Chapter Twenty-Six
Aye, I take this woman, take her, take her, and keep her.
For more than a year and a day.
— Maeve Montgomerie
The days and nights were the same. A living hell. He gasped through the heated haze, the words nearly panted out as the fever burned bright through his body. Dreams and reality were like vines, growing and twisting together. Images of his dreams. Of him coming to Glenrogha and believing the woman in his dreams was Tamlyn. Images of her brothers, drinking with them. Later, the first time he had seen Aithinne when he and Challon had come to Lyonglen, and knowing in that instant how wrong he had been. It was Aithinne.
It had always been Aithinne.
Damian’s mind struggled to break through the fever’s hold. “Fetch the priest.”
“Nay!” Aithinne pressed the cool cloth to his forehead, it growing hot almost immediately. He saw her struggling to be strong, holding back tears. If by will alone, Aithinne would not let him die. His Firebrand would hold tight to him. “Malcolm can stay at Kinmarch. You do no’ need him, Damian St. Giles.”
Damian managed a feeble smile, hearing her determination, her love in the refusal. “Aye, ’tis time, Aithinne. Fetch the Culdee. He is needed. The time is nigh.”
She did not say anything, just shook her head no. Hands trembling, she clutched one of his between hers, squeezing it tightly. Huge tears glimmered in her eyes, but he saw her refusing to let them fall. His poor Aithinne. His valiant warrior. He had caused her to shed too many tears.
As he gazed at that worried face, he relived all his dreams again. Over and over. Of the time when he had been wounded and nearly died. Her face had come to him in the hazy visions of fever, demanding he not die, that she would not let him die. Same words she had chanted these past days. More dreams visited him. Odd dreams mixed with memories of her. One very peculiar—one of him drinking from a cup her brother had brought, later awakening to find he was tethered to a bedpost. So clearly, he recalled yanking on the chain trying to get free. Of him taking her in the big bed in the old tower of Lyonglen.
You must speak your deepest wish.
Look at me. You are my wish. I want to see your eyes when I take you…when I make you mine.
He glanced over to Einar standing in the corner, keeping watch over his princess. “Fetch the priest, Norseman.”
Einar’s pale blue eyes shifted to Aithinne, watching her with love and worry. Damian could read his thoughts. He feared what Aithinne would do if Damian died. Then, the man turned his eyes back to Damian.
“Do it, Einar. And be quick about it,” Damian ordered.
Aithinne’s head snapped around to scowl at her personal guard, daring him to obey Damian. The poor man seemed to shrink in size under her withering attention, but then nodded to Damian that he would comply. Opening the door, he frowned sadly at Aithinne and then left.
“You will no’ die, Damian St. Giles. Your body rages with a fever because it fights the poison, the festering. If you were dying that battle would cease and you wouldst become cool. Your body struggles because it wars to live. And so you shall.” She took the cloth off his forehead, wetted it, and then swabbed his face and chest.
Oona came in carrying her herb box, and behind her was Moffet with a bucket of steaming hot water. “I ground enough herbs for more poultices, to hold us through the night. I told Einar as he goes to fetch Malcolm, to pass by way of Kinloch and seek more herbs from Lady Raven. My supplies wane.” She poured a mound of dark green moss and powder into the center of the large cloth, folded it and then dipped it into the hot water.
When the old woman placed it on his wound, Damian jerked up in the bed, hissing in agony. The wound was inflamed, festered. Applying heat only made the pain throb a hundred-fold. “God’s teeth, I think you seek to hurry my demise along,” he growled. “And do not dare cackle at me, crone.”
“If you have the strength to fuss, Lord RavenHawke, then you have the will to survive,” Oona pointed out, as she pressed the hot pad harder against his wound. “Here, lass. Keep the pressure on, whilst I make another. Let us keep switching them, see the poultices as hot as he can stand to draw poison from his flesh.”
Aithinne applied pressure to the compress. Nibbling on the corner of her lower lip, she watched as perspiration broke out on his forehead. “Deward, heat some bed bricks and place them all around him. He needs must sweat to burn out the festering.”
“God’s breath, woman, I am half-cooked as is.” Damian tried to sit up, but using her other hand, Aithinne push his back to the bed’s plane.
“Half-measures never see the deed done.” As soon as she uttered the words, her eyes flew wide, and she wished she could call them back.
Damian watched the woman he loved so much. Words he had never spoken to her.
“I sent for Sir Priest―”
“If you want extreme unction, then you shall go to your Devil. I shall no’ permit Malcolm to speak them over you. So there, Sir Nodcock! Die, and you die unshriven.”
Damian laughed, but that made his shoulder hurt worse, so his smile faded. “Aye, I think it best he speaks words. I may have the pagan raisings of my màthair woven into my beliefs, but I am a Christian knight. But there is another purpose in calling for Malcolm. The child.”
He saw the light of understanding flash in her hazel depths. In all her worry, she had forgotten about the son she carried. Her free hand slipped to her belly, her eyes finally shedding the tears she had been so valiantly holding back.
“Aye, the babe. We need to speak words of marriage, so our son will have my name.” He wanted to laugh, but held back thinking he was not sure he could stand the throbbing. “Anyone ever warn you about being careful for what you wish?”
Aithinne cautiously studied his face. Holding her breath.
Oona chuckled and she lifted Aithinne’s hand and switched the poultice. “With some regularity, my lord.”
“Once you thought to marry my grandfather to save Lyonglen, to protect its people. Well, the gods are laughing this night. You hurriedly sent for the priest, to speak words of marriage for you to wed the baron of Lyonglen. Malcolm failed to come in time, eh? Let us hope I have more staying strength than my grandsire.”
“Och, hush your gub. Who says I would wish to wed such an arrogant man? I am thinking of marrying Dinsmore Campbell as soon as we plant you in the ground. He shall make a grand father for my son.”
Damian knew what she was doing, but he could not stop the reaction. His hands grabbed her upper arms and desperately tried to raise up. Molten agony poured through his body to do so, but he wanted to look her in the eyes, nose-to-nose. “Witch,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Aye, ’tis what I be.”
“One with freckles,” he added the jibe, knowing it would get her anger on the rise.
“Oooooo…Sir Nodcock!” She glared at him, then burst out crying again.
He smiled crookedly. “Crying female, bah. Your nose gets red when you cry, Aithinne. You freckles stand out more.”
“You arrogant shoat. I could hate you—”
“Och, you lie, lass. Can I ever get you to tell me the truth?” He fell back on the pillows his breathing labored. The whole room swam around him, so he closed his eyes. “Aithinne…”
“Yes?” She choked out, leaning down burying her face against his chest.
“I remember.”
She slowly sat back, the poignant eyes warily watching his. “Remember what, my lord?”
“Everything.”
The long lashes batted innocently. “Everything what, my lord?”
“Do not play coy, lass. I recall it all. You had those three mooncalf brothers feed me something this crone conjured up―” He grimaced as Oona slapped a new poultice to his shoulder. “Then, you shackled me to your bed.”
“I ken not what you mean,” came the little liar’s reply. Her face appeared hurt, so innocent.
The brothers against the wall shifted uncomfortably, Deward and Lewis looking to Hugh for a sign. “Sister,” he said, “we go to the Great Hall. Surely, ’tis time for supper.”
“Run, you cowards.” He laughed to their departing backs. He waited until the door closed. “That is why you insisted I took your virginity when I questioned you―”
“Poor man, the fever consumes his mind,” she said to Oona.
“Ever my little liar, eh? Aithinne, you really should cease telling falsehoods. You are simply no good at it.” He reached up and caught her chin between his curled finger and thumb, forcing her to meet his stare. “No more lies betwixt us. They are not needed. You took me, used me to get with child, did you not, hoping to convince Edward you carried the heir to Lyonglen?”
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard. Finally, she nodded, her lip trembling. “I know you shall hate me for it. But if you will just live you can hate me all you want.”
“Why would I hate you for it?”
“Because of—” Aithinne caught herself before she spoke truths between them. Her eyes shifted to Moffet, poking the fire, recalling Damian did not wish his son to know the circumstances of his birth.
“Not the same, lass. That was to gain coin. You were doing it to protect the people you love. Fighting in the only manner you knew how to control your life. It was meant to be, eh? I was coming to Lyonglen. I would have claimed you. Edward already told me to take you to lady wife or stick you in a nunnery. Somehow, I do not think you wouldst have allowed me to stick you in a convent. My guess, you would have drugged me, chained me to your bed and gotten you with child.”
She shrugged, offering him a trembling smile. “Sounds a reasonable assumption.”
“I love you, lass.”
Her face turned to stone. “You tell me, do no’ lie, Damian St. Giles. I tell you, do no’ lie to me either. I looked into your heart the first…night. I saw the truths within you.”
“Ah, that is why you believe―”
“I ken―”
“You twigged what I thought was the truth. I saw the face of my dreams when I came to Glenrogha. Challon told me I was mistaken. Said I needed to seek the answers elsewhere, that it was not Tamlyn’s face that had come to me in dreams. When I first came to Lyonglen and saw you, then I understood it had been you. All along.”
Her chin quivered, and she moistened her lips to speak. “How can you be sure?”
He reached up and tapped her nose seven times. “Because the woman in my dreams had seven bloody dots on her nose.”
“My freckles? Truly?”
Damian laughed, taking her hand. “Yes, truly.”
She beamed. “Well, that being the case, Sir Nodcock, stop this nonsense about dying. I refuse to have a corpse for a husband.”
“Yes, Aithinne.”