Page 33 of A Highland Healer Captured
“Ye’ve got that look,” Mason said. “The one that says ye’re about to do a right thing in a wrong way.”
“Okay?”
“Just—” Mason started to say, but wiped his brow before continuing. “Just daenae scare her into silence.”
Zander set the blade on the rack and reached for the water dipper. “I stole her from a road,” he said. “If she hasnae run me through yet, she’s either steadier than is good for me or too tired to swing.”
“And yet,” Mason said mildly, “ye’re the one reading hawks to a child.”
Zander drank, the water cold and clean, then tipped the rest over his head. He scrubbed his face and shook the droplets from his beard. “Ye need sleep,” he told Mason. “Ye’re carrying me temper for me tomorrow.”
Mason laughed. “All in a day’s work.” He clapped Zander’s shoulder and wandered toward the door that led to the barracks, whistling something low and tuneless.
The yard felt wider without him. Zander crossed it slowly, boots making that hollow sound the flags got at night, and pausedbeneath the elm. The torch by the stair flickered. The inner court was still, a dark pool. He looked up on habit more than hope.
A faint movement at the third window.
He would have missed it if he weren’t a man who had learned to see what kept other men alive. A pale oval at the lattice, there and gone, then there again.
A face.
Her.
Barely more than the color of linen in the dark, hair unbound and falling in a soft rope over one shoulder. She rested her hands on the sill as if to cool them and leaned her cheek to the upright. Watching the yard like a woman who didn’t trust night.
He didn’t move.
If he moved, she’d shutter herself away. He knew that about her as surely as he knew he would react the same.
But… mayhap…
He set his palms on his belt, letting his posture say what his mouth wouldn’t:I’m right here, lass.
At last she shifted, the angle of her head changing as if something in the yard had drawn her eye. He waited for her to vanish.
She didn’t.
Had she seen me?
The silence and stillness was immediately annoying. And Zander let a small nod rest between them. One that he wasn’t sure was seen, but he left it there in the dark courtyard for her to consider if she did.
Ridiculous.
His boots scuffed and echoed on the stone as he rounded the corner toward the door.
It should have been nothing, but it wasn’t.
The slow heat that had started in the hallway when he’d put his mouth to hers and learned the taste of defiance there found a new shape.
Zander had turned around and paced back to stand under her window before he could think otherwise.
Shite.
Her eyes found his then. Expectantly.
“Can ye nae sleep?” he called up, keeping his voice low enough not to arm the gossip that roosted on every ledge.
She leaned into the lattice a little, the fire glow catching the fall of her hair as it slipped forward over her shoulder. “How could anyone do with all that noise?” she returned. “Couldye?”
