Highlander's Redemption: The Sinclair Brothers Trilogy, Book Two (10 page)

A war raged inside
her. His words of warning registered, for she too had been unsure of whether or
not she should fear him. What he said was true—he had lied. He was actually a
Highland warrior, and clearly a very skilled one. But for some reason, his
threat about being dangerous to her rang hollow. She couldn’t explain it, but
she simply didn’t believe him.

For one thing, the
more she thought on it, the more she realized that he hadn’t snatched her away
with him—he had saved her, first from her brother’s impending strike, and then
from the battle that had boiled all around her back at Dunbraes village.

Moreover, she had
seen for herself how protective he was of her, both when he had first seen the
bruises her brother had left, and again when her brother had been about to hit
her. He may have deceived her before, but she didn’t think that he could fake
the visceral, instinctive protectiveness he had shown her.

But all of this
was hard to wrestle from her mind, for her eyes kept tugging down to drink in
the sight of his incredible physique. He had donned his kilt, but still wore
nothing on his upper half. Every plane and muscle seemed to work in hypnotic
coordination when he moved. She remembered the feel of both his warm skin and
hard muscles when they had kissed back in the smithy—vividly. He was so strong
and large, and yet he could be so gentle with her.

He was attempting
to intimidate her by taking a step forward, trying to prove his claim that he
wasn’t a safe person to be around.

It was true, she
didn’t feel safe around him, but not because she feared that he would hurt her
or mistreat her somehow. Instead, she feared her own reaction to him. She had
felt the fluttering of girlish affection before, but this completely eclipsed
her youthful attachments. She was drawn to him as a woman is drawn to a man,
not as a girl daydreams over a lad. He made her feel something she had never
felt before—or rather, he awoke something inside her that she had never known had
been there all along: desire. Raw, hungry, bodily desire.

She couldn’t
resist it anymore. She didn’t want to. She let her gaze slip down from his
steel-sharp eyes to the corded muscles of his shoulders and arms, the broad
expanse of his chest, and the narrower chiseled planes of his trim waist.

In a flash, the
perfected physique that she had just been gazing at was pressed against her,
his lips burning into hers. She gasped in surprise at the sudden contact, and
he took the opportunity to invade her mouth with his tongue. He stroked and
caressed her, but there was an edge of urgency and insistence in his kiss,
which she felt rising inside herself as well. She wouldn’t have been able to
articulate it before, but this was what she wanted—to feel him against her, to
let their mouths meld together, to feed the hunger she had for him.

One of his hands
was wrapped around her waist, holding her close to his body. The other hand,
which had been on her back, drifted lower to settle on her hip, pulling her
even tighter against him. Her arms had risen of their own volition and were now
wrapped around his neck. Her fingers entwined in his dark hair, which was still
dripping from his dunk in the creek. His clean, masculine scent invaded her
senses. He smelled of warm skin, leather, and the outdoors.

He started moving
forward, which forced her to step back, but he held them together so that they
moved as one, never breaking their kiss. A moment later, she felt the bark of a
large pine tree pressing into her back. She was pinned between the tree’s
unyielding trunk and Garrick’s rock-hard body—and one hard part in particular
was pressing into her. Heat shot through her at the sensation, firing her limbs.
It gathered especially in her mouth, her breasts, and between her legs.

The hand on her
waist began to move upward, and though she had never been touched there before,
she suddenly longed for him to let his hands settle on her breasts, which were
achy and needy for something, like an itch but…deeper. And more pleasurable.

She arched her
back slightly in anticipation of his touch, and he made a noise in the back of
his throat that was somewhere between appreciation and pain. He kept his
movement slow, though, his hand inching up to brush against the outside curve of
her breast. Then he let his thumb move over so that it skimmed against the
swell of her breast.

Even through the
material of her dress and chemise, the touch sent a jolt of sensation through
her, and she gasped again. The urgent achiness hitched higher, both in her
breasts and between her legs, where she felt warm and damp. She pressed her
hips into his even harder, longing for both relief from the sensation and more
of it.

The hand on her
hip suddenly clutched the material of her skirts and pulled it up by about a
foot. Then abruptly, the cool morning air slammed into her, replacing his
warmth. Her eyes fluttered open and she saw him before her, panting, clenching
and unclenching his fists.

“Christ,” he
breathed.

She brought a
shaky hand up to her lips, trying to feel herself to make sure she was still
real and that this wasn’t some heady dream.

He dragged a hand
through his hair, which was disheveled from her fingers. “We can’t do that.”

As if she weren’t
reeling enough from the intensity of their kiss and the longing coursing
through her, his words spun through her head and she struggled to make sense of
them.

“Why?” That was
the best she could manage. She had a dozen more articulate and important
questions about what had just happened, but she couldn’t seem to sort them out.

“Because…” He took
a breath and rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the tense knots of muscles
that were visibly clenched. “Because you are Raef Warren’s sister, and I am a
Sinclair. Because you are English and I am Scottish. Because you are a healer
and I am a killer. Because it’s wrong.”

It hadn’t felt
wrong. In fact, it had felt more right than anything she had ever experienced. She
had been completely entwined with him, communicating without words, sharing in
a free and untamed passion she didn’t know she was capable of. She couldn’t
explain it, but she felt drawn to him like a moth to a flame.

“What does my
brother have to do with this, or my country of birth, or my healing skills?”
She couldn’t quite manage to say the part about being drawn to him like no
other, embarrassed at the thought of sounding girlish or naïve. But she
wouldn’t just accept his reasoning—not when she longed so badly to be back in
his embrace again.

“I don’t think you
fully understand the gravity of this situation, lass, or the mess I am already
in just by having you here.”

His tone was like
a splash of cold water, waking her from the dizzy dream of desire in which she
had been floating. “Then why don’t you explain it to me, since you were the one
who brought me here.”

He struggled for a
moment, longing to soothe the clear frustration and injury he was inflicting on
her by pushing her away, and yet also wanting to solidify the distance he had
just wedged between them.

“I can’t tell you
any more. We are all already endangered by how much you know,” he said through
clenched teeth.

He had told her
that he was a Highlander and part of the rebellion, and that he had been spying
on her brother and Dunbraes. That was enough to have them all hanged, but at
least she wasn’t completely in the dark anymore. He would be crazy to explain
further—about how he was Robert the Bruce’s go-to marksman, that they were
heading toward his secret camp near Inverness, that the Bruce was developing a
new strategy to attack the English using stealth rather than meeting them on
the battlefield, and that Garrick was central to this plan. She would just have
to accept staying in the dark while he figured out what to do with her.

“We should discuss
where you’ll be headed once Burke is well again,” he said carefully, wanting to
change the subject, but finding just as many thorns in this new line of
conversation.

She drew her brows
together and crossed her arms over her chest, understanding his meaning. He was
trying to offload her once her usefulness to his mission was over. He
suppressed a wince at the harshness of it, but it was true. He shouldn’t try to
soften it or ease the rejection for her. She couldn’t stay with him, no matter
how much he wished things were different. And he did.

“I’m sure I can
take care of myself,” she said flatly. “Just drop me off in a village, and I’ll
be fine.”

“You still plan to
stay in Scotland?” For some reason, this surprised him, though it shouldn’t,
now that he thought about it. She had already tried to escape to Scotland once,
and he doubted there was anything for her to return to in England—least of all
her brother’s keep.

“Yes. So you see,
just as you are using me to heal Burke, I am using you to gain my freedom and
start a new life in Scotland,” she said, lifting her chin slightly.

He wanted to argue
with her, to tell her that it wasn’t safe and that he couldn’t just leave her
in some random village. But then he realized that she was only making the best
of the situation he had put her in.

He cursed himself
yet again for acting so rashly. He should never have let it go this far. He
should have kept his nose out of it and left her to deal with Warren. But his
whole being rejected the thought immediately. He could never have sat idly by
and watched Warren harm her, or leave her to fend for herself in the middle of
a battle that his actions had instigated. Christ, this was a mess.

“Very well, lass,
we will use each other. But we should not…touch each other that way again. It
will only make things more complicated.”

He didn’t try to
explain how or why things would get complicated if they continued to let their
attraction rule them, because for every reason he came up with against it—she
was a maiden, she was English, she was Warren’s sister—his body came up with a
counter—her soft pink lips, those firm, full breasts, her innocent yet heated
response to his touch. He had nearly taken her right there and then against the
tree. If he hadn’t reined himself in instead of hitching her skirts up higher,
he might have done something irreversible.

She didn’t
respond, and instead searched him with her gaze, trying to read him. He dropped
a veil of flatness over his demeanor, suddenly afraid that if she looked too
closely, she might see that his reasons for keeping his distance were
paper-thin and could be torn away with the slightest brushing touch from her.

“I’ll go check on
Burke,” he said brusquely. “You should see to your dress. There is still blood
on it.”

She looked down
and registered the blood—his blood—that had stained the front of her dress the
night before. The sight chilled him, reinforcing what he needed to do. If he
didn’t follow through with his mission and keep her at a distance, one or both
of them would be hurt. He was used to closing himself off, to doing what needed
to be done, even if no one else was willing to do it. This was just another
mission, he repeated to himself over and over, forcing his feet to turn away
from her and walk back toward the shelter.

Jossalyn didn’t
bother to take off her dress. Instead, she just knelt next to the creek and
cupped water in her hands, splashing it down her front. She ended up damper
than she would have liked, but the thought of peeling off the dress and
standing in the open air in nothing but her chemise—with Garrick only a short
distance away—was too much. So her entire front was soaked, but at least most
of the blood had washed away.

She made her way
back to their makeshift camp slowly, trying to give herself time to chew on
everything that had passed between her and Garrick. It hadn’t come as a
complete shock that he was a Highland rebel—she had gathered nearly as much
with the combination of witnessing him fight, hearing his thick accent, and
seeing him in a kilt.

But she had had no
idea that her brother was such a well-known and hated figure in these battles
for Scotland’s independence. He very rarely told her anything about his trips to
the north or the movements of the English soldiers who frequently passed
through Dunbraes, but she had known he was some sort of player in all this—just
not quite so central a player.

The real shock had
been her kiss with Garrick—their second kiss, which had somehow managed to be
even more intense than the first one. But her mind swirled at his harsh words
of warning and the way he was distancing himself from her. His body and his
words were telling two different stories, and she wasn’t sure which one to
believe.

She was
uncomfortably aware of the fact that she was inexperienced and he…well, he
wasn’t. But she trusted her sense that his attraction to her was real. Could a
man simply fake the kind of bodily reaction he had had with her?

The memory of his
hard manhood pressed against her stomach flooded back to her, and despite the
fact that she was alone with her thoughts, she blushed. She didn’t think he
could fake that.

And she didn’t
believe he was faking his protectiveness of her either. From what she had seen,
he had a strong sense of honor, of right and wrong.

So then why did he
keep warning her about how dangerous he was? Why did he make it clear that he
didn’t trust her, and that she shouldn’t trust him? There was more that he
wasn’t telling her, she was sure of it. He wouldn’t tell her why, but he was
convinced that he was some sort of dangerous villain, which simply didn’t fit
with what she had seen of him, even after he had transformed from country
blacksmith to Highland warrior.

Her thoughts were
interrupted by the sound of a groan up ahead of her. She quickened her pace
toward the shelter, worry itching at her. As the shelter came into view, she
broke into a run.

“Stop! Put him
down!” she shouted at Garrick in shock. He had pulled Burke out from inside the
lean-to shelter and was supporting his weight under his arm. Burke was leaning
precariously against Garrick, his face white and glistening with sweat despite
the cool morning air.

“He can’t be moved
yet! He needs more time to rest!” she panted in frustration as she came to a
halt in front of the two men.

“There isn’t time
to rest anymore. We have to move,” Garrick responded coolly. He had donned his
shirt and leather vest again, and looked prepared to ride already. His tone was
authoritative, brokering no argument, but Jossalyn paid it no heed.

“You said you
wanted me to help Burke, but I can’t very well do that if you are dragging him
all over the forest, can I?” she said acerbically.

He raised an
eyebrow at her tone, but didn’t bother answering. Instead, he guided Burke around
her toward their horses. Burke had all his weight on his good leg, but even
just moving was bringing grunts of pain from him. When they reached his horse,
Garrick paused for a moment, letting Burke catch his breath and steel himself. Through
clenched teeth, Burke said over his shoulder, “Garrick is right, we have to
keep moving. I’ll be fine, lass.”

Garrick boosted
Burke up into the saddle, but the motion of swinging his wounded leg over his
horse brought a string of muffled curses from Burke. Garrick was grim-faced but
didn’t say anything. He turned to his own horse, preparing to mount, but
Jossalyn strode to Burke’s side and took the reins firmly into her hands.

“I cannot condone
this. You are endangering Burke by forcing him to ride.”

Garrick brought
his horse on the other side of Burke’s, so that he was towering over her and
pinning her between the two horses. “And we are all in danger if we stay here. No
doubt your brother and his English army are barreling down on us as we speak. Our
only hope is to take advantage of the fact that we are fewer in number and know
the landscape better. We have to outride them.”

Jossalyn felt a
surge of helplessness and frustration wash over her. It went against every
instinct as a healer to put one of her patients in danger by ignoring his wound
and risking infection.

On the other hand,
she had no desire for her brother to catch up with them. She felt her stomach
twist at the idea of another confrontation between her brother’s army and
Garrick and Burke. The images of the blood, death, and maiming she had
witnessed at Dunbraes flooded over her and she had to swallow to force her
stomach back down her throat. But this time, Burke wouldn’t be able to fight,
so Garrick would be on his own against who knew how many soldiers. The thought
of him dying beneath her brother’s blade brought a stab of fear and nausea to
her.

She locked eyes
with Garrick, trying to communicate her struggle to him. His steely gaze cut
into her, determined, but she thought she saw a flicker of his own fear for a
moment as well.

Just then, Burke
groaned again, but this time he began slumping forward over his horse’s neck
limply. Garrick flung himself from his horse and darted to her side just as
Burke began to topple sideways out of the saddle. He caught Burke just before
he would have fallen unconscious, either onto the ground several feet below his
horse’s back, or right onto her, which would have likely crushed her.

“Take him back to
the shelter,” Jossalyn said as she locked her eyes on Burke’s leg. It was
bleeding again, and the fresh bandages she had put on no more than an hour or
two ago were already soaked through.

Garrick
half-dragged Burke’s large frame back toward the lean-to. When Burke was
settled inside the shelter on his back, Jossalyn crawled in and placed a hand
against his damp forehead. He was burning with fever. She muttered in
frustration, something between a curse and a prayer, then unwrapped the bandage
on his leg. He had reopened the wound, likely trying to stand and mount his
horse. But more concerning was the fact that the flesh around the cut was now
red and puffy.

“What is it?”
Garrick said softly from the opening of the lean-to. He was watching her
closely, his eyes hard and grim.

“Infection,” she
said as her mind raced for a solution. “We’ll need a fire after all.”

He grimaced and
opened his mouth to argue, but she held up a hand to silence him.

“Garrick, listen
to me. Burke will die if this goes untreated. And even if I had every herb,
tincture, and tool that a healer needs at my disposal, I’m not sure whether or
not I can save him. I have to try everything I can, even if it means risking
discovery.” She held his gaze and watched a war rage across his face. Finally,
he cursed and raked a hand through his hair.

“What can I do?”

She turned her
attention back to Burke, relieved that she had won the battle. “We need a fire,
and boiling water. The best we can do out here is to soak the bandages in
yarrow water and force some tea down Burke’s throat.”

It was a long
shot, but the yarrow would absorb into the wound better if it were boiled and
soaked into the bandages. Yarrow was their best bet to get the bleeding stopped
and hopefully stave off the infection. She would have to re-stitch the wound,
too.

Garrick set about
building a fire a few feet away from the shelter. Jossalyn dug in her bag
again, hoping to find anything that might help, but she had taken very little
with her when she had left Dunbraes to stow away with Garrick and Burke. The
memory of packing for her grand escape seemed to have been formed ages ago,
although only a few days had elapsed. She had had no idea when she was packing
what kind of tangled calamity she would find herself in just days later. A
man’s life was in her hands—and all of their lives hung in the balance.

A fire now
crackled cheerily in front of the shelter, a stark contrast to her mood.
Garrick had pulled a small tin pot from his saddlebag and had filled it with
water from his waterskin, then placed the pot over the fire to get a boil
started. Jossalyn crawled out of the lean-to and toward the fire, a clump of
yarrow plants in her hand. She pulled off the soil-covered roots, but pushed
the rest of the plants—feathery leaves, white flowers and all—into the pot.

Reminding herself
that a watched pot never boils, she crawled back into the shelter alongside
Burke and went about preparing to re-stitch his wound. This time, since he was
unconscious, she wouldn’t need Garrick to hold him down. As she threaded her
needle, she glanced out at the fire in front of the shelter, but Garrick was
gone.

She tugged her
attention back to the task at hand, pushing away her thoughts about him. She
could gaze at his strikingly handsome face and body or chew on his enigmatic words
and behavior some other time, she told herself firmly.

After she had
re-stitched the wound in Burke’s leg, she went to the fire to check on the
yarrow water. The plants had turned pulpy and withered, and the water was
nearly boiling already. She looked around and noticed that the horses were
gone, but that their saddlebags sat on the ground a few feet away. Garrick had
likely seen to them. She felt a wave of gratitude at his small action. It meant
that she was no longer going to have to fight him on whether or not they could
move Burke and resume their travels. It was a small act, but she was glad to
have one less thing to worry about.

She rummaged in
one of the saddlebags until she found a small tin cup. She dipped the cup into
the pot, ladling out some of the yarrow water, then brought it to Burke’s side
within the shelter. She lifted up his head and poured some of the warm brew
down his throat, pleased when she saw that he swallowed several gulps of the
tea. Laying down his head as gently as she could, she scooted out of the
lean-to and refilled the cup at the fire.

She managed to get
one more cup of the yarrow tea into him, which boosted her spirits slightly. Yarrow
was a powerful anti-inflammatory, antiseptic, and anti-fever medicine. She thanked
her lucky stars that she had left some of the plant in her bag when she had
packed, and that there was more growing in the area.

This time as she
crawled out of the shelter, she brought all the bandages she could rummage with
her. She would only be able to soak one at a time since the pot was so small,
but it was better than nothing. Just as she was pushing one of the strips of
cloth down into the pot with the waterlogged plants, she caught a glimpse of
Garrick’s red plaid through the trees.

She watched as he
approached, but when she could finally see him fully unobstructed by the trees,
her breath caught in her throat. His arms were overflowing with yarrow. He
strode to the fire where she knelt and dumped the armload of plants on the
ground, making an enormous pile of them.

“Is this the kind
of plant you need?” he said, his eyes on her.

She didn’t know if
it was the lack of sleep or the razor-sharp anxiety of the past few days that
brought it on, but all at once tears blurred her vision. She nodded, not trusting
her voice.

Suddenly he was
kneeling next to her. “What is it, lass? Is everything all right? Is it Burke?”
Fear pinched his voice, so she shook her head quickly.

“No, Burke is
resting. It’s just…You found all this yarrow, and…” She took a shaky breath and
tried to pull herself together. “Thank you,” she eventually managed.

She was so struck
by his kindness and eagerness to do something useful that she nearly lost her
hold on the tears again. This was a man of action, a warrior used to being able
to do something with his hands to change things. He was no healer, as she was
sure he would vehemently insist, but he clearly cared enough about his friend
to act like one. She wouldn’t let herself indulge in the thought that he wanted
to be of help to her too, that he wanted to protect and care for her in the
only way he could think of. That was just sentimental wishful thinking, she
told herself firmly.

“The horses?” she
said, trying to get her mind back on reality.

“They’ve been fed
and watered. I found a shallow cave on the other side of this rock formation
that is mostly covered over with shrubs. It’s not perfect, but it will have to
do.”

She nodded, again
grateful for the fact that he had taken care of things. “I managed to get some
tea into Burke, which will hopefully help cut the fever and, if we are lucky,
stop the infection.” Using a stick, she drew out the strip of cloth that had
been soaking in the yarrow water. She let it cool in the air for a moment as
she pushed another piece of cloth into the pot in its place. Then she took the
soaked cloth into the shelter and began wrapping it around the wound. Garrick
followed her silently, helping her lift Burke’s leg again.

When the task was
done, they returned to the small fire. “How often does the bandage need
changing?” Garrick asked quietly as they both stared into the flames.

“About once an
hour.” She registered that her voice was flat with exhaustion, but was too
tired to care.

“And when should I
give him more tea?”