Page 91 of A Highland Healer Captured
“First, thank ye for the bloody letter.” She huffed in a low voice to mimic what Zander sounded like. “I kent ye’d just leave me with goodbye in a letter instead of tellin’ me… coward.”
She set her elbows on her knees, hands laced, chin bowed over them. “Coward!” she replied, to herself. “I’ve mended ye just now. Daenae test me, I’ll sew ye shut with nettle fibre and make ye itch ‘til spring.”
He didn’t smile. He didn’t do anything but breathe. She decided that she was right. A smile spread across her own face.
Then, she went on, softer, “I meant it. I’m stayin’. Now Ihaveto because ye’ve gotten yerself all sliced up like a Kirn pie.”
Her own words scraped her throat thin. She poured herself a swallow of ale gone flat and swallowed it anyway.
His lashes flickered. Only that. She watched the small movement as if it were an oath.
She checked the shoulder again: the edges didn’t gape, the seep moderate, the skin warm but not angry. She rolled him just enough to see the ribs; he groaned, and she soothed without thinking. “Aye, I ken, poor beast. Ye’ll live to be cross about it.”
She took a clean strip and wiped dried blood from his forearm, then another for his hands. She held the right in both of hers a long moment, eyes tracing the nicks and scars of a life spent holding steel and people together. “Ye could’ve died,” she told the fingers. “And I would’ve had to carry that out of here on me own back.”
The room answered with the small pop of a sap pocket in the hearth.
“Right,” she said briskly. “Let’s practice, then. I’ll say my piece, and ye’ll say what ye’d say if ye were a sensible man with the sense to be awake.” She straightened her shoulders, smoothed her skirt, and pitched her voice wry. “Laird, I’ve decided ye’re the most exasperatin’, pride-struck, mule-stubborn man God ever threw into a glen.”
She made his answer again in a gravel that was not his but tried for it. “‘Aye, lass. But I’m here.’”
“Barely,” she retorted. “Bleeding on me nice clean bandages as if linen grew on broom.”
“‘Ye’ll scold me after ye look at me mouth again,’” she had him say, and then she clapped a hand over her own face and hissed, “Och,shut up, Skylar.” A ragged laugh shook loose. “Ye see whatye make me do? I’m chattin’ like a madwoman to a slab of a man who kens fine and well I’m soft for him.”
A floorboard creaked. She spun, heart slamming her throat.
Mason leaned against the jamb—When had the door unbarred?It must have been when I’d sent for more cloth. Shechastised herself for the lapse—and the big man lifted both hands in a peaceable gesture.
“Daenae mind me,” he said, voice gentled in a way she’d never heard from him in the yard. “Just a wall with ears.”
“How much of that did ye hear?” she demanded, mortified heat climbing her neck.
“Oh, only the part where ye promised to itch him with nettles,” Mason said, mouth tilting. “I like that one. Puts fear in a man.”
She folded her arms and arched a brow, daring him to make a jest of sorrow. He didn’t. His gaze flicked from Zander to her and back, something like fondness and fatigue both softening the crags of his face.
“Ye ken,” he said at last, quiet, “if he were awake, he’d be tellin’ ye the exact same.”
She snorted before she could stop it. “Och, aye? And how in God’s name wouldyeken what he’d say?”
“Because he’s told me,” Mason said simply. “In so many words.”
“So many words?” she echoed, skeptical in spite of the sudden stupid flutter under her ribs.
“Aye.” Mason scratched his beard. “Ye ken how he is with ‘em.”
She did. Which was precisely why her knees went a little loose.
Mason tipped his head toward the bed. “He’ll keep, thanks to ye. I’ve a rotation on the wall and a head on a spike that needs watchin’ so the fools daenae try some rite of their own.” His mouth soured. “Should ye need anythin’, ye shout. If any man’s slow answerin’, I’ll slow his supper for a week.”
Skylar’s spine straightened at that, but she nodded once, gratefully. “Go,” she said. “And Mason?—”
“Aye?”
“Thank ye.” Her voice thinned on the last word; she cleared it.
Mason’s eyes warmed, and he slipped back into the corridor, drawing the door to with a quiet click.
