Page 39 of A Highland Healer Captured
“Did ye ken the laird before his men came to yer gate?” Skylar asked, gentler now. “Before the battle?”
Cora’s gaze slid briefly toward the window, toward the last blue of evening. “Nay.” The single word landed lightly, then she added, as if offering compensation, “I kent of him, of course. Everyone did. He fought the way storms do—fast, without second chances.” She tilted her head, considering. “He had a wife then.”
The sentence startled Skylar though she had known it. She’d felt the shape of that absence every time Zander had looked at his son the way a man watches the shore that drowned his ship.
“Lovely,” Cora went on, matter of factly. “Nae in the way of milkmaids. In the way of winter light—clear, cold, with edges. Marcus—” Skylar had not yet met Marcus, but Cora spoke of him as if he were a lamp on a familiar shelf. “—Marcus said their marriage was for alliances. Sensible. Like most.”
“Right,” Skylar said. She brought several more jars down from the shelf onto the table.
Cora watched her without blinking. “He was kinder after.”
“After?”
“After he lost her.” Cora turned away to straighten a stack that did not need straightening. “Kinder to Grayson. Harder to men. Softer with beasts. Ye can read a man better in how he feeds a hound than in how he speaks to a priest.”
Skylar almost smiled. “Ye’ve a gift for speech.”
“I collect sayings.” Again that small spark of mischief, pointing to Skylar’s collection in front of her. “Like jars.”
Both of them laughed softly. The room warmed by increments. Skylar found herself liking the girl more with every measured, sideways answer. “If ye like collecting,” she said, “ye couldcollect a little healer’s craft. There’s a knack to steeping cherry so it soothes and doesnae bind, and yer neat hands would serve. I’ll show ye, if ye like.”
Cora’s mouth tilted, pleasant as ever. “I’ve nay head for tinctures,” she said, and then, with the faintest wrinkle of her nose, “and I’ve less a stomach for messes other folk carry in with their bodies.”
The words were mild enough; the seam beneath them made Skylar pause. She glanced down at her own stained apron and the fine brown line the pestle had left across her palm.
“Nae for everyone,” Skylar said lightly, because what else could she say. Healers learned early who would stand a chamber filled with cough and sweat and sour; there was no shame in a soul that preferred order to the chaos of flesh. “Ye’ll keep the shelves. I’ll keep the messes.”
“That seems fair,” Cora said, and returned to her ledger as if she had not brushed the edge of insult. “We’ll need more willow within a week. Katie says the drovers brought a cart of bark from the east. I’ll bargain for it after the Kirn. If the laird lets me.”
“I’m sure he will,” Skylar said, surprised by the certainty in her own voice. “I have another list—here,” she handed a small piece of parchment to the girl.
Cora took the page, scanned it, nodded, and then dipped her quill. “He usually does,” she said, adding more to the list before folding it and putting it in her pocket.
They worked in companionable quiet after that, Skylar measuring and straining, Cora tallying weights and noting shortages.
Twice Skylar nearly asked the things that had taken up a corner of her mind. The first,Who were ye, before?
The answer was all over Cora—the way she counted, the way she made herself small or plain at will, the way she moved through the keep like smoke and left everything tidier than she found it. She had been someone who survived.
But why would any daughter of a laird just… survive?
The second,Who is Marcus?
She asked neither.
Too much digging for one night, she concluded.
Skylar checked the cups on the sill, and wiped the rim with a square of linen. “These are ready, I’m goin’ up,” she let Cora know softly.
“Will ye sleep?” Cora asked, closing her ledger.
“If I can.” Skylar lifted the cup, felt its warmth bleed into her palm. “If this works, I might.”
“And if it doesnae?”
Skylar blew out a breath and made herself smile. “Then there’s something else goin’ on, and we’ll find it. Or I’ll drag the laird into the yard and make him build a perch so high the birds will come teach us what we’re missin’.”
Cora’s laugh was small and real. “I’d pay good money to see that.”
