C
eana’s cheeks burned with mortification, the effect heightened by her knowledge of the tumultuous past between the three people now crowding her cottage. Did Alan think the Earl of Camdonn had seduced her like he had Sorcha? The truth was the opposite, she feared—she’d been the one to do the seducing. How could she have prevented the kiss, though, when every inch of her body craved the caress of this man’s lips?
I am a MacNab. Men don’t affect me.
Her mantra succeeded to an extent, and she diligently kept her eyes off the earl, for the sight of his pale, handsome face would crumble her resolve.
She gazed at Alan’s rugged countenance instead, trying to ignore the surprise written all over it—the raised brows, widened blue eyes, parted lips.
“Good morning.” She glanced at Sorcha, then away, for the shocked expression on the other woman’s face made her own burn even hotter.
Sorcha seemed too dumbstruck to speak, so Alan took the reins. “Good morning, Ceana. Cam.”
The earl made a noncommittal noise, and Alan glanced at her. “How is he? Ah”—he cleared his throat—“his wound, I mean.”
“He’s better.” Ceana spoke curtly, brushing her hands as if they’d just been immersed in sand. “Ready to return to his grand castle, I daresay.” She turned to her worktable and began to sift through her medicines. “There are a few things you must take to give to his physician. They will aid in the healing process.” She raised a small jar of salve so they all could see it. “This is to be rubbed on the wound twice daily.”
The rustle of skirts heralded Sorcha’s appearance at the bedside. Sorcha seemed to have come to her senses, for now she appeared more like herself. She smiled down at Cam. “From the way Alan described your injury, I was certain you were at death’s door. I wanted to come to you last night, but Alan forbade me to—”
“Your condition, Sorcha,” Alan cut in from the doorway. “You seem determined to forget about it.”
“—and so I came as soon as I could, only to find you debauching wenches.” She glanced up to give Ceana a saucy wink. “Now, why did my husband cause me to fret when it is clear you are as right as my leg?”
“I’m sorry to have caused you worry. It is good to see you, my dear.”
Sorcha knelt to kiss Cam on the lips. “I forgive you. I’m happy to see that you’re not quite at death’s door.”
Cam’s gaze rested on her rounded stomach. “You’ve . . . grown.”
Sorcha laughed. “Aye, so I have. He’s huge, isn’t he? I think he intends to grow until he bursts right out of me.”
“You think it’s a boy, then?”
“A lass wouldn’t have the impudence to stretch me thus.”
Ceana watched their easy camaraderie in bemusement. Cam and Sorcha had been lovers, and with Alan in the same room, Ceana would have expected some tension. But while Alan was silent at the threshold, his stance was relaxed and she detected no animosity from him. How extraordinarily odd.
As Ceana handed Alan the medicine, Sorcha turned to her. “Ceana, do you know the surgeon at Camdonn Castle?”
“No, I haven’t had that pleasure,” Ceana stated dryly. With a few exceptions, Ceana was wary of those formally trained in the ways of medicine. When she encountered them, her claws invariably extended. Besides being pompous and generally ineffective, these men could be dangerous to her kind. In the middle of the last century, Ceana’s great-grandmother had been burned as a witch on the evidence of such “learned” men.
“Well, he’s a fool,” Sorcha said. “Rest assured, if you place Cam’s well-being in that man’s hands, he’ll encourage ill humors rather than stave them off.”
Ceana sighed. “If you supply specific instructions—”
“—he’ll know they come from you and he’ll intentionally countermand your orders,” Alan finished. “I think you should accompany the earl back to the castle and stay with him until he’s healed.”
“That’s not necessary,” Cam said. “I’m already halfway healed, and Ceana has—”
Sorcha raised her hand, halting his words. “Do you trust your surgeon, Cam?”
“Well . . .” He hesitated and then said in a sheepish tone, “No.”
“Neither do I.” Again she turned to Ceana. “He needs proper care, doesn’t he? What will happen if he does not receive it?”
Ceana shrugged. “The wound will fester and he will die.”
“Then you must stay with him.”
Cam must have seen the hesitance in Ceana’s eyes. “She has other patients, Sorcha. I daresay I can manage my wound and the medications well enough on my own.”
Certainly there was someone at Camdonn Castle he could trust to care for him. Ceana blew out an exasperated breath. “If your surgeon is such an idiot, why do you continue to employ him?”
“He worked for my father, who promised him the position for life. Further, he is well liked. I haven’t the heart to cast him away.”
Ceana frowned at him. She’d been told the Earl of Camdonn didn’t have the heart for anyone. Certainly someone so ruthless wouldn’t keep a member of his staff out of sentimentality. Every minute she spent with the man drove home deeper the fact that the people of the Glen had misjudged him.
“Please, Ceana,” Sorcha said quietly. “When Cam was last injured like this, the wound festered and he nearly died. Your grandmother’s healing skills were what saved him in the end.” She shuddered and placed a protective hand over the swell of her belly. “We were so close to losing him. I don’t wish for that to happen again. I beg you to stay with him, at least until the wound is out of danger of festering.”
Ceana sighed. “Very well, then. For a few days.”
She felt Cam’s dark, soulful eyes boring into her, and she had a premonition that she’d live to regret that decision.
A few hours later, Ceana stood beside Cam’s grizzled manservant, Duncan MacDougall, in the earl’s cavernous bedchamber. Duncan was a round, small man with a haggard face and beady blue eyes, a circle of white hair his crowning glory.
Tapestries draped the stone walls of Cam’s bedchamber. Midday light filtered in through a single window, conveniently placed in a location to make full use of the sun’s trajectory. On the rightmost wall, two doors flanked a massive stone fireplace.
“Och,” Duncan murmured gruffly, “here they are, then.”
Ceana turned to the entrance of the room as four men appeared bearing the earl on a stretcher. He leaned up on his good elbow, scowling. When the men jerked to a halt just inside, he caught sight of Ceana, and his scowl deepened. “I can walk.”
She shrugged. “I’m here to ensure your welfare.”
Beside her, Duncan snickered silently. At least he was on her side.
Oh, but she’d see to Cam’s welfare. She’d see to it so well and so thoroughly, he wouldn’t be able to endure it. And in a day or two he’d throw her out of his castle, and she would be free to go home. She didn’t like the message she sent by staying at Camdonn Castle: that the earl’s well-being was more important than anyone else’s in the Glen.
But beyond that, for some reason, this place discomfited her greatly. Here, she was ultimately at the earl’s mercy. She didn’t like being under anyone else’s power. She preferred to be queen of her own tiny domain rather than a servant in someone else’s massive one.
“My welfare isn’t dependent upon my being treated like a goddamn invalid.”
Good
. Her plan was already working. She gave him a serene smile and gestured to the bed. “Take him over there,” she instructed the men. She knew one of them—Bram MacGregor—a tenant of the earl whom she’d nursed through the ague when she’d first arrived in the Glen. She smiled at Bram, but he didn’t meet her eyes. Instead, he gazed at Cam with open dislike as the four men laid the stretcher at the edge of the bed.
“Should we move him over onto ’is bed, Ceana?” one of the men asked.
Ceana opened her mouth to answer, but before she could, Cam interrupted in a growl, “I shall move myself, thank you. Now leave us, all of you.”
Duly dismissed, the four men and Duncan strode out, Duncan grinning and two of the other men raising sympathetic brows at Ceana as they passed her. She marched to the bedside, hands on hips. “You are a surly patient.”
“Do you know Alan pinned me down on that damned stretcher so they could carry me up here?” he grumbled.
“Only because I asked it of him.”
“You didn’t treat me like a piece of glass yesterday.”
“I’d no choice yesterday. I had to make you walk through the forest to save your sorry life. Today, however, I have everything I require to heal you quickly at my disposal.” She cracked her knuckles. “And I intend to make use of all of it.”
His lips twisted. “Sounds to me like you’re preparing to inflict torture.”
“Ah, well. Sometimes healing can be a kind of torture. Especially for men of action, such as you.” She allowed herself a drifting gaze down the length of his body. “Well, I assume you are, in any case. You might be one of those noblemen who sits about all day drinking brandy and gazing at your beautiful visage in a gilded mirror.”
He raised a single black brow. “You think I’ve a beautiful visage?”
“I didn’t say that,” she snapped.
A shadow cast a pall over his face, and his gaze skittered away from her until it came to rest on the opposite wall. “I shouldn’t taunt you.”
Needing to occupy her hands, Ceana turned to her medicine trunk. She’d brought more than Cam would require, for she suspected Cam wouldn’t be the only one to request her healing skills at Camdonn Castle.
“That kiss . . . at your cottage . . .” Cam’s halting voice came from behind her, and, squatting before her trunk, she paused.
Without looking back at him, she said, “It was a mistake.”
“Yes.” He sounded almost relieved.
“You are betrothed.” She tried—and failed—to infuse a scoff into her voice. “I am a MacNab.” That statement held quite a lot of meaning in the Glen. Most of the residents here had feared her grandmother.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Yes on both counts.”
As much as she wished it didn’t, his agreement pricked her in the chest. It hurt.
Nevertheless, she reminded herself that this was for the best. She didn’t want this man pursuing her. She had no desire to be the mistress of the Earl of Camdonn, and she had even less desire to become a rival of the future countess.
She should be thankful for his dismissal, because God knew she didn’t have the willpower to resist him. One touch and she’d be lost.
Yet she would be forced to touch him. Over and over again, until his wound had healed enough for her to leave.
Ceana closed her fist around a tiny pot of medicine and rose to her feet, looking wildly about for a means to change the subject. She gestured at the wall where the hearth was flanked by the two doors. “What lies beyond those doors?”
“Why don’t you go see for yourself.”
She strode to the rightmost door first. Opening it, she found an enormous dressing room with a wardrobe, a clothespress, and shelves brimming with clothing and accessories. Enough to clothe the men of Glenfinnan for a year, she gathered. After a few moments, she backed out the way she had come.
She walked to the other door and opened it to reveal a receiving room elaborately decorated with silk-covered furniture dyed in dark, masculine browns and rusty reds. At the far end of the room stood an exquisitely carved rosewood desk that matched Cam’s bed. Crystal bottles filled with clear and amber liquids covered the similarly styled sidebar that ran nearly the entire length of the wall backing the dressing room. Several plush chairs and a long sofa scattered the vast area between Ceana and the desk. The room was almost the size of Cam’s bedchamber, and equally elegant. Combined, the rooms were ten times as large as her cottage.
Most women of her status would swoon with ecstasy to walk into such a room. Ceana, however, was a MacNab. It took more than this to impress her. She retreated and returned to Cam’s side.
“Did you see the wine bottles beneath the sidebar?”
“No.”
“I could use a bottle right now.”
“Absolutely not,” she declared. “Spirits make wretched aids to healing.”
“Perhaps I ought to have called in my surgeon after all. He’d have allowed me to drink as much as I pleased.”
She chose to ignore that statement.
He frowned. “Even your grandmother allowed me a bit of whisky when I needed it for the pain.”
“My grandmother wasn’t nearly so erudite as I am.”
He laughed. “Is that so?”
“Aye. Her expertise was in the old ways. I have found many of those methods to be effective, but I’ve studied newer forms of healing, and I possess far more knowledge of the science of it.”
“What do you mean, ‘newer forms of healing’?”
“Techniques of the East, for example.” She tore her gaze from him, an unsettled feeling fluttering in her chest. She often used the techniques she’d studied, but people rarely questioned her, and she’d never shared her knowledge of them before. She’d accomplished most of her learning through secret reading and sly observance. At first it was a matter of self-preservation that she didn’t discuss her knowledge, for no one would allow any woman, never mind a woman of her lowly and questionable status, to study as she had. Eventually her secrecy had become a matter of habit. Nevertheless, it was disconcerting to talk about it to anyone, even after all these years.