Page 21 of MacAlister's Hope
“She will be fine, my lady.” The midwife glanced over her shoulder to her apprentice but neither woman looked hopeful.
Fia moved to the apprentice with the baby girl. “Elena needs a brew of raspberry, thistle, and mother’s heart, to slow her bleeding,” she said to the lass who was not much older than Mairi. “Will you go to the kitchen and see it made? And tell Symon he may come in soon, that Elena is well and we are just cleaning up. Do not speak of the bairns yet.”
The girl bobbed her head, handed the cloth she had been chafing the baby with, and left. Fia quickly looked over her shoulder to make sure the midwife was attending Elena. Mairi kept watch over her new brother, one hand on him, and one in Elena’s. The tiny girl struggled to breathe, and despite the apprentice’s efforts, she was still faintly blue and deathly still. Fia knew there was no time to waste if she was going to save this bairn. She pulled out the Winter Stone and held it over the baby. Under her breath Fia said those remedies she knew of to help the bairn, but the stone stayed stubbornly white. She searched her mind, but still found no response from the stone. The child gasped, as if she could not draw in breath, as if something was caught in her throat or her lungs. At this thought, the stone went pink, with that ribbon of bright green once more weaving through it.
Acting on instinct, Fia dropped the stone on the table and lifted the tiny body into her hands, laid the babe’s chest in one hand and gently, but firmly patted her back, the infant version of a hard back pounding. Once. Twice. Thrice and the girl coughed. Another several pats and she coughed again, this time more strongly. More pats and finally she cried, weakly. She began to wave her arms about and pulled her legs up. Tears of joy ran down Fia’s cheeks, and she heard Mairi tell Elena both bairns lived.
Fia kept patting the baby’s back, cooing at the bairn as the wee lass’s cries grew stronger and her color grew pinker. Carefully, Fia swaddled her, making sure she continued to breathe deeply, and settled her next to an exhausted, but beaming, Elena.
Chapter Eleven
A young woman Kieron did not know flew out of the chamber, pulling the door closed behind her so quickly nothing could be seen of the room inside. She stopped long enough to tell Symon that Elena was well, and he would soon be allowed in to see her, then she was gone down the corridor, leaving both men to stare at the chamber door. An angry bairn squalled, the second they had heard, accompanied by a rise in the volume of the women’s voices this time.
Kieron wasn’t sure what to do or to say. Symon had been furious with Annis, and had glared at Kieron, but had only banished the woman to her chamber, promising her punishment would be revealed soon. He’d turned his back on Kieron at that point and taken up his pacing again.
Symon sighed and took the decision out of Kieron’s hands. “What are your intentions toward Fia?” he asked suddenly.
Kieron took a breath to steady himself.
“Do you love her, lad?” Oddly, he didn’t seem angry.
“I do. I have loved her since first I met her years ago.”
Symon looked surprised. “I did not ken you knew each other before she went away with you. I ask again, what are your intentions?”
“I will not ask her to abandon her responsibilities here,” he swallowed before he added, “and I cannot abandon mine at Kilglashan.”
“That is no answer. I am asking what do you want of her?”
At that question all that he and Fia had shared the night of the ceilidh flashed through his head and his body, but he did not let that stop him from looking the man in the eye so Symon could judge the truth of what Kieron was about to say.
“I love her. I cannot bear the thought of leaving her here and never seeing her again. I want her to be my wife and I would wed her this very day if there was a way to do so.”
Symon pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes. “And my wee lassie, does she feel the same?”
“She does.”
Symon sighed and glanced at the still closed chamber door, the muffled sounds of women still evident, along with the fussy squalls of two new MacLachlans. “I felt…I feel, the same way about my Elena. I dinna ken what I would do if she…if I…” He looked back at Kieron. “I have never seen Fia look so sure of herself as she did when she hurried down this hall toward me. I have never once seen her turn to another man for comfort or reassurance, as she did so easily with you. I have never seen her…as the woman she has come to be.” He nodded as if he had come to a decision. “I want nothing more for Fia than for her to be happy, you ken that?”
“It is all I want for her, too, Symon.”
The chief turned his attention back to the door without another word. Kieron tried not to let his mind travel to a future that was still uncertain, though it seemed perhaps now he had reason to hope.
Suddenly the door was flung open and his Fia stood there, a smile on her tired face.
“Symon, your new son and daughter would like to meet you,” she said, wiping her forehead with the back of her wrist as she stepped back to let Symon into the room.
Kieron stayed in the corridor, wanting to drag Fia into his arms, but holding back, not wanting to interfere in this moment with her family. So he was surprised when she stepped through the doorway, pulled the door closed behind her, and melted into his arms.
Never before had he been so sure that he was exactly where he was supposed to be. He hugged her fiercely, and she responded by gripping him harder around his waist.
“We almost lost her,” she said quietly against his chest. “We would have lost her and the bairns but for Mairi…she’s so strong in her gift already. She had no fear, no concern that she might fail, as both Elena and I struggled with. She kept her mother strong enough to birth the bairns as if she had been using her gift for a lifetime.”
“And the bairns? We heard them cry.”
“I thought we had lost them, too. The laddie came round quickly but the lass…” She looked up at him, a grin on her face that he had not expected. “I used the Winter Stone, Kieron. I found a way to help her breathe because of it.” She rose up on her tiptoes and kissed him, shyly at first, then more sure of herself. “Thank you,” she said at last, stepping far enough away to pull the pouch with the stone from her belt. She held it out to him. “Without it, I dinna ken if she would have lived.”
“Keep it, love,” he said. “I think auld Beira would agree that it is in better hands with you than with me.”
