Free Torn (The Handfasting) by Becca St. John Page A

her.
    "What
are you doing, woman?  Moving her about so."
    "You
ever use a tourniquet on a man?"  Ealasaid barked at him. "Well leave
us to our own devices."
    "Don't
let her die."
    Ealasaid
stopped, her beefy arm swiping at the sweat on her forehead, her eyes on her
patient. "Your Maggie is stronger than Anabal was, Bold. She's stronger,
there's a greater chance she'll make it."  She bent to her task again. Talorc
lifted his wife, so the woman could get everything where it needed to be.
    Maggie's
head lolled from side to side. He thought of her concussion, of the temptation
to go to her twin, and jostled her. "Maggie, wake-up, don't die on me. Don't
you dare put me through this again."
    "Stop
it, Laird," Gerta tugged on his arm. "Let us tend to her. She's
better sleeping against the pain."
    Pain.
For the second time, in the short time they had been together, she lay upon
their bed, near death.
    "Why,
Gerta?" He asked as though there were an answer. "Why does this have
to happen?" 
    The
old woman clammed up, her lips pressed so tight they nearly turned blue. There
was an answer, when he expected none. No one could explain nature. But wrong
doing was another thing, entirely.
    Something
was wrong.
    Talorc
whirled on Ealasaid, "What happened here?" his fury tinged with panic.
"Why is she bleeding like this?"
    "She
lost the babe. She's a red head. Put the two together and you've got blood. Lots
of it. So get out of the way." Ealasaid refused to look at him, though he
heard the choke of a sob. "This is no time for talk!" 
    Gerta
tugged at his arm, again, someone pushed gently at his back. A man collided
with him, at the door, a slab of ice in his arms. Helpless, Talorc watched as
the ice was passed to the women and the man scurried out of the room. Away from
the tragedy. Talorc followed, crushed by his inability to be of help.
    There
was nothing he could do. When Anabal had been in this state, he had mourned,
but at the same time he had the hope of a babe. But there would be no babe this
time, no chance of one. That was already gone. Now, his only hope was that
Maggie live.
    Please,
God, let her live.
    He
slid down the wall, elbows braced on his knees, head in his hands. The hallway
filled with quiet murmurs as clansmen joined his vigil. Old Micheil pressed a
goblet of whisky into his hand.
    Talorc
could not swallow. "Give it to Maggie; see if it fires up her life."
    "I
did that first. They've poured it down her throat."  Micheil urged him to
drink, but the threat of tears, lumped in his throat. He turned away.
    His
Maggie, his feisty spirited girl, now limp as a doll and as pasty as raw dough
lay on the other side of that door. She had not chosen to come here. He used
her own family against her, fueled the MacBede clan to add pressure and added
the hefty weight of a battle won to cap it. He thwarted her own wishes and
connived to handfast her. He seduced her to child, allowed her to think it was
her brazen nature and not his hunger to spill his seed in her womb. He trapped
her, against her own ideals, against her sense of time. He'd rushed her, when
he could have waited, should have waited.
    And
now, here she was, the child lost, her reason for staying with him gone.
    I vow she shall never be harmed by me or mine, in any manner.
    Twice
she lay near death under his roof, amid his people. He had promised
differently.
    "Laird,"
Conegell hunkered down before him, "Something's wrong."
    Talorc's
head snapped up. "Aye, my wife is losing blood. That's wrong.
    "Like
your first wife."
    He
turned away. "You don't have to be telling me what I know.” He was cursed,
there was no doubt now.
    "It
was a drink she took and it was no different for your Anabal. She fell ill with
a drink."
    Drink? 
The same as Anabal?  He hadn't known that, but now, two wives, years apart, at
different stages of carrying a bairn, lost babes by the same means.
    An
enemy could not survive for years inside Glen Toric. They would have