Ashblane's Lady

The resentment that lay in his light blue eyes was momentarily replaced by perplexity. ‘Your retainer was full of praise for you, my Lady. I’ve seldom heard a young boy chat so much.’

The statement brought laughter to her lips. ‘Surrounded by such soldiers as these, any stranger could seem verbose.’

Quinlan frowned. ‘Alexander instructed everyone to keep their distance for your own safety. He wants you protected.’

‘Why?’

‘You are his now. Since last night.’ His eyes dropped to her breast. ‘As a hostage. I thought you understood.’

‘And if he dies?’

Alarm flickered in blue eyes as he sought her meaning. ‘Ullyot is invincible. Who would fight him and win?’

‘My God…’ Maddy crossed herself and turned away, the twin emotions of dread and joy battling within as suddenly everything dropped into place.

Could Alexander Ullyot, the feared Laird of Ashblane, shield her from everyone? From Noel and Liam? Even from King Edward? If he took her as a mistress, and unwilling, could such an uneasy alliance allow her time to think and plan, to throw them off her scent and disappear? She closed her eyes, the force of her desires washing across the more familiar powerlessness. He had men and might and an authority of leadership that was unrivalled. And last night, after she’d been sick over his floor, he had not killed her.

Not all bad, then, she reasoned, and turned again to Quinlan, her mind made up.

‘Without my help, your Laird will be dead by nightfall.’

She saw the hairs of Quinlan’s arm rise and his face redden visibly.

‘You curse him?’ His voice was strangled as he drew his blade.

‘Nay. I told your Laird, I have the power of healing.’ All around men gathered, their own swords drawn in response to Quinlan’s anger. She held his gaze. ‘The wounds your Laird has will poison him. Another few hours and his blood will run with it and there will be nothing I can do.’

‘Kill the Randwick witch,’ a bold voice cried to her left, and further knives were unsheathed.

‘No.’ Quinlan bade the men retreat, and they did so, but uncertainly, the air crackling with an unguarded tension. Were she to say more, she doubted even he could save her, and thus she held her silence.

An impasse. Drawing her gaze upwards, she looked towards the sky. The sun beat down upon the land and she felt it reflected in her hair. Quietly she raised her hood. In times like these some men took merely such a sign as this to take their action further. She saw Quinlan frown suddenly and thought perhaps he was a mind reader. She had encountered such beings in the old chronicles at her grandmother’s castle, and always their eyes were blue.

‘I will take you to the Laird and you can check the wound yourself.’ His voice was curt as he turned to his horse and called for hers. Beside her Jemmie made to rise, but she stopped the movement.

‘No, it is safe.’

One small hand came around her wrist and she felt the applied pressure. ‘You’ll need your things.’ Jemmie’s voice was uncertain, her upturned face deeply edged in worry.

‘What things?’ Quinlan demanded an answer.

‘My healing tools. They were left at the side of the battlefield when you took me.’

‘Our physician has others.’

Her mind raced to the balms and poultices she would have liked to have had, but in the pockets of her petticoats were twists of complex herbal powders whose recipes she had learned from her grandmother. It might just be enough.

And if it wasn’t? She refused to think of this problem yet. Everything was tenuous, but on the brink of disaster she sensed something different. If the Laird of Ullyot lived, she might yet have a life. For within the bosom of this clan she detected a glimmer of safety. Safety for her and for Jemmie. For a while. And if Alexander Ullyot lived, she would ask for her uncle’s safe passage from Heathwater.

Jemmie and Goult. Her family. To keep them safe she would strike a bargain with the devil himself.

The Laird was much worse when they reached him, and Quinlan’s fright mirrored her own.

Alexander Ullyot no longer knew them, the sweat on his brow so high now he had lapsed into delirium. An old man crouched at his side with a bowl full of leeches. Already she could see he had been bleeding him, the fat black bodies of the worms bloated with blood and glistening under the light of torches.

Quinlan hurried to his side, knocking away the other soldiers who knelt there. His hand felt for Ullyot’s and he squeezed it firmly.

‘Alex.’

A flicker of consciousness generated greater tugging, the black blood from his wrist leaving a trail of darkness in the dirt. Perhaps it was that, Maddy thought later, that made him push the elderly physician to one side and bring her into the light.

‘What can you do for him?’

A general hum went around the crowd at his words and another one as she came to crouch down beside him, pinching salt from a container on the ground and sprinkling it across the leeches. They curled up and fell on to the mat beneath him. She resisted scrunching them beneath her shoes even as the clan physician gathered them up.

‘I’ll need water,’ she said, her hands touching the heat of his brow. ‘And strong whisky.’ Both came within a second of her asking for it and she extracted her dirk and powders from her petticoat pocket.

Instantly she felt the prick of a well-honed sword in the sensitive folds of her neck.

‘Leave her.’ Quinlan’s voice. Anxious. Harsh. She did not look back at her assailant as she picked up her knife again and opened the herbal pouches. The sleeve of his shirt she dealt with next, slicing the seam apart and looking over at Quinlan who was watching her carefully.

‘He can mend it when he is better,’ she said bluntly, registering a spark of both admiration and wariness.

Many men had called her a witch, but just as many had admired her skills of doctoring. Tonight Quinlan’s respect buoyed up her courage, made her fearless, made the contact she had with bone and skin and blood more real. Closing her eyes, she held the palms of her hands against his skin, feeling the poison and tracing the pathways of darkness to healthier flesh. The shock of connection was like an almost-pain and she could sense a haunting, answering anger that shut off the moment she felt it. Deliberately? Beneath consciousness he could feel her? Her heartbeat accelerated markedly. That had never happened before. Ever.

With hesitation she pinpointed the dark blue lines of blood and drove the tip of her sharp blade inwards, tourniqueting all that lay beyond and squeezing out the badness.

If the collected men gasped and watched her with disquiet, she did not recognise their superstitions, so intent on hearing next the sound of his bones. When she held up her hand for silence, it came immediately.

‘Here.’ She grasped the elbow and slipped it up against the run of muscle, the swollen joints popping as the dislocation righted.

Sweat pooled between her breasts because she could not quite shake the unease of his awareness. Rolling him over, she looked at the jagged gash beneath his shoulder blade, red crossed by other scars from different battles and healed knot-beaded white.

A warrior!

My warrior!

The voices of those who had hurt him crowded in against her, the wraith cries of old battles full blown from that time to this one and echo-loud as she placed two fingers against the broken skin and pushed. When the heat gathered, her arms began to shake. Another moment, she told herself, another moment and the warmth would come. If she had been alone, she would have used the healing-fire inside her, but here the traditions of other people bound her tightly, and she had Jemmie to think of.

Nay, the doctoring had to be as conventional as she could show it. She smiled to herself when sharp heat made her fingertips vibrate. They would never see. A small, important victory for the de Cargne magic, for with its coming she knew that death had passed back into life.

Sitting back, she rested for a moment before swilling herbs in the whisky and bringing it to the Laird’s lips. Quinlan’s hand stopped her.

‘What is in it?’ The charge of poison lay as an unspoken threat.

Without answering she lifted the rim to her own lips and took a sip. Heat threaded her throat and sent the world reeling, but the fingers withdrew.

‘Go on.’