Page 30 of Bound to Her Highland Lord
She stretched her fingers towards him, grasping the unbuttoned collar of his shirt, giving him pause. He said nothing as he lifted a brow at her.
“Ye are bleeding,” she said by way of explanation.
Holding her red stained fingertips up, she showed him the proof of her statement. Her eyes drifted down to his chest, where the white bandage was now smeared with blood.
“Yer mother worked so hard on that too,” Sorcha chastised as lightly as she could manage. “I watched her spend such time making those stitches neat and tidy so they would nae scar. And here ye are, traipsing about in the cold, undoing all that hard work.”
He offered her a sheepish smile and a gentle shrug.
“I had to stop you from leaving,” he said softly, his words that of a perfect English gentleman.
“Well if backing me into a wall and shouting yer life’s troubles did nae do the job, this certainly has. Come on, Oliver,” she instructed, offering a smile of her own. “Let’s go find yer mother and get ye cleaned up again.”
The shift between them, the one prompted by the closeness of their bodies and the stories they had confided in each otherwith, was made permanent when Sorcha grasped Oliver’s hand. She did not let go of his warm, reassuring touch as she led him into the castle.
11
BENEATH THE WINE AND BREAD
Oliver hissed through gritted teeth as Sorcha ran another pass over his wound. Neither of them had realized just how late the evening had gotten, the stables walls had hidden well the sinking of the run and rising moon. He had refused the idea of waking his mother so she could tend to him again.
“Taryn was always the healer,” Sorcha told him apologetically. “And if she could nae do it, then Aila was next in line. I am afraid I never spent much time practicing my bedside manner.”
She wiped the blood off his bare skin, trying to be as gentle as she could. Oliver leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling of his mother’s surgery.
“You are doing just fine,” he assured her. “Even with all of my mother’s skills in the healing arts, she has yet to find a way to take the sting of some of these cleansers away.”
Sorcha nodded and bent back to her work. Oliver was perched on a table, positioning the bleeding wound at nearly eye level for her, his hands gripping the edge. She tried to do the things she had seen her friends do for wounds, tried to clean it the best she could without causing any unnecessary pain.
Taking such care with Oliver, doing everything she could to ease his suffering, was a shift that shocked her. Although she hadn’t wanted the man to die, it was only this morning that she had been content to drop him at the door of his home and leave without bothering to know if he survived. It seemed impossible that so much could change for her in such a short period of time, and yet here they were.
“Tell me something,” he urged, still clenching.
“What would ye like to hear?”
She sat back and fanned her hands, trying anything to take the sting away.
“Anything. Everything. Something to distract me,” he breathed. “Who are Taryn and Aila? You have mentioned them before.”
“They are my sisters.”
“Ah. Do you have a large family? Are you close to your parents? Will they be organizing a search party for you?”
Sighing, Sorcha ducked her head, trying to decide just how much to share with Oliver. Glancing up at him through her eyelashes, she thought of his own vulnerabilities. Not only had he shared his past with her, his biggest hurts, but he had quite literally bared his chest to her, giving her free rein to his wounds. It symbolized more than she could say. And it loosened her tongue.
“I had a large family,” she began slowly, rising from her seat to search the shelves for a salve. “My father is a merchant and my mother is his partner in every sense of the word. They were blessed with eight children, though they only ever saw us in one of two ways.”
“And how is that?” Oliver asked.
She could feel his eyes on her as she moved throughout the room, candles burning around them.
“We were either mouths to feed or hands to rake in more money.”
It was a blunt assessment, but the only one she could stomach at present. Her parents were wealthy, having done well for themselves. But their greed knew no bounds. It was that greed that had driven Sorcha to run from home.
“Which were you?”
Oliver’s question was gentle enough, but it still stung all the same.
