Page 36 of A Highland Healer Captured
And Grayson lay sleeping beside her. Propped on pillows, his mouth open, breath making the faint whistle Skylar had begun to learn as his ordinary song. One small hand rested against the blanket as though he had been reaching for something before slumber caught him.
Katie looked up, smiled, and lifted a finger to her lips. Then she tilted her head toward the bed as if to say,See? He’s all right. Ye need nae worry.
Skylar crossed to the boy’s side anyway, heart easing only when her fingers found his wrist. Steady. A rhythm she could count without fear. She stroked back a curl that had fallen damp across his temple. He didn’t stir. His lashes fluttered once, then stilled again.
“He had a restful sleep, at last,” Katie whispered, setting aside her needle. “Wouldnae close his eyes until near midnight, though. As if unable to catch sleep, but when he did, it was deep.”
Skylar’s hand stilled at the boy’s temple. She had heard him say it earlier—that his father had come. But to have Katie confirm it sent a strange warmth through her chest, fierce and reluctant at once.
She straightened, glanced at the empty chair by the bed. “The laird didnae stay?”
“Nay, he just looked in. About an hour’s past, now. He’ll look in come morning — always does.” Katie’s smile softened.
Skylar nodded, eyes fixed on the small rise and fall beneath the blanket. The guilt that had gnawed her since the storm outside MacLennan Keep shifted then—not gone, but threaded now with something harder to name. Relief. Gratitude. The dangerous thought that perhaps she wasn’t carrying the boy’s healing alone.
She drew the quilt higher beneath Grayson’s chin and let her palm rest a moment on the blanket, not touching him, justfeeling the faint heat his body gave. “Sleep well, little hawk,” she murmured.
Katie hummed again, tuneless and soft, as Skylar turned toward the door.
Back in her chamber, she sat at her table with the journal open, pen hovering.All well. Draught tolerated. Breathing quiet in sleep.She hesitated, then added,Boy restful. Hard to settle.
She stared at the line until the ink dried. Then she closed the book with more force than was needed, blew out the candle, and slid beneath the quilt again.
This time, sleep came—but full of dreams where a laird’s shadow leaned over a boy’s bed, and a pair of dark eyes lifted toward a window where she stood, unable to turn away.
12
The next day passed in a blur of small duties and scribbled notes. Skylar worked on fumes of sleep, and kept herself busy, reviewing Grayson’s pulse and breath with the careful eye of a scribe checking her sums, jotting margins in her journal until the page looked more crowded than tidy.
Katie bustled in and out with broth and clean cloths as she always did, while once Mason himself poked his head into the solar.
“Just— makin’ sure…” he mumbled before Katie shooed him away.
By dusk she had added more questions than answers, but Grayson still slept steady, and for the moment that was enough.
Evening bled slowly into the keep.
“Where has the day gone off to?” Skylar sighed hastily, pulling her loose hairs behind her ear with her free hand before she stepped through the doorway already rehearsing the litany in her head—pulse, breath, color—only to stop short.
Zander Harrison was seated beside his son’s bed with a book open in his hands, his head bent, voice low and even as he read.
The shock of it thudded in Skylar’s chest before her heart betrayed her entirely and tripped into a foolish, fluttering gallop. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want the way her breath caught at the sight of him softened by lamplight, or the way his mouth shaped the words with care.
Grayson’s lashes lifted at the faint scrape of her boot. “Skylar,” he whispered, smiling.
Zander’s gaze came up too, steady and unreadable. “Lady Dunlop.”
She made her face calm and her hands efficient. “Laird.” She nodded toward the book. “Readin’ the bir— the birds, are ye?”
A glimmer tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Aye. This volume is a crime against hawks, according to the lad.”
“They forgot the spots,” Grayson said solemnly.
“Unforgivable,” Skylar agreed, moving to the foot of the bed and setting her satchel on the chest. “I’ll write the author a very stern letter. After I find a quill grand enough to coo him.”
“Bring a sword,” Zander said mildly. “Men who draw poor birds seldom fear ink.”
“Now there’s a Highland proverb if e’er I heard one,” she shot back.
