Chapter Four
“You are hot,” Grace said, her palm flat on Keir’s forehead.
“’Tis better than dead cold,” he said, eyes closed, but a grin transformed his serious face into something more playful.
She snorted and laid a damp piece of her torn smock on his forehead. “Too hot leads to dead cold.” Grace had boiled the snow and washed his wolf bite, as well as the shallow wound on his horse’s hock. She had some honey and several bulbs of garlic, so she mashed and mixed them together to make a poultice. “I need to pack your leg and wrap it.”
With a flick of his hand, he yanked off the blanket that she’d been tucking and raised his kilt. Grace’s cheeks flamed at the sight of his muscular thighs, the kilt barely hiding his manhood, which she remembered only too well. “Thank you,” she said and patted his hand to get him to drop the plaid.
Reaching back, he cradled his head so that his elbows jutted outward, making his biceps strain against the linen of his shirt. Lowering her gaze to his wound, she dabbed globs of the honey-garlic mixture onto each of the puncture holes and gashes from the wolf’s teeth. “’Tis a good thing for you that I don’t believe in men turning into werewolves. Else you’d need to worry about me planting my dagger in your heart when you fall asleep.”
“And ruin all your hard work at keeping me alive?” he asked.
Lifting her kirtle, she used the dagger to start the tear of another round of somewhat clean linen fabric. The warrior shifted and cracked his eyes open at the ripping sound. “Ye’ll have little left of your smock by the time we are healed,” he said, his low voice strumming a warm path through Grace. It was an intimate voice, as if they were lovers, and he was imagining her out of her smock.
“Be happy I have it, and wasn’t instead running about the forest naked,” she murmured, bending closer to work the cloth under his thigh, which seemed as thick with muscle as a tree trunk. “Else you could have bled to death.”
“Ye would be an angelic, ice-blue, naked icicle,” he said.
She turned her head to look up at him from her bent position and paused, caught by his stare. The fire crackled in the hearth, while the blizzard whipped around the eves. Nothing else stirred. Even his horse had closed his eyes, dozing while standing near the door. “You called me an angel when you woke.” She should look away, finish the wrapping, but she wondered what thoughts might twist inside him. His dark eyes were mesmerizing.
He shrugged. “I thought I was dead,” he said. “And ye have the look of one.”
She straightened up. “You thought you were dead, and you kissed me? Sinfully kissed me.”
“Aye.” He lowered his arms.
She raised an eyebrow. “So, that is what you plan to do when you reach the gates of Heaven? Kiss an angel and hope God doesn’t throw you down to Hell?”
A lazy smile curved his mouth. “If a kiss from an angel tastes as good as ye, I’d gladly risk damnation.”
She exhaled a laugh in a huff and shook her head to look back at his swollen leg. “You are definitely feverish, Keir Mackinnon.”
“I wasn’t when I kissed ye,” he said, his eyes closing.
Tying the ends of the poultice, she stood. “I will say a prayer for your sinful soul.”
“Good,” he murmured. “For God doesn’t listen to my prayers.”
She frowned. “God listens to all prayers.” Taking the dry leaves of feverfew, Grace added them to some melted snow in a small crock and set it on the smoldering coals. She needed to get it into Keir before his fever grew out of control. Once the storm blew out, she must try to hike back to Kilchoan to find help and see to Thomas. Hopefully, the maid was tending him.
Grace took the shovel for the ashes to the door. A horse in the house, good God. Forcing her overused muscles into more action, she scraped the refuse, shoving the mess out the front door before struggling against the wind to shut it again, lowering the bar. She turned to lean against the door, breathing heavily as her eyes went back to the bed. Gone?
“Keir?” she called and stopped when she heard the obvious sound of him urinating in the privy pot set in the back corner. “Oh,” she whispered and turned to face the door. What had she gotten herself into? A blizzard, wolves, a heated kiss from a stranger, and now mucking out a house occupied by a horse named War and a man who had no modesty. She’d asked for an adventure, and God, or Satan, had provided.
“Ye can turn back around now, lass,” he called, and she heard the creak of the bed.
Grace retrieved the crock from the coals with her gloves. “I have some brewed feverfew for you to drink,” she said and stopped, her eyes taking in the sight before her.
Keir sat up in the bed, the blanket over only his feet. He’d taken off his linen shirt and leaned against the wall at his back. Broad shoulders, thickly muscled arms, and his entire toned chest lay bare, down past his navel where the low edge of his kilt wrapped his narrow waist. Dark swaths of pigment painted his one arm from shoulder to elbow in pointed curves around his biceps like intricate blades. Grace swallowed and walked closer, noticing the scars lining his physique.
In the dim light, she hoped he couldn’t see the blush that rushed up her neck and into her face. She was a healer, after all, and shouldn’t be affected by the sight of a man’s naked body. “’Tis hot,” she said, but he took the crock, holding it around the rim.
Grace watched as he lifted it to his beautiful lips and sipped. “You should drink it all to help bring down your fever.” Her gaze fell on his chest and shoulder where more dark marks lined up in rows that ran down his right side. She blinked, leaning in. “Are those…crosses?”
He swallowed. “Aye.”
She bent to look closer at the small, simple marks of gray and black. “You have been…branded?” With crosses, hundreds of them, in lines running down the side of his torso and across his hip to sweep along his back where she couldn’t see. She noticed other designs on his chest, too, under the light sprinkling of hair, over his heart.
“Not with fire, but with ink,” he said. “They represent those I’ve killed in battle.” He drank the rest of the feverfew.
“So many?”
All teasing from earlier had vanished, leaving a hard, hollow look to his glassy eyes. “Five hundred eighty-seven.”
Grace’s entire body tensed as they stared at each other in the shadows. She was face-to-face with the most lethal person she’d ever known. Only the memory of him throwing down his sword to save the wolf pups, by not killing their parents, allowed her to inhale. “Five hundred eighty-seven men?”
“One woman,” he said, sliding a finger down his side to a white cross on his hip bone. “She was a warrior from the Isle of Lewis. Fierce.” He said the word with respect.
“Oh,” Grace whispered. “You…have been a warrior for a long time.” Five hundred eighty-seven people. The little crosses printed permanently on his smooth, tan skin took on the solemnness of a battle memorial. Bloody hell, that’s exactly what it was.
“Aonghus Mackinnon took me into battle starting when I was sixteen.” His finger slid up to his shoulder, resting on a cross at the top. “My first kill was an Irishman warring with the Macleods for money, a mercenary.”
“You remember him?” she asked softly.
His eyes were dark in the shadows. “I remember them all.”
She let her gaze slide down the line of crosses. Finger extended, she touched one with the tip. “This one then?”
He looked down. “That row, and half the next, was a battle at Kyle of Lochalsh, inland from Skye, about seven years ago. A raid to repay a raid on Skye.” He turned to lean his head back on the wall and closed his eyes. “That particular warrior was old, no teeth, but still very brutal. He died well.”
“And the marks running down your arm?” she asked, peering at the dark, smooth marks curving along the muscles of his shoulder and mountainous biceps.
“To remind people who I am.”
“Who are you?” she whispered.
His eyes opened to meet her stare. “The Devil of Dunakin Castle.”
“Oh.” Grace’s mind churned through images she’d seen of devils. She felt his forehead, sliding her hand up to touch the spot where the scalp wound had scabbed over. “No horns? Maybe a forked tail painted down the back of a leg?”
The hard lines of Keir’s mouth relaxed, followed by the quake of a chuckle in his chest. “Nay, not yet, but I could talk to Brodie to see if he could do it.”
“I think it will be hard enough to get into Heaven with five hundred eighty-seven crosses on your body. Horns and a forked tail might doom you beyond redemption,” she said.
A grin spread across his lips. “Especially when I’m kissing an angel first thing.”
“Exactly.” She pulled the blanket up higher over his kilt and stomach. “When you first woke up out there in the snow, before you lost your mind and kissed a strange woman—”
“Who was lying on top of me.”
She ignored his comment. “You said…‘I am dead. Finally.’” She paused, watching his face. Firelight and shadows played along his sloped nose and darkly chiseled features. “What did you mean by ‘finally’?”
His grin faded. “When a tree falls on a man, it can make him think and say odd things, lass.” She met his stare, waiting, but he closed his eyes and worked his way back down the bed to lie flat.
She stood up. “Tomorrow you will need to teach me how to set a trap.”
“Aye, milady,” he answered, his voice thick with the beginnings of sleep as he turned toward the back of the room.
Grace traced, with her gaze, the rows of crosses that extended around his side onto his back. He’d memorialized the lives he’d taken, using his own skin to mark their passing. A chill spider-walked along Grace’s spine, and she wrapped her arms around herself as she went to tend the fire. The Devil of Dunakin, a warrior who remembered those fallen. Powerful and obviously fierce, but with a heart of compassion for a family of wolves out to kill him. A man willing to help a woman stranded in a blizzard.
She looked to his horse, War, who blinked at her with large, dark brown eyes. “You deserve a rest,” she whispered to the animal, her gaze shifting to the man in the bed. “You and your warrior.”
…
Keir ached. He knew this ache, the pain of resolving infection and the stiffness from lying in bed. It ran through his body, weakening him, and he hated it. Weakness was not allowed. Only strength honored his clan. He’d rather die than be weak. However, he’d been in this position often as he healed from battle wounds, and knew that the fastest way to regain strength was to let the healing take place. But it made him sour.
He opened his eyes to a gray dawn light filling an empty cabin, and the snowstorm came back to him. Keir pushed up onto one elbow and exhaled in frustration at the ache running down his back muscles and the throbbing pain in his thigh. Where was Cogadh and the woman, Grace?
Keir wiped his brow and looked at his hand. Wet. His stomach growled, and a wave of thirst made him rub a hand over his dry lips. All good signs that his fever was ended.
A sound outside the unbarred door caught his attention, and the door opened. “Bloody, blasted snow,” Grace murmured as she pushed into the cabin, striding directly to the fire to drop her load. Stretching her back, she turned toward him, her breasts jutting outward with her arch, and gasped. “You’re awake.” Throwing off her gloves, she rushed over, hair standing on end from dragging her scarf away.
Her golden-brown hair flew about as if lightning lit her from within. He raised his palm to feel the brush of the ends. “Your hair, lass, seems to be alive.”
“What? Oh,” she said and almost hit him as she ran her free hand over her head. “’Tis from the scarf.”
He sat against the wall at his back, the ache in his thigh reminding him why he had slumbered instead of completing his mission. “The blizzard blew out,” he said. “As did my fever.”
Grace studied him. Even with her hair sticking out at odd angles, her high cheeks, flushed pink from the cold, and her brilliant blue eyes made her the bonniest lass he’d ever seen. “Yes, the blizzard stopped trying to topple this cottage. But your fever…” She touched his head and then his chest. He looked down at her small hand, flattened over the tattoos emblazoned across his heart. So soft. Most women were afraid to touch his markings.
A smile bloomed across her mouth, making her lips look incredibly inviting. “But your fever took three days to break.”
Keir’s brows lowered. “I’ve been asleep for three days?”
“Going on your fourth, really. I’ve nearly lost track of time trying to force liquid into you and keeping us warm.”
“Where is Cogadh?”
“Little Warrior is doing better than you. He’s snug and comfortable in a little barn out back. He has a blanket and fresh water and hay to munch. Unlike us.” She gestured toward some sticks and rope near the hearth. “I tried to rig some traps, but I have no idea what I’m doing. Anytime I tried to get you to help me, you’d mumble names.” She crossed her arms over her ample chest. “I assume of people those crosses represent, because you also would say how they died. Spear to heart. Slashed throat and so on. I stopped asking you about the traps.”
Grace turned and shucked her fur-lined cape. “You mentioned two women,” she said. “Margaret and Bradana.”
He didn’t say anything, and she turned to look at him. “Is one your wife?”
“Nay,” he answered. “Margaret was my mother, and Bradana was my brother’s wife.”
“Was?”
“They are both dead,” he said, his voice going flat.
“I…I am sorry, Keir. Are they marked on your skin, too?”
“Aye, the crosses over my heart.”
Her gaze moved to his bare chest, but Keir grabbed his shirt that lay folded to one side and threw it on. “Did ye put the table and chairs out with Cogadh?” he asked, changing the subject.
She glanced around the bare room. “I had to break apart the furniture to feed the fire.”
“Quite resourceful and clever. Ye’ve done a valiant job at keeping us alive.”
Her features lightened, and she smiled, as if his praise was as valuable as firewood and food. “One twitch of you growing fur and fangs, and I’d have been forced to kill you, though. I’d have had to put one of those little crosses somewhere on me.” She placed another slat of wood on the fire.
“Ye’ve done well to heal me, but I thought the healer of Aros was Mairi Maclean,” he said, watching her closely.
She brushed her hands and shrugged, standing. “There are several healers at Aros, myself included. Mairi’s mother is much more talented at working cures than she.” She looked at him, her lovely face bright. “And Mairi’s not at Aros anymore. I am actually on my way to help her birth her first child on the Isle of Barra.”
“Barra?” he asked, his brows lowering. “Where Kisimul Castle sits in the bay?”
“Yes. She’s married to the chief of the MacNeils, the Wolf of Barra.” She laughed quietly. “Down in England titles like Earl, Duke and Baron are given to people. Up here, titles like Wolf and Beast and”— she indicated him—“Devil are much more common.”
“The Scots are fiercer,” he murmured, his mind chewing on this new information. Was Grace misleading him about Mairi? Why would she? She had no reason to guess his urgent mission or the lengths to which he would go to complete it. He’d been tasked to find the talented healer, Mairi Maclean, but she was about ready to have a bairn, and she was wed to the chief of Kisimul, a castle that had never been breached. To retrieve the woman, he’d have to sail all the way to Barra, find a way into the castle, and take her without harming the bairn. And if she wasn’t a talented healer, the risk and time required warranted a change in strategy.
“How is Cogadh?” he asked as he considered the timing.
“Little Warrior is nearly healed, and he’s too sweet to be called War in any language.” She brought over a hot cup of brewed feverfew and half a tart she’d saved, which he took greedily. The bitter taste of the hot drink was familiar, bringing back snatches of warped memory. Grace wiping his chest with a rag. Grace forcing him to drink the brew. Grace praying over him.
Praying? Not even the priest on Skye prayed for Keir. He swallowed the last drop, his mind latching onto a new mission, and handed the cup back. She smiled broadly without a hint of disgust or fear. The lass didn’t know his past sins and wicked reputation. And she surely didn’t know what he had planned for her, or she’d have left him to die, frozen to the ground.