with all her strength. “Come on, darlin’! I ken ye can do it. A few more steps and we will be home.”

He seemed to comprehend her need for movement. With another deep groan of pain, Bruce managed to get his legs back underneath him as he half-crawled to the door of the cottage with Esme’s support. “Get me back under the b-boards…”

She understood. She knew what he needed because they had no secrets from one another anymore. So what if he had flouted his convenient relationship with Mackenzie in her face at the beginning of their union? Bruce had stayed on this isolated island for three years, waiting for Esme to come around.

Helping him into the house and then moving to the room to remove the boards from the floor, Esme was with Bruce every step of the way. Only when he was curled up in the hidden compartment under the floor did she ask a question; “How long will it be for ye to heal, Bruce? What else can I do to help ye?”

“I need the healing sleep, Esme. I dinnae ken why, but I think this is the last time I will be able to call on the power of the magic talisman to render me such a service.”

His eyes closed as his body tried to find the last of the magic to heal him for one final time.

Esme was left alone in the cottage. It felt alien to be there without Bruce’s strong, masculine presence and his protecting arms to hold her.

Springing into action, Esme decided to go into the village to see what news she could pick up. While she was not allowed into the great hall, slaves were permitted to stand at the doors and wait for someone inside to send them to the brewery for a drink. It was here she found out all the gossip she needed.

It was supper time, another communal meal shared by the tribe and their families. A cauldron of soup had been brought from the kitchen and placed in the middle of the hall. The old bread trenchers from dinner had been thrown into the soup to soften and thicken the broth. The boards were lying across the trestles and all the laird’s favorite warriors were seated close to the dais.

Mackenzie was sitting at the supper table with her father, on the dais. The conversation was conducted in a low voice, but clear enough for her to overhear.

“Your actions were misguided, Mackenzie. When he heals, the Highland Bear will come looking for you, demanding vengeance. Did I not instruct you to wait for me to arrive at the cottage before the two of you started to hash it out?”

Mackenzie had a sulking expression on her pretty face. She was threading one of her long blonde braids through nervous fingers. “He must be punished for rejecting me, Father. And as for that slave girl Clyde has got all heated over, I want her guts pulled out with a meathook before she is hanged from the rafters.”

The laird put down his soup spoon. “Do you have any idea how much gold the Highlander possesses on the mainland? No, you don’t, you stupid, pig-headed woman! The Scotsman would have paid a huge wergild to be set free from the arrangement I made between him and you. And now you have gone and ruined it with your headstrong tantrum.”

“He is dead, or at least he is dying I tell you.” Mackenzie was insistent about the facts. “I stuck him through the heart and I saw the doom in his eyes. He staggered off into the night, grunting like a dying stag. He was not so immortal after all.”

Esme watched from the shadows as Laird McFletcher shook his head with frustration. “Even I can see that it is not the Highlander’s fate to die at the hands of someone like you, Mackenzie. And if you have not just stabbed us into a problem that not a single man on the island is capable of combating, I will be very surprised.”

“He deserved it,” the laird’s daughter insisted. “How dare he mess around with that little nobody behind my back.”

Laird McFletcher gave his daughter a scornful look. “By all reports, you were the one to stray first. Be gone. I want nothing to do with you. And you better go to the saint’s shrine and pray that the Highlander is in a forgiving mood when he returns—and do not doubt that he will return, Daughter. He will heal and come back, probably stronger than ever before because now he has the flame of love burning inside him.”

Pulling her arisaid to cover her face, Esme stepped back into the shadows. It sickened her how casually the two McFletchers dismissed Bruce’s injuries. How dare they discuss his poor injured body as if he were just another disposable slave to them. All they had ever wanted from him after all his loyal service was to fleece more gold out of him.

Suddenly, Esme forgot her hatred for the McFletchers’ ghoulish behavior. Mackenzie appeared at the doorway with the hood of her cape pulling down low. After turning her head to the left and right, she stepped away from the great hall, heading towards her brother’s house. Stepping lightly behind her, Esme followed. When she saw the laird’s daughter enter the house without announcing her arrival at the post first, she knew some other plotting and planning would be happening inside. Sneaking around the corner, Esme stood on an upended bucket so that she could continue listening at the window.

Anna was seated in a chair next to the fire, the remnants of a private supper on the table. Clyde looked up when the door opened, but he did not stand when he saw who it was.

“You made a pig’s ear of it, Sister,” his voice was sneering as Mackenzie came to warm her hands by the fire. “I told you the Bear is virtually indestructible. You will be lucky if the village elders take your part because of your three years as his bedfellow now. It’s not like having the Highlander lap at your yellow cat was a hardship to endure.”

Mackenzie shot her brother a look of dislike. “And yet you stand to gain just as much as I do by his death or departure, Brother dear.”

Clyde looked over at Anna. “Let me speak with my sister in private, Wife. This discussion is not for your ears.”

Anna stayed put. “This is my house and I am still the mistress of it. You two can go to the other room.”

Her spirited reply made Clyde angry. “You own nothing that does not belong to me first, Anna! Now go before the back of my hand forces you!”

Anna left before he stopped speaking, disappearing into the kitchen while tying a shawl across her swelling belly. When Anna had gone, Mackenzie took her place on the chair. “I need you to go looking for him, Clyde. He staggered out into the evening sea mist and now cannot be found. One sword stroke through the heart should dispatch him, I know it.”

Clyde raised one eyebrow. “I am not a coward. If I kill the Highlander, it will be in combat and face-to-face. I want my slave girl back. My loins burn hot for her, but I cannot spread her legs with ease if I have to think about the Bear breathing down my neck all the time. But is it just revenge that makes you long for his death?”

Mackenzie gave her shoulders a careless shrug. “I will get more wergild from his estate if he is dead.”

“No, you will not,” Clyde was adamant, “that was why Father wanted to handle the matter. The Highlander’s gold is unreachable without a warrant from the man himself. And he owes you nothing. The compensation will go to Father.”

A sly smile appeared on Mackenzie’s face. “That is where you are wrong, Brother. A large portion of gold will come to me because I am carrying the Bear Warrior’s baby.”