Highland Obsession (38 page)

Finally clean and feeling more energized than he had in days, Alan went to the drawing room only to interrupt Mary MacNab berating Cam. Not for taking a bath, but for the filthy condition of his wounds.

“I’m going to have to scrub out the dirt and poke more thread into yer beleaguered body! Do ye think your skin enjoys that kind of treatment, you damn fool?”

“I know I don’t,” Cam mumbled.

Mary harrumphed and ambled to a table where her medical kit sat and began to rifle through it, taking out bottles of unguents and powders. She glanced at Alan and rolled her eyes heavenward. “Devil take it, another one. And what’s wrong with you?” she snapped.

“I’m well.” Alan offered her a small smile.

She was unaffected by his gracious look. “Well, get out of my way, then. I’ve a patient to attend.”

“Of course.” Alan sidled past her to stand by Cam.

“Sorcha sent her,” Cam murmured.

Alan nodded. “Good. You need her help.” The thought of Cam falling into another deadly fever made his stomach twist. The first infection had weakened Cam, and he was exhausted by the days of travel and battle while he still should have been recovering. Alan doubted he’d survive a second bout of fever.

Mary trudged back to Cam, her hands full of bottles, which she thrust at Alan. “Make yerself useful, then.”

“Happy to help, Mrs. MacNab.”

She withdrew a long, glimmering needle from a fold in her skirt and waved it in front of Cam’s face. “This will hurt.”

Cam nodded. “I know.”

She thrust the sharp end at his nose, and he drew back quickly, narrowly escaping being punctured by the pointed tip.

“Is that idiot of a doctor returning?” She made a disgusted noise in her nose. “His damn fool medicine was why ye fell ill the first time. I’ll not have the bastard fouling up my work again.”

“I won’t call on him, Mrs. MacNab. I promise,” Cam said. “God knows I don’t want that to happen again.”

“Yes, well, none of us do, ye know,” she mumbled, turning away.

Alan’s eyebrows shot toward his hairline, and Cam glanced at him with an equally astonished expression. Had Mary MacNab just expressed approval of the Earl of Camdonn? Alan gave her an appraising look. Perhaps Mary watched people more closely than she let on.

Alan dutifully passed the concoctions to Mary when she ordered them. At the same time, he plied Cam, who was gritting his teeth and blinking hard in a valiant effort not to faint, with whisky.

When she was done cleaning, stitching, applying bandages to both Cam’s wounds, and had finished performing her pagan healing rituals, she clapped her hands together in satisfaction. “There now. Ye’ll be right as my leg in fewer days than ye can count.”

Cam slumped back in his chair, his eyes half lidded and his mouth drawn in a tight white line as Alan showed Mary out and arranged an escort to return her to the glen.

When he returned to the drawing room, Cam pushed his eyelids open and pinned him with a stare. “When will you go back to Sorcha?”

Alan sighed and sat in the seat across from Cam. “Soon. I wished to speak with you first.”

The look of muddled exhaustion bled from Cam’s face, leaving him wide-awake and concerned. “What of?”

Alan pressed the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Nothing has been resolved. I cannot fathom what possessed either of you to pursue me all the way to Sherrifmuir.”

“First you might wish to explain what drove you away without a word.”

Alan fought back the urge to clamp his lips shut and walk out—all the way back to Sherrifmuir if necessary. He’d rather avoid difficult or uncomfortable topics, and this one was perhaps the most challenging he’d ever have to face.

But running away again would achieve nothing. They all needed to understand what had happened between the three of them.

He took a deep breath. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “I was in my cups, Cam. We all were.”

“Not enough to forget what had happened,” Cam pointed out.

“No.”

Cam’s lips twisted sardonically. “Come, now. You cannot tell me you didn’t enjoy that night. I was a witness to it, after all.”

Alan shrugged. “It wasn’t that. I—” He pushed his breath out. “It was when I awoke, apart from Sorcha. I looked over and saw the two of you . . . embracing. And I knew—” He broke off abruptly.

“What did you know?” Cam asked. “What wisdom did seeing Sorcha and I touch bestow upon you?”

“You love her.”

That ruffled Cam. He leaned against the velvet cushions, and the tall chair back cast a dark shadow over his face, rendering it unreadable.

Finally, he steepled his fingers beneath his chin. “I do love her,” he murmured thoughtfully.

At Cam’s blunt words, a possessive rage shot up through Alan’s body like a geyser. Just as it was about to burst, Cam added, “But she is not for me.”

“No?” Alan’s voice was a near growl.

“No.” Cam dropped his hands to his lap. “I made a deadly error when I took her from you that night, Alan. Sorcha belongs to you. She’s yours, my friend.”

“Why?” Alan demanded. “If you love her, and it’s clear you want her, then why?”

Cam sighed heavily. “I care for you both. I look at you and see a love match—one that I meddled with using my personal poison. Not to mention”—he leaned forward awkwardly, hampered by his bandage—“the fact that she loves
you
, Alan MacDonald. Not me.”

Alan shook his head. God, he wanted to believe Cam. But what if Cam was wrong? Alan’s injured pride couldn’t take another blow.

“Why did you come to Sherrifmuir?” he asked quietly.

“It was as I told you on the field. She wanted to reveal her heart.”

“But . . . why?”

Cam hissed out a breath. “She didn’t want you to face death believing she didn’t love you.”

Alan just sat, staring at Cam. All his bottled-up jealousy drained from him like water through a sieve, and his heart resurfaced once again.

She did love him.

The truth of it melted the final vestiges of the ice he’d packed around his heart on the night of their wedding.

After studying him for a long moment, Cam asked, “When will you speak with her?”

“She needs time to mourn—”

“Don’t be an ass, man. All she needs is you.”

 

It was snowing lightly as Alan and Sorcha made their way down the sloped path leading home. They’d covered the distance from Glenfinnan on horseback, and they had hardly exchanged a word the entire way, both of them lost in their own thoughts.

When they reached the cottage, Alan dismounted, then lifted her off. When her feet touched the ground, he smiled down at her, still clasping her waist in his hands.

She smiled back. It was the first time she’d smiled in days, and it felt good. Healing.

He released her, and she went inside the cottage while he took care of the horse, promising to follow soon.

A few moments later, Sorcha turned from the hearth to see Alan standing at the threshold, his gaze fastened on her. She took a shaky step toward the door and leaned on a supporting post in the center of the room.

They were home. Well and truly alone for the first time in many days.

“Do you want to be here with me, Sorcha?” he asked in a low voice.

She shook her head, confused. “You must know I want to be with you, Alan. I’d follow you anywhere.”

Alan’s brows pressed together, and a deep line appeared between them. “I’ve been a damn fool.”

“How can you say that?”

“I was jealous. I couldn’t stand sharing your love.”

“I care about Cam.” She licked her lips. “He’s essential to who I am, like my brothers and sister and father. I’ll always love him. But you’re different. More. You’re my husband.”

His face tight, he nodded.

“Why didn’t you say goodbye that morning?” she asked quietly.

“Duncan woke me before dawn. I looked over at you and saw you tangled in a lover’s embrace with Cam, and I couldn’t think. It nearly killed me to see the two of you like that. I felt—” He raked a hand through his hair. “I felt
alone
.”

Emotion lurched in her chest, but she remained silent.

“I was too sick of mind and heart to confront you at that moment. My men were waiting for me downstairs. It seemed so much easier to go to them than to wake you . . . to let you see how”—he glanced away—“hurt I was.” He inhaled deeply and met her eyes once again. “I went down to meet with Bowie—it was just him and two others. They’d risked the men leaving without them to come fetch me, and Bowie told me they planned to depart at dawn, whether I was there or not.” A guilty look crossed over Alan’s face. “I should have gone up to tell you what was happening, to reassure you all would be well between us. But I took the cowardly way out. I left.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she breathed. “You must know that.”

“I do now. I think I might have realized it later that day when we were on the march. By then it was too late to go back and say goodbye.”

“And now?”

“You came after me,” he said simply. “You and Cam drove to exhaustion to reach me in time, and when you didn’t, you searched for me among the dead in a field of battle. What further proof do I need?”

She pushed herself from the post and stepped toward him. “I love you, Alan. Can you see how much I love you?”

“I—” Alan gazed at her. She stepped up to him and rested her palms on his shoulders. “I fear what you might do to me.”

“I would never hurt you.”

He shook his head. “I know you wouldn’t—not purposely. But still . . .” His voice dwindled.

He was afraid she’d hurt him again. Because he loved her and had given her that power over him. “I lied to you once,” she said, “and I will never forgive myself for that. But I have never lied to you since. I love you. If we are open and honest with each other, as you said on the first night of our marriage, how can there ever be anything else?”

His thumb grazed her cheek and she closed her eyes. The mere touch of his finger nearly overwhelmed her. She continued in a low voice. “I didn’t know what it was, at first, this feeling in my chest whenever I looked upon your face and saw the wariness there. I hurt, because I’d hurt you. And I am so sorry for it.

“And then I hurt you again, with Cam that night. But everything I did was to please you. The greatest joy I experienced during that night was in thinking how I’d pleased you. How close I felt to you.”

“I manipulated you,” he said softly. “I tested you.”

Pain clogged her chest. “And I failed. I’m sorry.” She dropped her head, but his fingers found her chin and pressed it up so once again she stared into his eyes.

“No, it is I who am sorry. I misled you,
mo chridhe
. Into failing me so I’d have an excuse to run away. It was a sham to disguise my own cowardice.” Alan paused for a long moment, his fingers still holding her chin, but she felt a slight tremor in them. “It was because I’d fallen in love with you and I was too cowardly to acknowledge it. I was afraid of the pain you could cause me. Afraid if I opened my heart to you, you’d destroy me by returning to Cam.”

“Never.”

His fingers stroked her hair behind her ear. “I love you, Sorcha. So much, it scares me. Forgive me for being a . . . well, in Cam’s words, an ‘ass.’ ”

“I forgive you,” she murmured. “We both made mistakes.”

“Aye, we did.”

She wrapped her arms around his muscular torso and buried her face in his chest. They held each other for a long moment, and then she whispered, “I miss my brother. So much.”

“I know,
ceisd mo chridhe
.”

“He’s gone, and I will never know what kind of a man he would have become.”

Alan continued stroking her hair.

“If—if I had lost you as well—” Tears gathered behind her lids. “I couldn’t have borne it, Alan.”

“I’m here. I’m beside you, and I’m not leaving again.”

“You are the most important thing in the world to me, and I thought I might lose you without you ever knowing it. And . . .” She swallowed down the thick emotion crowding her throat. “I wished . . . I wished I had given you all of myself, and I realized I never really had.”

His fingers stilled over her ear. “What do you mean,
mo chridhe
?”

“I want to have a family. With you.” She glimpsed at him to gauge his reaction. His face was blank and she forged on, breathless. “You, me, and maybe a son or daughter for us to raise . . . in our new home up on the hill.”

“What about what happened to your mother?” he asked softly.

“I’m not afraid of death anymore. I’ve seen enough of it in the past few days. If my mother’s fate should befall me, at least I will die knowing I tried to give you a child.”

He cupped her cheeks in his palms. “Are you certain?”

“I’ve never been more certain of anything.”

“Ah, Sorcha.” His lips descended on hers, soft and light. She wrapped her arms around him and returned his kiss.

It had been so long. She tried to keep it slow, to refrain from devouring him, but a long, agonized groan emerged from her throat.

He gathered her tight against him. In all her life, she’d never felt so content, so loved. So right.

She pulled away. “Does this mean yes?”

He chuckled. “I say we begin right now.”

Gathering her close, he carried her to the bed. Their bed. He laid her down, removed his belt and plaid and then joined her, unclasping her brooch to release her
arisaid
, then plucking at her laces until her petticoats and stays gaped open. Then he grasped the edges, and she shimmied out of the garments as he tugged them from her body.

“It’s cold outside,” she whispered, shivering a little.

“Aye, it is.”

She slipped her hand beneath the hem of his shirt. “But you’re warm.”