Claray snorted at the claim. “No’ if what the lasses say is true. They say ye’ve a prick like a string bean and can no’ get it hard without hurtin’ a lass first. Pathetic,” she pronounced.
Hamish struck out at her so quickly he took them both by surprise. Or perhaps he was the only one, Conall thought grimly when Claray took the blow with equanimity, simply turning her head slowly back from where his blow had turned it to the side. She licked away the blood that ran from the corner of her split lip before asking dryly, “Did that excite ye?”
Conall saw Hamish’s hand tighten around the sgian dubh, knew he was going to hit her again, and couldn’t bear it. He started forward, only to pause when Hamish whirled back and raised his sword, poking him in the stomach with it.
“I was plannin’ on killin’ ye quickly as a kindness fer setting Deagh Fhortan to rights fer me,” Hamish growled. “But now I’m thinkin’ I’d rather kill ye slowly. Mayhap I’ll even leave ye alive long enough to watch me rape yer woman before I finish ye both off. That,” he added grimly, turning to glower at Claray, “would excite me, I think.”
Conall started reaching for his sgian dubh the minute the man turned his head. His fingers had just closed around it when Squeak suddenly launched himself off of his shoulder and leapt the few feet to the other man. He landed in the center of his face, slid down and clamped his sharp little teeth down on Hamish’s lip to catch himself, or perhaps just because the man had hit his Claray. Whatever the case, Hamish roared in pain and instinctively dropped his sword to reach for the wee stoat, to pull it off.
Conall quickly bent to snatch up his own sword and then thrust it into the man as he brought it back up. Much to his relief, Hamish’s hand squeezed into a fist inches from Squeak, leaving him unharmed as his eyes, widening with confusion, found Conall. It looked as if he was bewildered as to how he’d ended up getting stabbed when only a moment ago he’d held all the cards. Then he dropped to his knees.
“Squeak,” Claray cried with alarm, and the wee stoat reacted at once, launching himself sideways into Claray’s lap just before Hamish fell forward, flat on his face.
Chapter 27
Claray glanced from Squeak to Conall as her husband kicked aside Hamish’s weapons and bent to roll him over. She grimaced when she saw the man’s wound. Conall had jabbed the sword in from below, driving it up under his ribs, and probably piercing his heart. But when the man had dropped to his knees, the sword had still been inside him and still held by Conall. It had ripped up through his chest before it was pulled out. If the sword hadn’t pierced his heart with the first blow, the gaping chest wound he’d ended up with would have killed him.
Straightening, Conall moved to her now.
“Are ye all right, love?” he asked, kneeling before her to begin untying her legs.
“Aye,” she breathed, managing a smile.
“Yer bleeding,” he growled, his gaze sliding up to her neck and then back to the ropes he was trying to undo. Finally, he gave up trying to untie her and simply sliced through the ropes around one leg with his sgian dubh.
“’Tis fine,” Claray assured him when he didn’t immediately move to the other leg to remove the rope there, but reached up to tip her head back instead so that he could look at her neck.
“Ye’ll ha’e a scar to remember this day,” Conall growled as he examined the wound. Scowling, he met her gaze and added, “Ye ne’er should ha’e angered him. What if he’d killed ye outright? I could no’ live without ye, lass. I love ye.”
Claray’s eyes widened, tears springing to film them at the claim, and then movement behind him caught her eye. Shifting her gaze past her husband, she saw with horror that Mhairi had regained consciousness. She was now rushing at them with her sgian dubh in hand and raised, ready to plunge it into Conall’s back. Claray had barely opened her mouth to scream a warning when she heard a growl from behind her and a gray streak flew overhead, crashing into the woman.
“Lovey!” she cried with concern as Mhairi struck out at the wolf with the knife, just before his teeth closed on her throat and they both crashed to the ground.
Conall was moving at once to help the beast, his body blocking her view as he knelt over the pair.
“Is he all right?” she asked anxiously.
Conall didn’t answer, except for a curse as he quickly began to cut a strip of plaid off of his great kilt. That was answer enough, and Claray immediately started tugging at her arms, but they were still bound tight to the chair. His freeing one leg had done nothing for her arms.
Cursing now herself, she glanced to Conall and asked, “How badly is he hurt?”
Conall finished what he’d been doing, which turned out to be his binding the wound on Lovey’s side, she saw as he now turned quickly to help her.
Claray’s gaze slid over the wolf and woman as her husband began to cut her free of the chair. Mhairi was alive, but not for long judging by the gurgling sound that was emitting from her every time she breathed. Lovey had torn her throat open, and blood was pouring from the wound, she noted, but her only concern was Lovey. The wolf was lying on his side, panting shallowly, the plaid around his chest already darkening with blood.
Conall cut the last of the ropes away from her and tried to examine her neck, but she pushed his hands away and lunged out of the chair to go to Lovey. But there was nothing she could do there without her medicinals.
“We need to get him back to the keep,” Claray said anxiously, running a soothing hand down the wolf’s back.
“I need to bind yer neck first, love,” Conall said grimly.
“When we get back,” Claray said impatiently, and tried to scoop up the wolf into her arms.
Cursing, Conall pressed a second strip of plaid into her hands that he’d apparently cut from his great kilt and then urged her out of the way. Bending to pick up up Lovey, he ordered, “Bind yer neck. Yer losin’ a lot of blood.”
Claray peered down, surprised to see that there was a great deal of blood soaking into the top of her pale-yellow gown. She hadn’t realized that Hamish had cut her so deeply. Frowning, she quickly wrapped the plaid around her throat and tied it off as tightly as she could without choking herself, and then followed when Conall started out of the hovel. But she glanced back nervously at the door.
“Mayhap we should make sure Mhairi is dead first,” she muttered, hesitating to leave.
Conall paused and turned back, his gaze sliding to the unmoving woman. “Why was she here? What had she to do with this?”
“She’s Hamish’s mother,” Claray breathed, feeling suddenly weary. “She’s the one who poisoned yer parents and the rest o’ the clan when ye were a boy. She was mad and thought she was carrying out God’s will.”
Claray turned back to her husband to see myriad emotions cross his face before it settled into a cold mask. He shifted and for a minute she thought he might go back and finish the woman, but then his gaze dropped to the plaid around her throat, and he turned away. “I’ll send men out fer them when we get back. We need to get ye to the keep so I can tend yer wound.”
Claray followed him out of the cottage without protest. She would have felt better making sure the woman was dead, but Lovey needed tending. She wouldn’t risk his dying because she’d delayed. Besides, she was beginning to feel a bit woozy. Blood loss, she knew. She didn’t think her neck was bleeding badly enough to cause it. But it wasn’t the first wound she’d taken that day and her head wound had bled freely.