Page 77 of Highlander's Captive Bride
Surprised, Daisy turned back to her. “Oh. What is that?”
“I want ye to teach me some things, seeing as ye’re such a great healer. I want to learn from ye,” Maria told her with a cheeky smile.
“I’ll be happy to teach ye anything ye wish, as long as I ken it,” Daisy promised with a small laugh as she went out.
With a sense of deep satisfaction that came with knowing she had fulfilled her duties as a healer to the best of her ability, she went to her room, took off her shoes, and lay down on her bed.
The problem with having a break from work was always that her thoughts would immediately turn to Bellamy. This was no exception. As soon as her head touched the pillow, thoughts of him and visions of his face would pop into her head, not to be banished.
Ever since they had been reunited at the gate and kissed so passionately, they had not seen much of each other. Even when Bellamy had come to visit his injured men in the healing room, he had seemed intent on speaking to his men and not to her, except briefly.
Though they had met in passing when going about their business in the castle, Bellamy had always seemed to be busy with some aspect of the clear-up after the battle. Much as Daisy wanted to speak to him, she had so far felt unable to interrupt him.
Now, as she lay quietly in her bed, absorbed in thoughts of him, it struck her a little painfully that, busy as he undoubtedly was, he was deliberately avoiding her.
She told herself over and over that she was being unfair. It was totally understandable for him to be taken up with his duties after such an event, more so even than herself.
Even so, it stung, and it gave her a peculiar feeling that there was more to his distance than merely being absorbed in the clear-up. It felt to her as if something was afoot.
24
It turned out, a few days later, that she was right. With four healers now sharing the duties of the healing room and the number of patients regularly decreasing, Daisy was now able to sleep a little later in the mornings than before. On the fourth morning after the attack, she awoke in her bed and then got up to draw the curtains, to let the summer sunshine in.
She looked out her window over the courtyard and beyond the gatehouse, her eyes seeking the loch, the moors, and the mountains in the distance. However, on this occasion, her gaze was arrested by the unexpected sight of a small party of armed men on horseback drawing up the stone pavement immediately before the castle gates. In their midst was a carriage drawn by four horses.
While she was peering at the unexpected sight, pressing her nose against the glass, a tall, dark-haired man broke away from the group slightly. She frowned, for there was something strangely familiar about him, but she could not quite see well enough to make his features out. A beam of sunshine suddenly hit him, illuminating the tartan of his plaid.
Daisy’s heart leaped in her chest with a painful thump.
“Dominic?” she murmured in disbelief.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, thinking her eyes were deceiving her. But when she opened them and looked again, she could see it was, indeed, her brother.
But how is he here? How did he know to come and get me?
Seized by an insatiable need to know, she hastily dressed and pulled a brush haphazardly through her hair. Then, she left her room at a trot and hurried downstairs, making straight for Bellamy’s study.
She knocked, praying he was there. When he answered, she rushed inside, to see him sitting alone at his desk, a pile of parchments in front of him and a quill in his hand. The smell of wax was in the air.
Without ceremony, she went right up to his desk and leaned her hands upon it.
“Me braither is outside the gates,” she announced, shooting him a questioning look.
“Is he?” he asked, throwing down his quill and sitting back in his chair, regarding her levelly as he rested his chin on his hands.
“Aye, he is. With a party of men and a carriage. But how is it that he’s here?”
“Because I wrote to him and asked him to come and fetch ye home,” Bellamy told her calmly.
“What? When?!” she demanded, taken aback. “Ye said naething to me about it.”
Daisy thought he might get up and come round to her side of the desk then, but he stayed put, with the expanse of the huge desk stretching out between them.
“I found yer letter in me chambers on Beltane night before the attack started.”
He suddenly rummaged in his shirt pocket and produced the very note she had left for him. Daisy stared at it in surprise. She had forgotten all about it amid the flurry of events. Guilt stabbed at her, and she felt her cheeks flush.
“I saw how ye planned to leave without saying goodbye to me or Elodie. I realized that ye’d done everything I asked of ye, and more, and I thought that if ye wanted to leave so badly, I should let yer braither ken where ye were and tell him of our situation so he could come and fetch ye home.”
