Page 2 of Forbidden Kilted Highlander

The horses huffed. One pawed the dirt. A guard cleared his throat behind them, the signal subtle but clear.

It was time.

Agnes turned toward the carriage, drawing a breath that hurt her lungs. Her boots scuffed against the packed dirt. The damp wind pushed against her back, as though trying to usher her forward.

And then someone shouted.

“Lass—get back!”

The voice rang sharp through the courtyard. Agnes froze, her heart stuttering. She turned quickly, her shawl slipping down her shoulders.

Brodie Ainslei, one of the men who was responsible for her safety during this trip, stumbled out from the stables, one hand clutching his chest. His face had gone white—paler than snow, like all the blood had been stolen from beneath his skin.

“Brodie?” her father barked.

But the guard didn’t answer. His eyes—normally so alert—were wide and unseeing, his breath ragged. He swayed, took a step, then another, his movements unsteady, limbs jerking like a puppet cut loose from its strings.

And then he fell.

Straight to the ground, his body crumpling in the mud. Everything stopped. Sound, movement, thought. For one stretched moment, Agnes couldn’t breathe, but then everything snapped back into motion.

“Help him!” Agnes shouted.

Two guards rushed forward. Agnes’s body moved before her mind could catch up. She dropped to her knees beside Brodie, her skirts darkening with mud, her hands flying to his wrist.

Cold.

“Brodie—can ye hear me?” she asked, her voice barely holding together. “It’s Agnes. Look at me.”

His lips parted, trembling. A rasp of air escaped, barely audible.

“Dinnae... go...”

“What?” Her fingers curled tighter around his arm. “What did ye say?”

But his eyes rolled back and his body went slack.

Everything around her moved in fragments—blurred shapes, gasps, boots thudding against mud and stone. But Agnes knelt frozen in the middle of it, her hand still curled around Brodie’s wrist, cold and slack beneath her fingertips.

He was breathing—barely. Shallow, uneven gasps. But his lips had gone an alarming shade of blue, and something inside Agnes cracked at the sight.

Voices rang around her like muffled bells.

"Get the healer!"

"Gods, he just collapsed—I saw him, he just fell."

"Move! Make room!"

Tav Graham, her father’s most lethal soldier, knelt beside her with a sharp grunt, his hand sliding beneath Brodie’s shoulders. He was tall, his skin a tapestry of ink save for his face, and his eyes… God, those eyes. The coldest, clearest blue she’d ever seen, like winter sky cut with steel.

“Lady Agnes, let go,” he said gruffly, though not unkindly. “We’ll carry him.”

She hesitated, her fingers tightening for a moment. But then she nodded and let go.

Mud clung to her skirts as she stumbled to her feet, numb. Her legs didn’t want to work properly, like they’d been carved from stone. She watched as Tav and another guard lifted Brodie’s limp form between them, and something flickered across Tav’s face… a shadow of concern too raw to hide.

The healer met them at the door to the cottage, her silver hair bound in a scarf, sleeves already rolled. “Bring him in,” she barked. “Lay him by the hearth. We need heat and water, and someone fetch me the willow bark and yarrow. Go!”