She took another stitch, setting them neatly, not too tight, side by side. There would still be a scar, but it should be nice and straight and narrow. She took another stitch, hardly noticing the movements of those around her: Malcolm Bain holding the wound, Gregor stiff and white beneath her hands, Duncan murmuring in sympathy, and Morag at the edge of her vision, holding the bowl of water.
Each stitch careful and precise, one by one, until there was one more stitch needed.
Meg made it, and watched Malcolm snip the thread. He took the needle from her hand. “Ye’ve done a bonny job, my lady. When the lad can talk again I’m sure he’ll agree.”
It was only then that the room began to spin slowly around Meg, turning like a top. She swayed, reaching out for purchase, and something hard and very strong gripped her hand, holding her up. She looked down and saw that Gregor had closed his large hand upon hers, fingers intertwining. She blinked and her head cleared a little, although her legs were still shaky. His amber eyes were fastened upon hers as tenaciously as his hand on her hand.
“I’m not going to swoon,” she assured him, a little breathlessly.
“Neither am I,” he replied.
“I’ve never been much good with men,” she went on, and then flushed, mortified to have said such a thing. Where had that come from? Were her wits quite addled?
His mouth lifted into a smile that made her head spin all over again. “Mabbe you just have not met the right one.”
“Done,” Malcolm Bain announced. He had rebandaged the arm with deft twists in the clean strips of cloth supplied by the innkeeper’s daughter. “There, lad, ye’ll feel more comfortable now,” he said with a confident air.
The ‘lad’ looked as if he, despite his assertion to the contrary and his charming smile, was about to pass out.
“Let’s get ye to bed,” Malcolm went on. “I fear we’ll have to beg one here at the inn for tonight.”
“Can you arrange that?” Meg asked, looking to Morag.
“I’ll see to it, my lady,” the girl said. “Will ye eat now, my lady, or would ye prefer a tray to your room?”
“A tray,” Meg said, gratefully, and the girl hurried off to prepare a room and see to the food.
Meg looked down at the man before her, hesitant. He had said that he owed her a favor, and here was her chance to call that favor in.
“Captain Grant?”
Gregor grunted, unmoving. His fingers had begun to relax, and he had stretched his legs out toward the fire. He looked limp and helpless, not a man who had lived a brutal soldier’s life, who fought duels over women and drank himself senseless. Suddenly he was much more like the gentle boy Meg had imagined sketching those portraits of glen life. The boy she had admired so much, and thought she knew so well, only…bigger.
“Captain Grant,” she repeated, more loudly this time.
He opened one amber eye and glared at her indignantly. “Lass, lemme s-s-sleep now,” he slurred. “I promise I’ll be ready for ye again come the morning.”
Color heated her face, but she supposed it was her own fault for pestering a half-conscious man, especially a man as clearly lacking in morals as this one.
Malcolm Bain hid a smile. “Talk to him in the morning, my lady.”
“Aye,” Duncan added, uncomfortable in agreement.
Meg gave an impatient sigh. “Very well.”
“We’ll get him to his bed,” Duncan said, with a quick glance at Malcolm Bain, and a tightening of his lips. “Get some sleep, Lady Meg. I dinna think we’ll be riding home tomorrow, but who knows? I knew a man once had his foot taken off by a blow from a claymore, and he was in the saddle again the following day….”
Meg could see the sense in his advice. When Gregor woke tomorrow, sore-headed but sober, she needed to be ready. Would he do as she asked? She thought he would. Penniless and landless and lacking in morals he may be, but he was still a Highlander at heart, bound by his honor. And Meg thought that it was his honor that would bring him to heel.
And then I will have what I came for, she told herself. Gregor Grant will be mine.
The words echoed in her head as she made her way to her room. They gave her a warm tingle of pleasure that had nothing to do with the fire burning in her hearth. Foolishness, she thought impatiently. She would d
o well to remember that Gregor Grant was no woman’s man, and certainly not hers.
Suddenly she was very weary, and missing the services of her maid, Alison, at home in Glen Dhui. Alison had wanted to come, but she was no horsewoman, and Meg knew that, as much as she valued her maid’s company, Alison would only have slowed them down. So, once again tonight, Meg was her own lady’s maid.
The food arrived and was as good as had been promised, but Meg had lost her appetite. She quickly undressed, slipping on her nightshift and letting the white muslin settle about her before drawing a warm wrap about her shoulders. Halfheartedly she brushed out her wildly curling hair—no easy task, for it required concentration to free the flaming mass of tangles as she sat before the crackle of the small fire in the hearth.