The Firebrand (24 page)

The knight took her gently by the arm and guided her along the gallery. At the bottom of the steps, Nichola planted her feet and whirled on him.

“Please!”

She found her show of strength breaking down under the weight of this new discovery. She’d been so certain the fire in her prison upstairs would create enough of a distraction for her to get away. But now this!

Disappointment washed over, cold and wearying.

“Please, Henry! I appeal to your honor and the friendship you felt for my husband. Answer this one question. Are my daughters protected from the fate that awaits me?”

The knight averted his blue eyes, fixing his gaze on the steps behind her.

“That, Nichola, is up to you.”

Adrianne needed no one to accuse her. With every shuddering moan from the young boy, guilt tore at her insides with the claws of some ravenous beast.

A fire crackled in the brazier. The wet clothing had all been stripped from Gillie’s slender frame. Piles of blankets had been tucked around his frail, shivering body. But in spite of all Adrianne had done, the lad continued to shake like a willow leaf in a winter storm.

The sleepy serving man who had lit the fire for her had long ago gone back to his bed. Wyntoun, too, had stormed off. She looked about her, frantic for more blankets to pile on top of the boy. But there were no more left. She laid her hand on his cold, clammy forehead. Helpless desperation washed through her, draining her. The dawn still seemed hours off. She wondered briefly if getting something hot into the boy would help him. She shook her head. Leaving him alone while she ran to the kitchens was out of the question. She just couldn’t bring herself to leave him alone.

The sound of someone at her door drew her attention. After another quiet knock, Jean’s wrinkled face appeared from the shadows. Adrianne cried out with relief and ran to the older woman.

“Thank heavens you’re here!” She moved forward to give the older woman a hand. Jean’s heavy walking stick clunked loudly on the wooden floor. “How did you know to come?”

“Wyntoun came for me, of course.”

“Of course.”

She looked at Adrianne carefully. “This is not much of a wedding night for you two, lassie.”

“This is all my fault,” she blurted out. “I should have known that Gillie would be waiting outside of our chamber. I mean, the poor child always watches over me. He’s always there at night. ‘Tis so irresponsible of me…”

“Hush!” Jean said sternly, putting an arm around Adrianne and wiping away her tears with callused fingers. “That kind of talk does no one any good. You cannot be taking care of him if you are falling apart yourself.”

Adrianne nodded and drew a breath to calm her tattered emotions.

“Now, first things first.” She leaned on her stick and frowned at the younger woman. “I want you to go directly to your chamber and get out of this wet clothing before you catch your death yourself. And you’ll do it this moment.”

“But…”

“No arguing, child. Go!” Jean turned toward the bed. “I am going to look after the lad while you’re gone. The sooner you go, the sooner you’ll get back. And when you do get back, I’ll have a number of things we’ll be needing to put this urchin to rights. Now be on your way.”

Adrianne rushed down the stairs and burst into the chambers that she had so carelessly convinced Wyntoun to leave before. The rooms were as they’d left them, and there was no sign of the knight. She went directly to a large chest containing the new clothes Mara had directed Bess and her helpers to sew for Adrianne.

She hadn’t even realized how cold she was herself until she had cast aside the wet dress and shift and pulled on dry clothes. Reaching over her head to tighten the laces in the back, she raced out of the chambers. Adrianne took the steps two at the time and ran to Gillie’s room. Jean was sitting beside the boy’s cot. She had propped him up with pillows and was rubbing an oil of some kind on Gillie’s chest.

“How is he?”

“Sleeping. But the fever has already begun. By morning, if he survives the night, the lad may begin to cough.”

Adrianne moved to the side of the bed. “Please tell me what to do.”

“Sit with him for now,” she said, soaking a linen cloth with another oil that she poured from a horn jar. Carefully, she spread the cloth over Gillie’s chest. “Cover him when he has a chill and bathe the lad’s face and neck with a damp cloth when he is burning up. Use this oil to dampen the cloth.” The woman painfully pushed herself to her feet. “On my way out I’ll stop in the kitchens and have one of the women bring you up some warm barley water. Spoon the liquid into him as much as you can. I’ll make up a mixture of sorrel and honey when I get back to my cottage and send John back here with it. Give that to the lad when he starts to cough.”

Adrianne listened intently to these directions as Jean handed her the two horn jars containing the medicinal oils.

“Let me walk you downstairs,” she said when the healer was finished.

“I can manage.” Jean waved a hand, pausing to look back at Gillie. “The lad’s face...”

“He was born with it, I understand.” The young woman gazed at Gillie’s face, raw-looking with its scabs and open sores and scars. For a change the cheek was not covered by his wool cap. “But he is no bringer of bad luck, Jean. He is just a young lad.”

“Nay.” The old woman shook her head. “The lad wasn’t born with those sores.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind any of that now.” Jean turned toward the door. “We’ll talk more about it if the lad survives the fever and the cough.”

***

Wyntoun was standing by the great arched cooking ovens and talking to John when Auld Jean limped into the kitchen. The two men both stopped and waited for her to speak.

“Only the Lord can tell,” she said in response to their unasked question. “I’ve seen a few folk in that laddie’s condition who’ve met their Maker in a day and others who’ve lived to a ripe old age.”

She squeezed Wyntoun’s arm and looked up into his face. “I think your young wife, though, is the one who is suffering the most right now.”

“If she is, the woman brought it on herself.”

Jean cocked an eyebrow at him. “Not like you to shrug off
your
responsibility.”

The Highlander frowned and turned his gaze to the embers banked in the hearth. “I didn’t mean it as it sounded. The lad has been my responsibility since the day I found him as a bairn and took him to Kisimul Castle. And I haven’t done right by the boy. I left him out there to be treated with less care than they’d give a dog.”

“That’s the problem with both of you.” Jean shook her head, moving toward the fire. There was a pot of water simmering at the end of a long iron hook, and she used her stick to pull it closer to her. “You and Adrianne are both so wrapped up in what is past that you are not paying any heed to the present.”

The midwife turned to the Highlander. “This is your wedding night. The beginning of many things.”

She watched him as he continued to fix his gaze on the fire. Wyntoun MacLean had grown tall and strong. To everyone else, he was the fierce Blade of Barra, their master and future laird. But to Jean, he was still the young lad with a bloodied knee. And, out of respect, he still wouldn’t look her in the eye when he disagreed with her. Some things never changed, she thought.

“You are a great man, Wyn. A man of the world. An educated man ten years Adrianne’s senior. You are also an understanding man.”

“Jean, I have no stomach for this…”

“You
do
have stomach for it,” the older woman scolded gently. “And you
will
hear me out.”

Her husband John moved away from the fire and picked up a fat cat from a bench. He stopped by the door, far from his master’s wrath.

“She is a young thing, Wyntoun. Young and restless and hungry for life. Aye, the lass is starving for life. She wants to learn…and help…and belong.” Jean leaned heavily on her stick. “Just think of what she has been through. Losing a father. You know what it felt like when you yourself were a wee lad and Alexander was out at sea. But you had Alan and the rest of us. Adrianne was separated from her mother and her sisters. Who did she have on that godforsaken Barra? She had your aunt! You yourself could not stand her blustering for a day, John tells me.”

Wyntoun didn’t fight her. He didn’t disagree. But she could still see the battle raging in his face. He wasn’t convinced. He wouldn’t let himself be convinced.

“Have a wee bit of patience with her, Wyntoun MacLean. See her not just for all that is wrong with her. Appreciate her for all that is good in her. I’m telling you, Wyn, few have a more compassionate heart than that one.”

He gave her a curt nod, and she watched him go. There was trouble in this marriage. She could see it in the sadness that lay in Adrianne’s soul, in the storm that brewed in Wyntoun’s eyes. There was trouble, here. But there was passion, too.

Jean shook her head and looked into the fire as her husband joined her by the hearth. If she only knew more about healing. She needed a medicine that could make these two pour out what lay bottled up in their hearts. She sighed.

If only there were such a medicine.

***

Adrianne dipped a strip of linen cloth in the bowl, wrung it out, and patted away the beads of sweat forming on the lad’s brow again. There was a small whimper. An incoherent murmur. Gillie’s head moved jerkily from side to side.

Two nights and a day had passed, and Gillie was still burning with the fever. Jean had come back next morning, checking on the lad, leaving more medicines. Mara too had come up each day, her concern obviously more focused on Adrianne. Against the older woman’s remonstrances, though, she refused to leave Gillie’s side.

How could she, Adrianne had argued, when the boy continued to sweat profusely one moment and shiver like a winter leaf the next. He needed her.

And she needed some sign of improvement in him. She needed a reprieve from all the guilt she was feeling.

She gazed at the boy. He was so helpless. So sad.

Adrianne couldn’t hold back her own tears as she watched the young boy continue to struggle against the fever.

“‘Tis all my fault,” she whispered guiltily, caressing his face. Sitting on the side of the bed, she stopped him from pushing back the covers in a sudden thrashing frenzy. “I am sorry, Gillie. I am so sorry.”

She laid the damp cloth across his forehead. The boy relaxed a little, but he mumbled incoherently and cried out softly in his sleep.

She had been blessed with the affection of loving parents for all of her life. Despite all of the troubles she’d caused, Adrianne had always had the comfort of being surrounded by those who’d watched over her, loved her, forgiven her—no matter how horrible her transgressions had been.

When her parents were taken away, then she’d had her sisters. She had not known what loneliness meant until she’d been sent to the Isle of Barra.

Loneliness. Rejection. The stinging lash of reprimand from one who does not love you. Adrianne had endured five months of it on Barra. Gillie had faced it for all of his ten lonely years of life.

Never to have been held in a mother’s arms. Never to have felt the warmth of a proud father’s glance. Never, ever to have been cared for or loved.

To be as lonely as this child had been for all of his life! The thought was crushing.

“I will look after you,” she murmured, gently cradling with one hand the scarred side of his innocent face. “I promise never to be as careless as I’ve been before—never to endanger you as I have done. Please, Gillie! Please get better!”

The words caught in her throat, choking her, and her tears coursed down her cheeks. Adrianne reached up, impatiently wiping them away as she continued to watch the young face.

He looked too pale. Too weak. If his fever did not break soon, she feared she might lose him. Fear. For the first time, the emotion was taking control of Adrianne’s mind. What happened if Gillie did not live through this? What if her carelessness should cost this innocent boy his life? What if Wyntoun had been right in all that he’d said?

“Please, Blessed Virgin...” Adrianne’s prayer was hushed, yet wrenching. “Please, help him get better. Give him strength to fight this through.”

“I think ‘tis time you went downstairs and rested, young woman.”

Adrianne hadn’t heard the door open, nor had she heard Mara’s approach. “I am well. I do not need to rest just now.” She clumsily wiped away at her tears.

Mara’s small hand rested on Adrianne’s shoulder. “I disagree. You have not slept for over two days. You will get ill, as well.”

“I have been resting as Gillie sleeps. Surely, Mara, you can see that I am fine.”

“I see no such thing. And that’s a lie, my dear, about resting. You know as well as I do that you’ve sent away each person I’ve sent up here to take your place. Whenever I’ve come up here to check on you myself, I see you steadfastly vigilant, caring for this foundling lad.”

“I cannot leave him while he is like this, Mara.” Adrianne leaned over and touched Gillie’s face as he began fretting again. He seemed to quiet at her touch. “I am the reason he is here. I am the reason he is fighting for his life. The least I can do is to stay here and help him fight.”

“Reason! Reason!” Mara huffed, sitting down on a small stool that had been placed beside the bed. “That is one area of your education in which I can see you are greatly lacking. ‘Tis cold in here.”

But Adrianne was in no mood for Mara’s scolding. She was in no mood for anything but being left alone. Responsibility! That’s what Wyntoun had said she lacked. Responsibility…and now reason!

“Have you seen your husband?”

“I have.” Adrianne lifted the cup of barley water to Gillie’s mouth and poured some of the liquid past his parched, chapped lips. The boy sputtered, but swallowed a little.

“When did you see him last?”

“I’ve been too occupied with other things to keep track of when he was last here.” Adrianne knew she sounded short. But worrying about Mara’s perception of their marital affairs was not high on the list of her priorities right now.