She touched her hand to her head and fainted in his arms.
Chapter Fifteen
Galeren wanted torun. He looked down at Silene and seriously considered running away with her. He could toss her over his saddle and flee to Invergarry. Let anyone come. No one would be able to breach the MacPherson stronghold. If they did, they would find themselves facing the most savage warriors that ever lived.
But he wouldn’t take her away when she didn’t want to go. Whether because of fear for their lives, or because of her desire to belong only to God, she was staying. That meant he was staying, too.
He’d thought when she saw how serious he was about leaving that she would go with him—not faint in his arms.
“All is well, children,” he told them. “Sister Silene has fainted. She will awaken soon. Let me put her down. Alex, get my plaid and set it down here.”
He waited, smiling down at Margaret. He shifted Silene’s weight and held her in one arm and plucked Daffodil off his shoulder. “Hold her fer now,” he told her while Daffodil meowed in protest.
His gaze shifted to Silene’s face. He closed his eyes and swallowed.
“Captain?”
He opened his eyes to Alex spreading out his plaid.
Galeren couldn’t lay her in the grass outside and risk someone seeing him carrying her. He’d already put her in enough jeopardy.
“Why did she faint, Captain?” Alex asked him, finishing up.
“She has many things to think aboot. Mayhap meetin’ the men of the church has been too overwhelmin’.”
They looked at her and nodded as if they understood.
“People will speak ill of her if they hear aboot this.”
Margaret and Alex listened and nodded as he set her down on the plaid and remained on his haunches. He tapped her cheek, “Silene? Wake up, lass.”
“Wake up, Sister Silene,” Margaret echoed.
After another moment, her eyes fluttered open.
Galeren’s heart quickened as his blood rushed through his veins. “Silene?”
“What happened to me?” she asked, looking up at him with her wide, worried, blue-green gaze.
“Ye fell faint,” he told her.
“Ye are heavily burdened with decisions,” Alex added.
Galeren and Silene turned to gape at him.
“Alex,” Galeren said, resting back on his thighs. “How d’ye understand things meant fer adults?”
The child blinked his stunning eyes, one green and one blue and shrugged his scrawny shoulders. “I feel it.”
Silene sat up slowly, her gaze steady on the boy. “What do you mean? How do you feel it?”
“I just think of everythin’ I know aboot somethin’. After a bit of deductions, I come to a conclusion. If ’tis correct, I feel it. ’Tis as if I found a piece to a puzzle.”
So, hisfeelingwasn’t based entirely on emotion, but on the science of deduction. She still felt a kinship with him stronger than the blood they shared.
“Come,” Galeren offered her his hand. “I will escort ye ootside fer some fresh air.”
“Oh, Captain, your plaid,” she lamented when she saw his plaid on the barn floor.