“Nay.”
Her brow puckered further. “How am I supposed to doctor your wounds if you insist on hiding them from me?”
“Ye’re not a doctor,” Dougan spat. “Leave me be.”
“My father was a captain in the Crimea,” she patiently explained. “He learned a little about doctoring cuts so they didn’t fester on the battlefield.”
That arrested his attention. “Did he kill people?” Dougan asked, unable to help himself.
She thought about this a moment. “He had good many medals pinned to the coat of his uniform, so I think he must have, though he never said so.”
“I’ll bet he used a rifle,” Dougan said, diverted by thoughts he deemed manly and grown-up. Thoughts of war and glory.
“And a bayonet,” the girl supplied helpfully. “I got to touch it once when he was cleaning his weapon by the fire.”
“Tell me what it was like,” he demanded.
“Let me tend your hands, and I will.” Her sea-storm eyes sparkled at him.
“Very well.” Cautiously, he pulled his wounded hands from behind him. “But ye have to start from the beginning.”
“I will,” she promised with a solemn nod.
“And doona leave anything out.”
“I won’t.” She picked up the cup of water.
Dougan leaned forward and extended his palm toward her.
She winced at the broken flesh, but cradled his wounded hand in both of hers like one would a baby bird, before reaching for the bowl of water to trickle it over the cut. When he snarled in pain, she began to describe her father’s rifle to him. The way the little coils fit together. The clicking noises of the levers. The silt and stench and sparkle of the black powder.
She poured the alcohol over his wounds, and Dougan hissed breath through his teeth, trembling with the effort it took not to snatch his hands away from her. To distract himself from the pain, he focused his blurring vision on the droplets of moisture collecting like diamonds in her abundant curls. Instead of making her hair heavy and straight, the rain seemed to coil the ringlets tighter and anoint the silvery strands with a darker gloss of spun gold. His finger itched to test the curls, to twirl and pull them, and see if they bounced back into place. But he kept absolutely still while she wrapped the strips of her petticoat around his palm with painstaking care.
“Tell me yer name,” he demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“My name is Farah.” He could tell the question pleased her because a tiny dimple appeared in her cheek. “Farah Leigh—” She cut off abruptly, frowning at the tidy knot she’d just produced.
“Aye?” he said alertly. “Farah Leigh—what?”
Her eyes were more gray than green when they met his. “I’ve been forbidden to utter my family name,” she said. “Or I’ll get me and the person I told into trouble, and I don’t think you need any more trouble.”
Dougan nodded. That wasn’t so uncommon here at Applecross. “I’m Dougan of the Clan Mackenzie,” he announced proudly. “And I have eleven years.”
She looked properly impressed, which ingratiated her to him even more.
“I have eight years,” she told him. “What did you do that was so wicked?”
“I—swiped a loaf from the kitchens.”
She looked appalled.
“I’m so bloody hungry all the time,” he muttered, not missing her flinch at his profanity. “Hungry enough to eat the moss off those rocks.”
Farah tied off the last bandage and leaned back on her knees to inspect her work. “This is a lot of punishment for one loaf of bread,” she observed sadly. “Those welts will probably scar.”
“It’s not the first time,” Dougan admitted with a shrug more cavalier than he actually felt. “It’s usually my arse that gets blistered, and I’d rather that. Sister Margaret said I’m a demon.”
“Dougan the Demon.” She smiled, thoroughly amused.