Page 17 of The Highlander’s Enchanted Healer (Spellbound Hearts #2)

“Ye are nae going to die!” she said, almost as if chiding Tomas for a thought he had nae vocalized.

My brows dipped together at the strangeness of the way she worked, but if she saved Tomas, I would not complain.

When she took up the dagger her hands were steady, and with care, she cut around the entry wound, widening it just enough to allow the arrow’s head to be withdrawn.

Tomas cried out, his small body bucking against my restraining hands.

“Almost done,” Aria soothed, her voice gentle and reassuring.

For one shocking moment, I imagined that was how her voice would sound when speaking to her children, and I pictured her as a mama.

I shook my head to rid myself of these images that did not serve me, of futures I did nae have any part in.

“Just a moment more, Tomas,” she whispered, drawing my focus back to her.

The determination on her face gave me comfort.

She would do all she could to save Tomas.

Pursing her lips, she gripped the shaft of the arrow, and in one smooth motion, she drew it free.

Aria pressed clean linen to where the blood welled from the wound.

“Spirts, please,” she said to Fenella, who immediately handed her the flask.

“This will sting,” she warned Tomas, who was now fully conscious and weeping silently.

She poured the spirits over the wound, and the boy’s shriek tore through the room.

I tensed, but Aria did nae flinch. She moved her hands with purpose, cleaning the wound and then packing it with a poultice of herbs that Fenella handed her.

Finally, she wrapped fresh bandages around Tomas’s shoulder.

My admiration for her grew as I watched her work. Whatever had caused her initial hesitation had been overcome. She moved with the assurance of someone who had indeed done this before, her actions methodical and efficient.

She paused, glanced to me and Fenella, and brushed another fallen strand of hair from her face with the back of her hand. It left a smear of blood across her cheek, and my fingers twitched to wipe it away, but I held myself back.

Fenella reached out and clasped Aria’s hand with her own. “Ye did well.”

Aria offered a small smile and then said, “I could nae have done it without ye.”

Fenella gave a disbelieving laugh, which I understood. Aria had barely asked for Fenella’s aid, but mayhap just having Fenella here had reassured Aria.

Suddenly, Aria said, “I need to make a mixture for the pain and one to prevent fever.”

“I was just thinking that,” Fenella said as she released Aria’s hand. “Do ye need me to aid ye?”

Aria shook her head. “Ye can go if ye wish,” she said, moving to the herb shelves. “I ken ye have a lot to tend to in the kitchens.”

Fenella looked to me for permission, and I inclined my head.

“Go ahead,” I confirmed out loud. “The men will be sorely vexed if supper is late, and I can stay here with Aria should she need a helping hand.”

Aria whipped her gaze to me, and it was a combination of what looked to be uncertainty and wariness, but then she looked down as she mixed the tonic.

“If ye need me, simply send word to the kitchens,” Fenella said as she moved toward the healing room door.

“I will. Thank ye,” Aria replied.

Once Fenella was gone, I found myself staring at Aria as she stirred the mixture.

“Will he live?” I asked, trying to tear my gaze from her slender waist and nicely rounded hips but failing.

I slid to the floor, bringing my legs up to prop my hands on my knees.

I was exhausted, so I was certain she had to be, too.

“Aye,” she said with conviction before looking at me. “He’ll live. The arrow missed anything vital, and he’s young and strong.”

Relief flowed through me even as my jaw clenched.

The distraction of tending to Tomas had suppressed my rage, but it simmered once more now.

“They’ll answer for this,” I vowed, watching Aria move to Tomas, administer both tonics, and then gently run a damp cloth over his forehead.

There was a tenderness in her movements that matched what I’d heard in her voice as she had soothed the lad a short time ago, and a longing I’d never felt before stirred within me.

But I didn’t have an interest in examining what I was yearning for beyond retribution.

She paused, heaving a breath. “Have Gordon warriors targeted young children before?”

“Aye.” I squeezed my eyes shut on the rage, the sadness, the burning need for revenge that threatened to propel me to my feet and out the door to seek vengeance right now.

Footfalls filled the silence suddenly, and when I opened my eyes, she was sliding down to the floor beside me. She leaned back against the wall while raising a trembling hand to her head. “I did nae ken,” she murmured, lowering her face into her cupped hands.

“Why would ye? Ye only just came to us.”

“Aye, but…” Her words trailed off, and as I stared at her slight shoulders, they begin to shake. Then the softest of noises, like a muffled cry, reached me. She was weeping.

I froze, caught between wanting to reach for her and comfort her, and being keenly aware of my desire for her and what touching her could lead to. I had control, but I was flesh and bone with weaknesses and wants like any man.

“Aria?” I ventured, scooting close enough to touch her but not doing so yet.

She did not respond. Instead, her fingers locked together behind her head as she pressed her forehead to her knees, shoulders still silently shaking and a few sharp breaths escaping with the whisper of the cries she was clearly trying to suppress.

Tomas’s blood stained her pale fingers, and the stark contrast tightened my gut with something more than desire.

This woman had saved Tomas. I could control myself and comfort her.

I placed my arm around her, and she stiffened momentarily, then leaned into me, tilting her head toward my shoulder.

Her tears flowed freely, making fresh tracks through the dirt and blood on her fair skin, and each of her sobs moved through her body into mine.

Something protective stirred in my chest. I did not fight it.

For this single moment, I would allow it.

I owed her that. I tightened my hold on her and drew her closer.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped between sobs. “’Tis all so overwhelming, I suppose.”

I nodded. “That’s understandable.”

She sucked her lower lip between her teeth as she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “’Tis draining. To hold yerself together when…when—” she motioned toward Tomas “—someone’s life hangs in the balance. I held the fear back while working, but—”

“It overwhelmed ye when ye were done.”

“Aye” She nodded. “I suppose I’m weak.”

“Nay.” The word was more vehement than I’d intended, and she must’ve heard something hidden in my tone because she arched her eyebrows at me.

I slid my teeth back and forth, contemplating.

It was not my habit to share personal things about myself, but there was not much hope for it now.

“I do it, as well,” I said. Then, seeing her brow crinkle with confusion, I added, “Hold back my fear and uncertainty in myself and the outcome during a battle. If I am fearful, my men will be. If I am nae certain, how can I ask my men to proceed boldly? I am responsible for every Campbell life, so I must be always braw and certain.”

“And selfless?” she asked.

“Aye. And selfless.” I rubbed the back of my neck, my tongue burning to confess my sins of the past to this woman for some unknown reason. “I’ve things to atone for,” I settled on.

Her eyebrows drew higher. “Such as?”

I inhaled a long breath, feeling my nostrils flare as the ghosts of the past rose up from their graves. “Such as being selfish and failing my family. I was nae there when I should have been, and my parents and my sister paid for it.”

“Yer brother told me,” she admitted.

I wasn’t surprised. “Allan does nae ken how to keep his mouth properly shut.”

“Mayhap nae,” she said with a small smile. “Ye can nae forgive yerself?”

“I can nae even contemplate trying until I’ve avenged them and Alba’s mind is returned, and I deal with that snake Laird Gordon! He attacked my family for something he himself did!”

She studied me a for a long, silent moment, and then a deep frown came to her lovely, blood-streaked face. “What do ye mean?”

I heard an earnest question in her voice, so I decided to give her my honest answer.

“He was born to a whore, and he was poor and powerless. He coveted what he would nae ever have the chance for as long as Fergus Gordon lived. ’Twas Ramsey Gordon who poisoned his stepda, stepbrother, and uncle, nae my da. ”

She shook her head almost violently. “False whispers ye heard on the wind.”

“Nay.” I shook my head. “There is irrefutable truth there. His mama was a whore who planted herself in the previous Laird Gordon’s stronghold when his wife took ill, and then she endeared herself to the man so that he would come to need her, lean on her, and eventually want her.”

Aria seemed to almost twitch with my words and look beyond me, as if she were watching a scene from the past. “Impossible,” she whispered after a long stretch of silence. “That would have been slyly calculating and horrendous to do such a thing as the laird’s wife lay dying.”

“People are calculating. And horrendous.”

“The laird would have seen it, or the son, Fergus. He…he would have stopped it if that were how it happened.”

I frowned. She talked almost as if she knew these people, but more likely, it was that the scenario touched something within her. “’Tis hard to see evil when it hides in yer midst. Those at a distance see it more clearly.”

“Mayhap,” she whispered, sounding stricken. “But even if that part is true, it does nae mean the man plotted to kill his family.”

“’Tis the only explanation I can think of. Someone poisoned Laird Gordon, his son, and his brother purposely. That someone had something to gain, and I ken for a fact it was nae my da. The most probable explanation is Ramsey Gordon. With the other men gone, that left only him to become laird.”

Aria sucked in a ragged breath as she drew a trembling hand to her cheek to wipe away, I supposed, the last of her tears.

Instead of leaving her face clean, she left another trail of smeared blood.

The tether of control I’d been clinging to snapped, and I reached toward her and rubbed away the blood she’d left there.

Our gazes locked, and the vulnerability I saw there moved me.

“Ye did well,” I told her, my thumb unconsciously tracing back and forth across her soft cheek. “The boy will live because of ye.”

“Because of us,” she corrected, her voice steadier now. “Ye and Fenella aided me.”

Warm, protective emotions gripped me, and for a moment, I considered what having a wife might be like.

Was it this feeling? A strange need to protect?

A woman to return to after battles, not just to warm my bed but to work with side by side?

The thoughts were so unexpected, so foreign to the life I’d been living, that it nearly took my breath away.

Aria suddenly turned her face up to mine, her eyes now clear and searching. “Thank ye,” she whispered. “For helping me. For…this.”

We were so close that her warm sweet breath fanned my face when she exhaled, and I could count each freckle scattered across her nose and cheeks.

In that moment, the vow I’d made seemed distant, muffled by the roar of blood in my ears.

Before I could think better of it, I leaned forward and pressed my lips to her warm ones.

Fire shot through my veins upon contact unlike anything I’d ever felt. Her soft lips tasted of salt from her tears. For a heartbeat, she was still. Then, to my surprise, she kissed me back, her hand coming up to rest against my chest.

The realization of what I was doing hit me like a blow to the head. I was kissing a woman I barely knew, breaking my vow in the middle of a healing room with a wounded child not three paces away.

I jerked back, releasing her as if her touch burned. “I—” Words failed me as I stared at her lips, swollen from our kiss, her eyes wide with surprise. “That should nae have happened,” I finally managed while scrambling to my feet.

I looked down at her, hair in wild disarray, her achingly beautiful face turned up to me, gaze bright and burning. The desire to kiss her again nearly drove me downward to do so. Instead, I took a step back from her. She was a temptation I could ill afford.

“It will nae happen again,” I growled, unsure if I was saying it aloud for her reassurance or my own. My hands trembled slightly as I shoved them through my hair. “Forgive me,” I grumbled. “That was…inappropriate.”

Aria touched her fingers to her lips, her expression unreadable. “It was—”

“I’ll send another lass to give ye a respite until Isla returns,” I cut her off, already backing toward the door. I could not bear to hear what she might say, whether condemnation or, worse, encouragement. “Ye should rest while ye can.”

I turned and left before she could respond, striding down the corridor as if pursued by demons. In truth, the demons were within me—the memory of her warm willing lips on mine, the soft curves of her body in my arms, the burning desire scorching in my veins.

I had broken my vow. I had allowed myself to be swayed by a pair of blue eyes and a moment of shared vulnerability.

Shame burned my gut, but there was something else there.

Something clawing, demanding to be fed, not wanting to be denied any longer.

I needed and wanted a woman, but not just any woman.

I wanted the healer. Not just to bed her, no.

What I wanted was unlike anything I’d experienced before—and even more dangerous for it.

I wanted shared moments like we’d just had.

A woman’s head on my shoulder seeking comfort.

Someone to confide in about my fears and who would do the same with me. Someone who would rule with me.

I could want those things, but I could not pursue them.

I could not risk failing to get vengeance, failing to atone for my sins.

I would put this lapse in judgment behind me and maintain strict formality with Aria from here on out.

Even as I silently vowed this, the warmth of her lips lingered on mine like a brand, a reminder of my weakness where she was concerned.