Page 42 of A Highland Healer Captured
Instead he found his hands at her waist and her palms flattening against his chest, her lashes lowering and the feel of her breath catching, and he thought, wildly, that a man might be forgiven for wanting one good thing he hadn’t earned.
The pounding at the door came like a cudgel, and they both froze.
Their foreheads met in the same instant, a small, startled knock that turned their hunger into breathless laughter neither of them gave voice to.
Zander closed his eyes, drew air that tasted of her, and forced his voice steady. “Who is it?”
A girl’s voice, high with nerves. “M–me laird, it’s Elspeth. Katie sent me. The wee master Grayson… his breathing is worse.”
Skylar had already stepped back, color draining from her face, her body arranging itself into the efficient lines he trusted more than any oath. Zander’s hand fell from her waist like he’d remembered it didn’t belong there. He didn’t open the door; he pitched his words to carry. “Tell Katie we’re coming. Slowly. Without panic.”
“Aye, laird.”
The girl’s footsteps scurried away. The silence that followed had teeth.
“I’ll go,” Skylar said, already crossing to the latch. “I’ll call if I need ye.”
He wanted to forbid her going alone, to reach for the old instincts and put men between her and every kind of harm—including his. But he saw the steadiness in her, the way her fear had turned to focus, and swallowed his command with effort. “Go,” he said. “I’ll give ye ten minutes.”
Her mouth almost—almost—smiled. “Save yer temper for the drovers.”
“Save it for me council.” He reached past her to pull open the door, close enough that the brush of his sleeve at her wrist felt like a further kiss. “Skylar?—”
She looked up.
Because anything else would have been too honest, he said. “Ten minutes.”
She nodded firmly and was gone before he could change his mind about softness. He stood a moment with his hand still on the door, breathing the room back into shape.
14
By the time Skylar reached the solar, the room was both familiar and new—familiar because she knew every corner now, every draught, the exact way the fire struck light off the iron kettle; new because Grayson’s breath had changed and that made every other thing in the world tilt.
Katie had propped the pillows behind him, so his chest opened easier, warm cloth at the ready, a cup of water sweetened with honey to coax his throat to stay soft.
“Good lass,” Skylar murmured, and meant it. She pressed the back of her hand to Grayson’s brow.
Nae too hot.
She laid two fingers at his wrist.
Too quick.
She bent and let her ear hover just above his chest and counted the small, rattling story his lungs told.
“It hurts,” the boy whispered without complaint, which hurt worse.
“I ken.” She tapped a rhythm against the blanket—slow, even, the way she wanted his breath to go. “We’ll help it.”
She set to work. Distantly she was aware of the heat of Zander’s mouth and how quickly it had become a memory she could taste. But her hands knew this work, and that was the point of hands.
Steam first—water barely shy of boiling poured over a fist of thyme and mullein in a clay bowl, a cloth tented over boy and bowl and healer while Katie faded to the edges.
“Count with me,” she said, and Grayson tried. Ten breaths. Fifteen. A cough. The sound tore at her, but she did not let her face say so.
When the steam’s magic ran thin, she tried the second cup of the angelica blend, small sips curved into his mouth with a spoon, waiting between each to see if it soothed or bit. It did neither for long. She tried a poultice warm at his breastbone, the sweetness of onion braid tempered with mustard, laid so lightly even his thin skin wouldn’t scald. He grimaced less than he had the first time; his tolerance had become skill.
Midnight came and went, and Skylar felt more like an old woman muttering conspiracies to herself than a sound healer.
