Page 46 of A Highland Healer Captured
Zander swiped a hand down his face with a feigns grave expression. “Wood floats, son. Ships are made of wood. More wood means more to float. And if the shipbuilders measure out everything correctly, they’ll stay afloat even when a lot of stuff inside.”
Skylar let their exchange wash over her like warm water. It did something treacherous to her. It made her want things she’d not given herself permission to want, like another hour like this, and then another. Like the sound of Zander’s voice softened bysunlight, or the sight of a small boy learning the world around him.
Wanting made her angry, and anger made her stubborn, and stubbornness kept her upright. She ate a crust of bread and looked away toward the gate to steady herself.
Her mind leapt the wall as conveniently as a sparrow, flew south and east, and landed hard on a pale face with fevered eyes. Ariella. The memory struck her like a hand to the breastbone.
How many days has it been since the letter?
The storm; the flight; the capture; the debate; the kiss that had upended the floor of her chest; the boy’s small laughter; the nights of steam and tincture.
It felt like a lifetime and a breath at once.
Guilt rose fast and hot. Every smile she coaxed from Grayson seemed to cost her cousin a sigh.
What if Ariella worsened because I spent a morning learning the way Zander pronounced kestrel?
Zander’s voice cut gently through the tangle. “Ye’re scowling at a tree. What offense has it given?”
She blinked and found she had indeed fixed the elm with a look fit for enemies. “I was thinkin’ of me cousin.”
“The one who needs ye still?”
“Aye.” She pressed her thumb into her palm to stop the tremor that wanted to start. “Guilt is a loud companion.”
“And necessary,” he said, surprising her. “Else a man forgets he owes anything.”
She studied him sidelong. “Do ye ever feel it?”
“Now?” The corner of his mouth tipped. “Less than I did this morning. Me son is outside with the wind in his hair; guilt can wait its turn.”
She hated how reasonable that sounded when he said it. She hated more that it cracked something tender in her she hadn’t asked to expose. So, she set her jaw and decided to steer the day toward simple pleasures, toward lists of birds and the precise architecture of perches and the way a mast might be lashed to a limb.
She asked Grayson how high he thought a kestrel could see a mouse, and he argued from authority, having been a boy for six years.
She asked Zander what kind of wood he trusted to bear weight for a ship, and he answered like a man who had built a life out of making decisions that held.
The sun climbed. They ate. They laughed in small, careful measures that didn’t tax the boy’s breath.
Twice Skylar took Grayson’s wrist and counted, felt a little steadier each time.
Twice she lifted the cup to his mouth and watched him sip, making a note of how the draught sat in his belly when it was taken warm and slow beneath the sky.
“Tell me a story,” Grayson demanded at last, sated with bread and birds and praise.
Zander looked at Skylar, a question without words. She arched a brow. “Go on, laird. Amaze us.”
He rolled his eyes at the title but obeyed, calling up some tale of a fisherman who tried to bargain with a selkie and had his boots stolen for his boldness.
Zander was in no way a bard, nor did he pretend. But his voice did a small magic anyway—something to do with how he moved through sentences like a man who meant to carry them where they were going without dropping them.
Skylar let it weave around her. She didn’t fight the loosening it brought. For a handful of minutes she let herself be nothing but ears and skin and the warm weight of a small life leaning against her thigh.
When the story ended, Grayson’s lashes had drooped, and his breathing was even. Skylar smoothed the blanket, pressing the lines flat as if fear could be ironed out like wrinkles. Zander’s hand came, uncharacteristically, to rest near hers on the boy’s blanket. Not touching her. Not quite. The nearness lit a fuse in her belly.
“If ye sit any closer,” she said without turning her head, “folk will talk.”
“Folk talk when men sneeze.”
