Page 45 of A Highland Healer Captured
“Truly,” Zander said, tasting how good it felt to say it and mean it. “We’ll finish the steps. I’ll lash a board across two good limbs and bind it with rawhide. We’ll set a pole like a mast so ye can hold when the wind kicks.”
“Like a ship!” Grayson’s whole face broke open into joy. “And we’ll call it—” He faltered, casting for a name fit to hold such small glory. “—the Gray’s Nest.”
“The Gray’s Nest,” Zander agreed, reverent because something in him needed ceremony for this tiny promise. “We’ll start with the first light that warms the bark.”
Grayson put a hand on his father’s shoulder and squeezed with all the strength he had. “I love ye, Da,” he said, as if it were a private oath.
Zander swallowed a sound that would have been a losing thing to let free. “And I ye, son.”
Footsteps on grass made them both turn. Skylar crossed the yard with a blanket roll and a basket and a cup, her braid dark against the clean line of her neck. The sun hadn’t cleared the wall, but the gray had gone to pearl, and the light made her look like something the dawn meant to keep.
Grayson sat up as much as the pillow would allow and shouted past Zander’s ear with all the force his small chest could lend him. “Skylar! Me da is goin’ to finish the perch for me!”
Zander didn’t have to turn his head to know she smiled; he felt the sound of it like fingertips down his spine. A soft laugh, intimate as a secret kept in a sleeve.
“Are ye now?” she called back, and the tease in it slid under his skin and took up residence. “Then I’ll fetch ribbons, laird, for the mast—so all the birds ken it’s a proper ship.”
“Sweet hells,” Zander muttered, not quite under his breath, and Grayson’s answering giggle made him glad he’d said it. He didn’t look at Skylar until he had his face in some order. When he did, she was close enough to hand him a cup and not quite touch.
“Picnic first,” she said, businesslike to save them both. “Then work.”
“Aye,” he said, and when their fingers brushed over the clay, the jolt of it told him what the day would cost and what it would give. He accepted both, just for now, because his son was laughing and the world was wide enough for a promise nailed into a tree.
15
The world had room for breathing again.
Morning ripened into something gentle, and the old elm threw a patch of dappled shade broad enough to cradle three bodies and a basket. Katie had pressed bread and a small round of cheese on them with the air of a commander sending men into a skirmish, and Zander had accepted it with a look that almost counted as gratitude.
Now they sat beneath the branches. Grayson was wrapped in blankets and propped on a pillow like a small king on a modest throne, Zander was cross-legged with his cloak pooled behind him, and Skylar with her skirts tucked neatly under her knees, the clay cup of her latest draught cooling on the grass.
They tried to make the business of breathing a holiday.
Grayson’s face had more color than it had yesterday—less white chalk, more pink. That alone would have been enough to easethe tightness in Skylar’s chest. But the boy’s smile did more; it spread in slow, genuine increments whenever a breeze stirred or a bird wheeled above them, each small joy like a stitch pulling him back to himself.
“Look—two of them,” he whispered, pointing. “See how they turn together like they’ve a string between them? Kestrels. The book’s picture was wrong about the tail, but right about the hangin’.”
“A grievous crime to lie about a tail,” Skylar murmured, and Grayson’s answering grin dried the damp in her eyes before it could shame her.
Zander had brought the bird book and laid it open across his knee, and he had a sketch book lying next to him. “Aye. We’ll forgive the artist if he mends his sin in the next chapter.” He glanced at Skylar when he said it, like a man checking a compass. Not for approval, but to test if they were walking the same line.
Aye, we are.God help her, they were.
She tore bread into precise, healer’s portions and passed them, letting simple tasks quiet the quickness of her pulse. Each time Zander’s fingers brushed hers, heat climbed her throat; each time she made herself look away, her gaze looped the long way around and found him again.
He didn’t press. He seemed to have decided that pressing her only gave her another reason to brace. Instead he let the quiet do what arguments never could: soften the space between them.
“Tell me something ye wish to learn more about,” Skylar said to Grayson once he’d chewed and swallowed and breathed without rattling. The question had become her habit, a way to anchor him to the world so it wouldn’t slip.
He gave it his serious consideration. “Ships,” he decided. “Uncle Mason says ships are just houses that dare.”
Zander huffed a laugh, one of the rare ones that came without sharp edges. “Hewouldsay that.”
“What do ye wish to ken more about ships, Grayson?” Skylar started and then eyes Zander. “I’ll admit, I daenae ken much about them meself.”
He nodded with understanding. He knew he was going to be the one answering this one.
“I daenae ken,” Grayson said, thoughtfully. “How do they float?”
