Page 56 of A Highland Healer Captured
Grayson’s smile tilted. “She likes ye.”
Zander choked, coughed, and made a great business of adjusting the blanket. “She likesye,” he corrected, too quick. “And that’s the bit that matters.”
“Aye,” Grayson said, solemn as a church. “But she likes ye.”
“We’re discussin’ vole-catchin’,” Zander growled, but there was no bite in it.
“Voles,” the boy agreed, satisfied he’d landed the arrow, and let his head sink into the pillow.
Zander sat with him while the hour turned, speaking of small things: how the elm creaked like a ship; show Mason had called the next hour a liar and been right about it; how the Kirn pipes would sound at a distance, sweet and thin. Grayson listened with a grown man’s attention and a child’s hope.
At last the wee boy sagged, bravery burning down to ember. Zander tucked the blanket again and let himself look at the curve of the cheek too hollow for six years old, at the lash shadows, at the mouth that had argued him into makin’ a perch. Love hit him clean and without mercy.
He bent low, touched his lips to the hair at the crown of the boy’s head, and whispered in his own tongue, the one he’d learned at his mother’s knee. “Mo ghràdh.”Me love.
Grayson stirred but didn’t wake. Hi. Zander sat back, cleared his throat, and when he could trust his voice he called softly toward the door. “Katie.”
She appeared without the hinges saying a word, shawl wrapped tight. “Aye, laird?”
“Circle’s shut,” he said. “If anyone offers him a kindness, ye send them to me. If a cup moves, if a jar’s touched, ye sing it. We’ll bait a line with honey and see what rises.”
Katie’s jaw set. “Ye’ll have it.”
He rose, tucked the bird book under the blanket as if talismans counted, then turned at the door. “Gray?” he said, though the lad slept. “Ye’ve me word. We’ll win this.”
The boy’s fingers twitched, like a wee wing testing air. Zander took it for a pledge, and left as quiet as a thief with nothing worth stealing.
The corridor met him cool as a well. He shut the solar door with care and stood a breath to listen—Grayson’s soft whistle, Katie’s low hum, the house breathing as it should.Good. He could walk away a moment without feeling the ground tilt.
His feet found the stair down toward the yard before his mind caught up. He’d thought only of steel and snares. But gratitude dogged his heel like a well-trained hound. Skylar had pulled his son back from a black edge and then stood there herself, holding the ground as if the cliff would mind her orders.
“What d’ye give a lass like that?” he muttered, half to the stone, half to his own thick skull. He’d given letters, aye. Ingredients, aye. His word about riders and walls, aye. But those were laird’s gifts—things a man with a chair and a title could throw on a table. They weren’t Zander’s.
A healer’s chest? He could have the carpenter plane yew smooth as butter, put in small drawers for herbs, fix a brass catch that clicked sweet. A raven-feather quill, for the way she wrote the world down. A key— to what, though?Trust, says a daft voice. Aye. But a key’s a thing ye can break. He wanted to give something that would stand even if men failed.
He strode out into the yard, where dawn had left a pale milk at the eaves and the first fools of the day were already tiein’ bunting where carts wanted to pass. “Shift it,” he barked, and the boys leapt like frogs. Mason loomed up from a shadow with a mug of something that oughtnae be drunk at that hour.
“Have ye eaten a bee this mornin’,” Mason observed. “Which I’d pay good coin to see, mind.”
“Ye’ll see me eatyeif ye keep the clatter goin’,” Zander said, and earned the grin he’d aimed for.
“Skylar filled me in. How’s the lad?”
“Holdin’,” Zander said, voice gone rougher than he’d meant.
“He’ll play sick for me like a hero. We set cups as bait. Ye’ll post men—nay capes, nay swagger. I want ghosts, nae cockerels.Ghosts.”
“Aye.” Mason took a swallow, made a face, and drank anyway. “We’ll look with soft eyes. I’ll put Fergus on the map chest and Tam on the hearth steps. They see everything when folk think they’re seein’ nothin’.”
Zander nodded once. The practical settled quick. It was the other thing— the thanks—that didn’t fit neat in a ledger. He glanced toward the inner stair where he’d stood last night, waiting on a woman’s shadow to choose him or nae. “I need—” he started,then huffed a laugh at himself. “Christ, I daenae ken what I need.”
Mason’s brows went up. “Aye ye do. Ye’re just too polite to say it out loud.”
“Polite?” Zander glared. “Since when am I?—”
“Ye want to thank her,” Mason bulldozed cheerfully. “Proper-like. But ye’re a hammer tryin’ to tie a ribbon. So ye’re askin’ yerself if ye give her a chest, or a jewel, or the moon. Here’s the answer: give her somethin’ she can use and somethin’ she can keep, and then tell her the truth she’ll nae ask for.”
Zander stared. “What truth?”
