Page 8 of Hold Fast

Fergus lowered slowly back to his seat, his mulish expression carving deep lines into his face. He suddenly looked so much older than he was. Or maybe he’d always looked older and Una was only just noticing.

Then again, so did she. She hadn’t had many opportunities for looking at her reflection before her handfast. Her family didn’t own a mirror. But she had been surrounded by mirrors at the keep, had watched her face transform over a year. Her mouth hardening, her brows narrowing until there was a permanent furrow between them. She looked ten years older than she had before, the year feeling like a lifetime.

Then again, ithadbeen a lifetime. The life she had lived, the person she had been before, both of them were long gone.

“You’ve nowhere to go. You have nae prospects. Nae family but me. And after this, I cannae imagine anyone lining up to take you off my hands as a bride. So we’re stuck together, you and me,” Fergus said, glaring at his hands.

She looked at him. Then she looked beyond him. At the filthy cottage, the dim light. Everything was rough and homespun, nothing like the fine surroundings she’d experienced in the last year. She wore a wool gown today, but Malcolm had insisted she wear silk in the keep. He had given her trinkets and jewels, gifts when he flew off the handle. But she had left them all behind that morning. The gowns. The jewelry. The mirror. The furs.

She didn’t want a single thing from him.

She didn’t want anything from her father either, she realized. Not his sympathy. Not his care. Certainly not his pity. Such kindness might have made her stay, might have made her worry about him enough that she lingered to help him, to save him.

But this was better. Easier. Because he was wrong about yet another thing. She would never be stuck anywhere ever again.

CHAPTER3

The MacDonald men, laden with their quarry, returned to the keep at an agonizingly slow pace. Ewan was torn between a desire to return to the keep as quickly as possible and the knowledge that excessive bumping and jostling might cause Connor to bleed more. They continued, Connor in his arms, as the snow fell. He loosened the extra fabric from his belt and wrapped it around Connor to keep him warm.

Connor floated in and out of consciousness. From time to time, he would open his eyes and gaze at the sky, seeming to see and not see at the same time.

“Ewan,” he whispered. “Where is Ewan? I must apologize to Ewan.”

“Shhh,” Ewan said. “Hush now. I am here. I have you. There is nothing to apologize for.”

“Can you make it stop hurting, Ewan?” Connor whimpered.

Ewan’s jaw was so tense that he wondered how it was that he hadn’t broken his teeth. So many failures for one day, all of them laying at his feet and in his lap. He should have forced Connor to practice more. He should have supervised him more closely on the hunt. He should have sent someone else after the stag. He’d just been so angry,so damned angry, and he never allowed himself to indulge such a feeling.

It had felt good to ride off after the stag in a fit of temper, to feel his anger punctuated by the pounding of his horse’s hooves, to chase and catch.

It had felt good, but for what? What had such temper gotten him? Nothing, other than sending his brother to death’s doorstep.

“Ewan,” Connor asked weakly, a few moments later. “Am I going to die?”

Ewan choked before answering in a voice that neither sounded nor felt like his own. “Nay, Connor. Why would you say such a thing? That boar merely scratched you. We’ll have you patched up in nae time.”

Connor nodded and slipped back into unconsciousness. Ewan’s heart and hopes sank lower as the gatehouse and curtain walls of the keep came into view. The watchers atop the wall stood silently. There were no whoops or cheers as there normally might have been. Rather, the hunting party rode as silently as a funeral procession into the bailey.

Ewan guided the horse to a stop. Connor was shivering violently in Ewan’s arms, both of their clothing completely soaked with blood that had chilled quickly in the cold air. Kenneth pulled his horse up next to Ewan’s and dismounted, reaching up for Connor and taking his unconscious body gently into his arms. Ewan dismounted and handed the horse’s reins off to a waiting groom before following Kenneth across the bailey.

Just then, the door to the keep burst open and their sister—and Connor’s twin—Catriona appeared in the shadowed opening. She hiked her skirts and flew down the steps, racing toward them with tears streaking her face. Ewan had sent men ahead to ready the keep for their arrival.

“He cannae be dead!” Cat screamed. “He cannae be dead, Ewan. Tell me he isnae dead!” She sobbed and hurled herself at Ewan’s chest.

He wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly. “He yet lives, Cat. But we must work quickly if we are to save him.”

Catriona drew back, her face stained from Connor’s blood, which had saturated Ewan’s shirt. She looked as if she’d been to war. She walked with them into the keep, up the wheeled staircase, and down the hall to the laird’s chamber, where the light was best.

All around them, chaos reigned. Servants bustled back and forth with arms full of linens and boiling water that they carried up the stairs and to the laird’s chamber. He heard Fiona, the housekeeper, shouting orders from the Great Hall and hear Fenella’s bellow beyond hers in the kitchen. Someone spoke of fetching Father Brian. The cacophony sounded like droning insects in Ewan’s ears as he helped Kenneth to arrange Connor’s body on the bed.

The room was large, and yet, with so many people, it felt cramped and small as servants hurried to fill the boiling cauldron over the fire and lower strips of linens into it.

“What are we to do, Ewan?” Catriona cried. “The healer’s been dead for nearly a month now, and we havenae replaced him!”

“He needs to be stitched,” David said from the window, where he was pulling back the fur coverings to let in more light.

“Aye,” Ewan said, turning his gaze to his sister. “And by someone with verra fine stitching.”