Page 68 of A Highland Healer Captured
He recovered too late. She had seen it. Worse, she looked pleased.
They turned toward the elm, the green beneath it trampled flat by lads too impatient to wait for songs. The tree rose like a lord of its own, limbs black against a sky that had gone the color of pewter. Zander’s carpenter had left a small pile of planed boards and a bag of iron nails at the base. The lowest limb showed the start of a perch—two braces pegged true into the heartwood, a cross-board waiting for its brothers.
“Ye’ve begun,” Skylar said, surprise slipping her voice low.
“Aye,” he said. “I told the lad I would build him a high place.”
“Ye keep promises,” she said, like she was discovering a problem she had no idea how to cure.
A group of boys thundered past, chasing a rag ball, one of them skidding to a halt when he saw Zander. “Me laird! Will we be allowed to throw apples at the targets this year? Or is Tamhas fear’t we’ll take out an eye?”
“Ye can take out his two if ye aim true,” Zander said without looking at Skylar, because the sound she made when she tried not to laugh might finish him. He pointed the lads toward the far fence, and they bolted again, a calamity in motion.
Skylar wandered a slow circle around the elm, eyes on the ground, then up the trunk, then to the brace. She was thinking. He could see the gears of her clever mind and wanted to put his hand on them to slow the spin.
“Ye’ll need a second brace there,” she said, touching the bark just above eye level. “Else the board’ll torque under a lively boy.”
“I ken me boards,” he said.
“I ken lively boys,” she said.
He looked at her then, properly. Giving in to ever temptation he was trying to subdue.
The wind had teased wisps from her braid; the shawl’s blue stripe lay along the bone of her shoulder where he wanted to set his mouth; her eyes were bright with the sort of talk that had nothing to do with poultices.
A picture rose unbidden—her on the board, skirts tucked under, laughing down at him as if the world had no edges sharp enough to cut them.
His hands went restless. He curled them into fists and turned away, bent, picked up a brace only to set it down again. “We’re done here,” he said too roughly. “I’ll walk ye back, now.”
“Of course,” she said, composed, as if she hadn’t noticed the ragged edge in him. But when they started across the green, she kept to his side instead of a pace behind, her sleeve whispering the linen at his wrist now and then, an accidental brush that didn’t feel accidental.
“Tell me,” she said after a moment, eyes on the river. “If the weather turns, what’s yer call? Keep the feasting outside or bring the long tables into the hall?”
“Outside until the saints themselves spit on us,” he said. “The hall holds fewer; a crush is worse than a drizzle.”
She nodded, lips pursed. “And if someone were to fall sick in the crowd—someone important—where would ye want them carried?”
He stopped. She didn’t. Three steps ahead, she realized he had halted and turned back, face open and too calm.
“Ye’re thinkin’ of the boy,” he said.
“Aye,” she said. Not a flinch, not a blink. “I think of him when I’m awake and when I sleep. I plan for what I can fix, Zander. That’s all.”
He should have believed her. He did, partly. Enough to keep walking. Not enough to quiet the stubborn voice that counted rings and gates every time she spoke.
They reached the postern. The guards fell back smooth as fish sliding under reeds. The keep’s shadow took them in. The shawl bumped his knuckles where she’d folded it against her side. He could smell clean wool and the faint sharp of vinegar clinging to her skin from the surgery.
“Ye’ve eyes for other folk’s work,” he said, to say something that wasn’tstayordon’t runorif I kiss ye once more I will forget the name for air.
“I’ve eyes,” she said. “They’re good for finding what’s missing.”
“What’s missin’ now?” he asked before wisdom tightened his mouth.
She looked at him a long moment. Not a healer. Not a prisoner. A woman. “Nails,” she said at last, and the corner of her mouth went wicked. “Ye need more nails for that perch.”
He made the mistake of smiling back. Heat went through him in a clean, bright line. For the first time since fever had taken his boy, the wanting didn’t taste like betrayal; it tasted like a man waking. Hope and hunger were poor cousins, but they could share a table for an hour.
“Come,” he said, voice not as steady as he liked. “We’ll fetch them.”
