Read Online All The Time You Need by Melissa Mayhue - Free Book Online Page B

in front of him. Arms that would put most football players to shame. “Yer barely returned to yerself and you’d have us hasten another illness upon you?”
    “Hush yerself, lad,” the old woman said. “I can send a boy down to the stream for a bucket if you’d like to wash up. Or perhaps they have some heated in the kitchens.”
    What was wrong with these people? Water didn’t make a person sick. Although, come to think of it…
    Now that Annie actually paid a little attention to her surroundings, it did appear as though she was somewhere pretty primitive. The walls were made of stone with what looked like rugs hanging on them and the windows were little more than holes placed high up in the walls, with wooden shutters on either side of them. Was it even possible that there were places in Scotland that didn’t have running water?
    And if so, were those places this close to her cottage? If not…
    “Where am I?” she asked, pushing away from the pillows to sit upright in the bed. “Who are you people?”
    “Who are we?” the big man echoed, his handsome face a mask of arrogant indignation. “That’s only one of the questions you should be answering. Who are you and who’s responsible for locking you in our arbor?”
    “ Your arbor?” Apparently it was her turn to play echo chamber. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
    Were these people squatters, living in the abandoned castle on her grandmother’s property because Ellen had come here so irregularly? That might explain the primitive nature of their surroundings, if they were living here without permission and totally off the grid. She could almost accept that explanation, except for the fact that these stone walls were standing and solid, and the ones she’d walked through earlier today on her way to the arbor had been little more than crumbled ruins.
    “What is this place?” she asked again, her heart pounding in her chest.
    “Everyone out!” Lissa breezed into the room, a large tray in her hands and a young boy carrying a large bucket trailing behind her. “Wonderful! You’ve come back to yerself. I was fair worried over you after you collapsed again.”
    Seeing Lissa felt almost like finding a friend in a roomful of strangers. Annie’s first thought was relief that the young woman had survived their attackers. Her second—the more rattling of the two—was that those same attackers were in this very room and were, even now, meekly heading toward the door on the orders of the petite redhead.
    Lissa was one of them?
    She must be. The larger man stopped beside her, dipping his head to share a whispered conversation. Annie found herself feeling more than a little envious of the hand he placed on the woman’s shoulder before Lissa shooed him out the door behind the other one, leaving only the two of them and the elderly woman who sat on the foot of the bed.
    None of this made any sense. Not who these people were, not why she was here and sure as heck not why she’d have any sort of feelings other than complete dislike when it came to the man who’d just left the room.
    “I’m so confused,” Annie muttered, lifting a hand to her head and wincing as her fingers brushed over her cheek, sending shards of pain strafing up the side of her face.
    “Put yer worries from yer breast, fair lady, and old Agneys will see to all yer aches and pains,” the older woman said, rising from the bed to rummage through the small clay pots on the tray Lissa had brought in. “Ah, this is what we need.”
    “Wait.” Annie pulled back from Agneys as the healer dipped her fingers into the pot and lifted a slimy substance toward Annie’s face. “What is that?”
    The old woman clucked her tongue and pushed Annie’s hand away. “Just you sit quietly and let me do what I’m best at and we’ll have that nasty swelling down in no time. As to what I’m using, it’s naught but a salve to help the wound upon yer cheek. A bit of yarrow and mallow with some balm mixed in,