After plodding past the crystal lake Casa del Llac derived its name from, she and her baggage arrived in the manor’s central courtyard. “Vitale!” Annalía called for her steward but received no answer. Where was he?
Smoking, no doubt. Over dice. “Vitale!” This whole place was going to ruin without her brother. “I know you’re smoking behind the stable, and I don’t care just now!”
Vitale leVieux peeked his craggy face around the side of the stable. “Yes, mademoiselle—” he began before he gasped at the injured man, smoke wafting from his open mouth. His crinkly gray hair bounced as he rushed to her side. “What have you done?” he exclaimed, his French accent sharp. “He’s Scottish—look at the plaid.”
“I saw the plaid,” she said in disgust. Spotting Vitale’s ancient dice partners lining up to see the spectacle, she said in a hushed voice, “We shall discuss this inside.”
Undeterred, he cried, “He must be one of the blood-drinking Highlanders the general hired!”
One of Vitale’s friends mumbled, “Highlander, you say?” When Vitale nodded emphatically, his compadres called goodbyes and shuffled off with their canes for hills unknown.
Apparently everyone had heard the tales of their brutality.
“Why would you save him?” Vitale demanded when they were alone.
“What if he isn’t one of the mercenaries?”
“Oh, of course, he must be here for the…” He trailed off, scratching his head as though stumped, then flashed an expression of realization. “I have just recalled—there’s nothing here to see!”
And everyone wondered where she’d gotten her sarcasm.
She gave him a lowering look. “Are you going to help me? I need you to get the doctor.”
“The doctor went north to join your brother’s men.” Vitale looked the man over, all nine feet of him, it seemed. “Besides, we bring the injured to you.”
“You bring injured animals and children to me, not beaten-senseless giants bleeding from every limb,” she corrected. When Annalía was younger, her Andorran nanny had taught her to treat some injuries—broken bones, burns, cuts, and the like, but then she’d probably never envisioned a patient like this one. “It’s not proper for me to attend him.”
He gave her a patronizing smile. “Perhaps mademoiselle should have thought of that before dragging the enemy into our home? Hmmm?”
Lips thinned, she replied, “Perhaps mademoiselle is displaying the same compassion she showed when she hired Vitale the Old.” Though they both knew her taking him in from the streets of Paris to her home in Andorra hadn’t been simply because of kindness. Gratitude had compelled her.
He sighed. “What do you wish me to do?”
“Help me put him in the room off the stable.”
“We can’t lock that room! He could slit our throats while we sleep.”
“Then where?” He opened his mouth to answer, but she cut him off, “And don’t you dare say back to the riverside.”
He closed his mouth abruptly. They both looked down at the man as though searching for the answer.
Vitale finally said, “We should put him in the manor house so we can lock him in a bedroom.”
“Where I sleep?”
“Mademoiselle has demonstrated compassion”—he smiled too serenely—“which is but a slippery stone away from hospitality.”
She ignored his expression. “The only room downstairs that locks is the study and that’s private. I don’t want him to know our business affairs.”
He gave the man a rousing kick in the hip. When no response came, he cackled.
“Vitale!”
He turned to her with an impassive face. “So mademoiselle suggests upstairs?”
“We simply can’t do it. My horse had problems pulling his weight.”
Some of the ranch hands’ children ran by then, eyes wide, reminding Annalía of the state of the man’s clothing. Most of it had ripped away. A tear spread up his thigh, close to his…She straddled his legs, sweeping her skirt over him for cover. “Run along.” Her voice was strident.
They looked to Vitale, and though he rolled his eyes, he told them, “Untie the ropes and go take care of poor Iambe.” Facing her, he said, “If you’re insisting it must be upstairs, we can attempt it. Besides, do we really care if we drop him?”
So by dint of strategizing, straining, and yes, using the children she’d pleaded with to return, they managed to get him to the nearest guest bedroom and transferred onto the bed. Though she was exhausted, with her palm jammed into her lower back like a washerwoman closing the day, she knew she still had to tend to him.