Page 37 of A Highland Healer Captured
He shut the book on his thumb and regarded her, something like wariness tempered by amusement in his eyes. “Ye sound as if ye’ve taken a vow against every word I speak.”
“Just the foolish ones,” she said sweetly. “It keeps me busy.”
Grayson made a small sound that might have been a laugh. The sound loosened something in Skylar’s throat.
She reached to smooth his blanket, giving her hands the familiar work of tending while her gaze—the traitorous thing—kept sliding back to Zander.
He obliged her foolish heart by speaking again. “Ye left instructions with Cora.”
“She listens. I like that,” Skylar answered, then let a sliver of teeth show. “Ye should try it.”
He didn’t bristle. Somehow that unsettled her more than if he had. “I am trying,” he said after a beat, the words so quiet she almost missed them.
“Ye’ll strain something,” she murmured.
“Perhaps.” He nodded at the satchel. “What mischief are ye brewing next?”
“Mischief?” She lifted a brow. “Herbs. Draughts. The ordinary arts. I daenae toss hexes and billet-doux into a pot and hope for miracles.”
His gaze dipped to the curve of her mouth before he dragged it back to the book, turning one page idly though he wasn’t reading it. “Nay miracles, then. Only work.”
“Work,” she said, relieved to stand on that ground. “And persistence.”
“That’s one way to say it.” For the first time since she’d entered, his voice warmed. “Grayson has it too, but I call it stubbornness.”
“I got it from ye, da,” Grayson said quick as a whip.
“Aye, ye do,” she said, but the agreement came out too soft, too near to fond.
Skylar coughed, annoyed with herself, and busied her hands with the ties of her satchel. “If ye’re to stay, then I’ll be in the surgery. I want the draught warm and new-drawn for him.”
“We’ll be here,” Zander said.
The three words landed with the weight of a promise. She didn’t examine that feeling. Instead, she lifted her chin. “Will ye read another page, then? Properly? With respect for spots on backs and tails of a correct length?”
He glanced down at the picture, and a genuine smile cut quick across his mouth, unexpected and sharp as light off steel. “If me Laird critic consents.”
Grayson’s weak nod was all the consent Skylar needed. She let herself listen for one more minute—just one—while Zander’s voice threaded the room with kestrels and stoops and air that held a hawk like a hand.
Then she fled.
She fled because her pulse had gone a little wild and because her work waited.
The surgery greeted her with its familiar sharpness. Skylar hung her cloak, and moved with practiced ease, laying out what she needed for that evening’s concoction.
She rinsed the mortar with cool water and began to crush the angelica root slowly. This particular root was challenging as she knew that it was imperative to not over grind the root and heat the resin. Heating the resin made the plant toxic if it came in contact with the skin.
Wouldnae be good to give the wee lad a burn as well.
Skylar moved the pestle slowly, adding a bit of dry flour to absorb the excess oils and releasing a scent both bitter and sweet that calmed her, as it always did.
Something about it tugged up memories of the MacLennan kitchens thick with steam and stories, and of her father’s quiet nod when she’d set a broken arm steady on the first try.
“Stubbornness,” she said aloud, more to the pestle than to the room. “If aught will save him, it’ll be stubbornness.”
She added other roots and herbs and then drizzled honey to bind them together. She stirred it with a patience that her mother would not have believed she possessed.
The mixture was half hope, half stubbornness, the sort of draught you gave when nothing else had worked and you could not afford to stop trying.
