The Hellion and the Highlander Read Free

unscathed.
    “And the monastery in Tunis?” Will prodded. “You recall the three months we spent there while Ian recovered from his illness, I healed from my sword wound, and we all recuperated and regained our weight and strength?”
    Kade grimaced. While they’d escaped the cells unscathed, they hadn’t been so lucky afterward. They were stealing horses on which to flee when Will had been run through by a guard who took them by surprise. Once the guard had been taken care of, Will had tried to be brave and steadfast, clutching the wound in his side and telling them to go on without him, but Kade had ignored that and taken the time to bind the wound the best hecould. It had been bad, and Kade had feared losing yet another friend to Baibar’s cruelty.
    Once they’d reached the safety of the monastery in Tunis, the monks had tended Ian and Will. Ian had recovered from his illness within a couple of days, but it had taken two weeks for Will to recuperate. Once he was up and about, they had spent another two and a half months regaining their strength and working to earn the money for food, clothes, and horses to make the long journey home. It had taken them more than two months to make their way north to France. They’d hired a boat there to carry them across the Channel to England, he recalled.
    “But you do not recall the boat crossing from France to England?” Will asked, reminding him of his earlier confusion.
    “I remember,” he managed, wincing as the words tore at his throat. The boat they’d hired had seemed sturdy and the day fine when they’d cast off, but a storm had whipped up halfway across, and waves taller than the ship had surrounded them. Kade was no coward, but even he had trembled before the powerful walls of water that had tossed the ship about. When they finally saw shore ahead, he suspected he was not the only one to breathe a sigh of relief that it was nearly over. But Mother Nature had not been finished with them yet and, as the captain tried to steer into the harbor, the ship was caught by a wave and dashed against the rocks. Kade had a vague recollection of the screams of men and panicked whinny of horses, then a blinding pain in his head.
    “The men?” he asked, doing his throat more damage.
    “Stop trying to talk,” Will said with exasperation, then sighed. “We lost Gordon and Parlan.”
    Kade closed his eyes as loss slid over him. Two more men to add to the others lost to the madness of Edward’s Crusade. Of the thirty warriors he’d been captured with, only Domnall, Ian, and Angus remained. And Will, he acknowledged. Edward had ordered that the Englishman accompany them on the late-night sojourn to check on the whereabouts of Baibar’s men. That order had cost the Englishman more than three years of his life, and while Kade was sorry for his friend’s sake, he was grateful for his own. Their friendship had helped him stay sane during their trials.
    “But Ian, Angus, and Domnall made it to shore,” Will went on firmly. “And I pulled your sorry hide there when I found you facedown in the water. The horses did better,” he added dryly. “We only lost one and managed to collect the others as they swam to shore.”
    Kade grunted. He’d rather have lost all the horses than one more man.
    “I took you up on my mount, and we rode straight here to Mortagne. You have been unconscious nearly two weeks now, and—”
    “Two—?” Kade began with disbelief.
    “Aye, two weeks,” Will interrupted, and shookhis head. “I do not know why. You had a bump, but it was not even an open wound. Averill says head wounds are like that though. A small bump can kill a man, while another will survive his skull being cracked open.” He shrugged. “She would know, I suppose. Averill was trained in healing by our mother and has aided in tending the ill and injured here since a child. She has fretted over you like a mother hen these two weeks, dribbling broth down your throat several times a