Kara's Gift. Suzanne Barclay
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prodded him again, harder.
“Argh! Are you trying to kill me?” He rolled over, coming to rest on his back, an arm flung over his face.
“Nay, I but wanted to make certain you were unhurt.”
“By poking me with hot pincers and leaving me in the desert to be eaten by wolves?”
“Wolves.” Kara whipped her head around, spotted the MacGorys fleeing across the grassy field with Eoin and her clansmen in swift, loud pursuit. “You need not worry about the wolves, they’ve been routed. What is your name?”
“Duncan. Hot...damn me, but it’s hot.”
Hot? A brisk October wind whistled down the mountain slopes, icing Kara’s skin beneath her simple skirt and tunic. “Are you sick?” she asked warily.
“Course not. Never sick.”
“Wounded, then?”
“Antioch.”
That must be a place, though not one around here. “Where on your body, Duncan.”
“Shoulder.”
She ran practiced hands over him and felt the thick bandage on the left one and pressed gently.
He groaned, a low, anguished sound.
“Does that hurt?”
“Nay. I will be fine. Just...just let me be.”
“Men, never wanting to admit you’re hurting,” Kara scoffed, on familiar turf now. She touched his cheek. “Well, you are burning up with fever and like to die if you stay here. Nor have you the strength to rise without help.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. In the gathering dimness, it was all stark planes and shadowy hollows, wide forehead, sunken eyes, straight nose and strong chin. “Don’t need help. Don’t want help.”
“Too bad, Duncan. We seldom get what we want.”
“Kara!” a voice called. Aindreas, captain of the night guard, was just coming on duty. “Hob says the lads are hunting MacGorys and ye’ve a hurt man. Do you need help?”
“Aye, bring torches and blankets,” she shouted back. “We’ll need to rig a litter to carry him.”
“Nay.” Her patient struggled to sit. She pushed him down with one finger and kept him there till the men came. As the torches closed in to bathe the area with golden light, she got her first good look at Duncan.
“Gods!” Kara exclaimed.
“Do you know him?” Aindreas drew his long knife and waved it in the stranger’s direction.
Only he was no stranger to her. “Put that away,” Kara said sharply. “We need no protection from him.”
“Who is he?”
“The man who will save us.”
“Really?” Aindreas leaned closer, looking appropriately impressed. “The one you saw in the Beltane fires this May?”
“The very same.” She sank down on her knees beside Duncan. “I am sorry I poked you.”
He glared up at them, his scowl deepening. “Heathens.”
Aindreas stiffened. “See here, now, no call to—”
“Pagan barbarians,” Duncan muttered. “Got to get away.” He surged to his feet with surprising strength for a man half-gone with fever.
“Duncan, let me help—”
He flung Kara’s hand off. “No help.” Wavering, he turned and started for his horse. “Got to get away.” What he got was two steps before his legs gave way.
Aindreas caught him and lowered him to the ground.
“Filthy pagans,” Duncan mumbled.
Aindreas glanced at Kara. “He’s an odd way about him for a man what’s come to save us.”
“Nevertheless, he has. The vision said so, and my visions never lie.” Kara rose with all the majesty she could muster, trying not to let on that Duncan’s vehemence had shaken her. “He will stay, and he will help us.”
Duncan was still protesting when Aindreas and the others carted him off.
It did not bode well for Kara’s plans.
Chapter Two
“Untie me,” Duncan ordered through clenched teeth.
“You are not well enough to be up and too stupid to realize it,” his captor said cheerily. She stood gazing out of the arrow slit that served as a window for the tiny wall chamber where they’d brought him two nights ago.
Duncan recalled little of it, his memories a jumble of wolves and torchlight and desert heat. Nay, that had been a fever dream. But he was recovered. “My fever has broken.”
“At dawn this morn,” she replied without moving. “But you are still so weak you fell when you tried to rise.”
“’Twas no reason to bind me to the bed,” he snarled. “I will not do so again.”
She turned and cocked her head in his direction. Bathed in the last rays of the setting sun, she resembled some pagan goddess. Her hair was wild and unruly, tumbling about her shoulders and down her back in a riot of dark curls. Where the sun struck them, her tresses glowed red as fine burgundy. Her face was more exotic than beautiful, golden cat’s eyes slanting above high cheekbones, a straight nose, full mouth and a stubborn chin that warned of her willful nature.
Even her name was strange and pagan. Kara Guenna, she’d told him she was called. Not Mary or Margaret after one of the saints. Or even a decent name like Jean or Janet. Janet, good Lord, she was as different from his cool, neat Janet as day from night. This Kara was not only dark and exotic, but immodest. Her coarse skirts came only to her calves, showing shapely legs.
Staring at her made Duncan’s skin grow warm again with a fever he knew too well. Desire. Deep inside him dwelt a bad seed Cousin Niall had not beaten into submission. Something in this wild girl called to the baser nature he’d inherited from his mother. Gritting his teeth, Duncan pulled on the ropes binding him to the bedposts. “Let me up.”
“You will get up when I say.”
A red mist obscured Duncan’s vision and he ceased struggling. “So, I’m a prisoner.”
“You are my patient.” Her voice was rich and low. Her hips moved in seductive swirls as she walked toward him.
Damn. Duncan shut his eyes.
“See, this argument has tired you.”
Ha. Duncan’s eyes flew open at the precise moment she stopped at his elbow. His nostrils filled with the scent of her. Not the sour stink of sweat and horses. That he’d have welcomed. Instead, she smelled of heather. Damn. He’d dreamed of heather when he lay fevered in the Hospitallers infirmary. Heather and home. It was almost obscene to smell it now, underlaid with the sweet muskiness of this pagan woman.
“I am not tired,” Duncan snapped. “I am outraged to think that you and your...your heathenish clan would waylay a Crusader knight returning from the Holy Lands.”
“What is a Crusader?” She sat on the bed beside him.
Her scent overwhelmed him. Duncan groaned.
“Did I jostle your wound?” she asked.
Eyes squeezed shut, jaw clamped so tight his teeth ached, Duncan nodded.
“I am sorry.” She slid to the stool she’d occupied when