Page 15 of A Bride for the Highlander (Wishing for a Highlander #1)

CHAPTER 15

Adeline picked her way across mounds of horse manure and other things that she didn’t dare to guess at.

Focus on the sickness. Focus on assessments, whatever tests you can do, and helping these people. They wouldn’t be the first ungrateful patients you’ve treated.

“In here,” the elderly woman said, leading Adeline into a small, wooden hut.

The blast of heat struck Adeline immediately, her brow beading with sweat within seconds. The air was too thick inside the hut and sour with sickness, two fires burning at the same time, following the outdated theory that heat combatted heat. It had long been established, at least in her world, that too much heat with a feverish patient would only make them worse.

Adeline spotted the three figures on the floor, in between the two searing braziers, all buried beneath a mountain of furs and blankets. Two young women and a man, their faces bright red, even in the low light of the hut.

She went to them without hesitation, her training kicking in, shunning all of her nerves. Kneeling beside the first of the two young women, Adeline touched her hand to the woman’s forehead. It was like touching hot coals.

“Get the doors and shutters open,” Adeline commanded, her voice firm.

The old woman stared at her as if she was completely mad.

“Trust me,” Adeline urged. “Get the doors and shutters open. We need good airflow through the hut. And then…”

What can I do for them without medicine?

She racked her brain, thinking through all of the survival medicine guides she’d read, seeking inspiration.

“And then, I need someone to fetch snow,” she continued, nodding to herself. “As much as they can carry. And salt, if you have it. I’ll need to borrow some pots to boil water, too, if you can spare them. Spread the message—I want everyone boiling as many pots of water as they can. I’ll need cloths, as well. All the cloths you can find.”

The old woman hesitated.

“If you do this, I can help them. If you don’t, I can’t, and they’re going to get worse,” Adeline insisted, not unkindly.

The old woman took a shaky breath and, with a nod, disappeared back out into the street. Adeline could hear her barking the instructions to the rest of the villagers, while she herself set to work on getting good airflow through the stifling hut, pulling open shutters and wedging the door open.

That done, Adeline pulled back the blankets and furs that covered the first woman. Without a stethoscope or a blood pressure monitor or any kind of machinery, for that matter, she was really dipping into her survival knowledge. Still, she wouldn’t let a lack of technology beat her.

Tearing off a length of her petticoat, she tied it around her face and leaned down to press her ear against her first patient’s chest. The woman’s heartbeat was frantic, racing too fast. And as Adeline pressed her fingers to the inside of the woman’s wrist, feeling for her pulse, she could easily guess that the patient’s blood pressure was sky high.

Just then, the old woman came back in, carrying an armful of cloths. “I got these for ye. The lasses in the village are rippin’ up more. The lads have gone to fetch the snow that ye asked for. And there are pots comin’.”

A thought occurred to Adeline. “Are there hot pools near here?”

“Aye, down by the beach,” the woman replied.

“Are they really hot or just warm?”

The woman frowned. “Just warm.”

“How warm would you say they are? Is it like when you’ve made yourself a… bowl of hot soup and forgotten about it, so when you come back to it, it’s only just warm?”

The woman’s eyebrows rose, like she understood exactly what Adeline meant. A good sign.

“Aye, like that,” she confirmed.

Adeline could feel her confidence rising. “Is it easy to get down to the beach?”

“There’s a slope, aye.”

“Can you fit a cart down it?”

The woman nodded.

“This is going to sound a bit… mad,” Adeline confessed, “but I need you to get everyone who isn’t sick to gather in the middle of the village for me. It’ll be easier if I explain what needs to happen all in one go, instead of repeating myself.”

The woman was out of the door before Adeline had properly finished, filling her with hope that these people might trust her, after all.

Taking a moment to work through what she was going to say to them, Adeline drew in a deep breath, the air already fresher inside the hut, and headed out into the gray light.

To her surprise, everyone had already gathered, including Logan, his uncle Dallas, and Theo. Then again, there weren’t too many people to gather. Forty or so. Everyone else must’ve been in a similar condition to the three patients in the old woman’s hut.

“I realize you don’t know me,” Adeline began, trying not to let the wary stares get the better of her. “But I am here solely for your benefit, and now that I’ve seen one of the… sickly, I’m certain I know how to help. But in order to help, you’re going to have to trust me and listen to me. I might say some things that you don’t agree with, but… if you want the sick to survive this, you need to believe that I know what I’m doing.”

A grumble rippled through the small crowd.

“To begin with, we’re going to start taking the sick to the hot pools by the beach,” she went on, her nerves rattling. “Let’s start with five people, and once they’ve bathed, we’ll exchange them for the next five, and so on and so on until everyone has been in the pools. The sickest first.

“For those who are waiting, I need you all to open your shutters and doors to let the air flow through your homes,” she added, conscious of her vocabulary. “Too much heat isn’t good. And… the air will stagnate if it can’t get out, and that stagnant air will stagnate in the lungs of the sick.”

She chose explanations she thought they would understand, though it wasn’t easy to steer away from the medical terms that came so easily to her.

“I’ve also asked for you to start boiling as many pots of water as you can. This is the only water you must allow the sick to drink, and only once it has been cooled.” Adeline clenched her hands into fists, suppressing her anxiety. “That’s why I’ve asked for snow to be fetched. This is not to be melted down and drunk, for any reason. Instead, set the cups of the boiling water on it, to cool it down quicker. However, you will need to melt some of the snow down, then dip cloths into it and put those cloths on the foreheads of the sick. When they warm up from being on the skin, change them for freshly dipped cloths.

“Cover the sick with blankets and furs, of course, but not too many. You don’t want them to get too hot, and, right now, they’re boiling alive,” she concluded. “I’ll come around to each of you in turn and help you understand how many is too many, and I’ll give the sick a tonic to help with the fever, once I’ve brewed it.”

She held up the jars she’d brought with her. “It’s just feverfew and willow bark. I’m sure you’ve heard of them before. It’ll help, alongside everything else I’ve just advised.”

The villagers kept staring at her, though their expressions weren’t quite as suspicious as before. Instead, they looked anxious, like they hadn’t quite understood everything she’d said.

Adeline glanced over at Logan, who was gazing back at her with his eyebrow raised. He seemed impressed, a half-smile on the lips that she would’ve given anything to kiss just then, so she wouldn’t have to think about the enormous task ahead of her. Healing an entire village with no modern medicine whatsoever seemed impossible, but what choice did she have?

“Oh, and do as I’ve done,” Adeline added, pointing to her makeshift face mask. “I don’t know yet the nature of the curse, but if it’s in the air, this will lower the risk of the rest of you getting sick. All of you should drink the boiled water—only the boiled water. And… uh… I’ll have to check your food stores at some point, to see if that’s causing all of this.”

“Ye think someone cursed the food?” one man asked.

Adeline shrugged. “It’s a possibility we all have to consider. But, for now, please do what I’ve asked, and we’ll see how we get on.”

“Ye heard her!” Logan strode forward, tearing off a strip of his own shirt to tie around his face. “Get to work! We’ve a lot to do, by the sound of it.”

Immediately, the villagers followed suit, grabbing bits of cloth and fabric to tie around their faces, before dispersing to do as Adeline had commanded. It gave her hope that, even if they didn’t quite trust her, they trusted their Laird enough to save their own lives.

“I daenae ken what ye have planned,” Logan said, approaching, “but ye sounded like ye kenned what ye were sayin’. Ye certainly daenae seem so nervous anymore.”

Adeline flashed him a smile, realizing too late that it was hidden behind her mask. “Believe it or not, this is the kind of thing that relaxes me. I thrive on stress.”

“That cannae be good for ye, can it?” he asked.

She shrugged. “Everyone has their thing. You bathe in hot pools, drop crumbs all over your study floor, and… I don’t know, lift weights or something. I prefer to exercise my brain, and right now, it’s running a marathon.”

“Lift weights? What does that mean?” He frowned at her.

She shook her head. “Never mind. Come on, we’ve got who knows how many people to get bathed and treated. It’s going to be a long day, and I can’t have you… distracting me.”

“I distract you?”

She put a finger to her lips. “Nope. Zip it.” She nodded down the muddy street. “Anyway, shouldn’t you be worrying about your brother? He’s here somewhere, isn’t he?”

“Nae here, exactly,” Logan replied. “Ye do realize that this is only the first of the eastern villages, do ye nae?”

Adeline’s eyes bugged. “What?”

“There are five all down the eastern coast,” he said. “This is the first. Me brother is in the last.”

Adeline puffed out an exasperated breath. “You mean, I have to do this four more times?”

“Aye, though I daenae think ye’ll be able to use the pools for the villages that are farthest from here.” He scratched his head. “I daenae suppose ye have any other ideas, do ye?”

Adeline nearly threw in the towel right there and then, but one look at the villagers running back and forth, wearing their makeshift masks, doing exactly what she’d asked, and she knew she couldn’t give up. If the other villages couldn’t come to the hot pools, the hot pools would just have to come to them.

“Ride on to the next villages,” she instructed, thinking out loud. “Have them find the biggest buckets they can—the closest thing to a bathtub. Get them to start boiling pots of water and fetching snow. Once I have everything sorted here, I’ll start on the next village.”

Logan smiled. “Ye really do ken what ye’re doin’, eh?”

“Did you doubt me?”

His smile widened. “We’ll have to see what happens.” He leaned down, his mouth close to her ear as he whispered, “I’m still nae entirely convinced ye’re nae a witch.”

“Do you want to get me burnt at the stake?” Adeline hissed, struggling to ignore the heat that rushed down her neck. His lips were so close to her skin.

He chuckled. “I willnae allow it.”

“And if you can’t stop it?” she probed, genuinely curious.

His smile faded, his breath tickling her throat. “I’d get ye out of here, nay matter what it takes.”

“That’s the plan anyway, remember?” she said, more to herself than to him.

She’d only been on the island for a matter of days, but with each of those days, getting closer to the people she had encountered, the world she’d landed in began to feel less strange. And not once had she sat down and really thought about how to get home. It worried her, more than she knew how to explain.

No matter what, I have to get back…

There were people waiting for her. People who’d miss her. People who’d be crushed by her disappearance. Only two, in reality, but those two were enough to ensure she never forgot her goal.

Logan pulled back, dipping his head. “Aye, I remember.” He turned to his uncle and man-at-arms. “We’re ridin’ up the coast. Come, there’s nae a moment to lose.”

Adeline didn’t dare to believe it, but as she watched Logan retreat to the horses, she could’ve sworn she saw a look of disappointment on his face. As if it might not be the worst thing in the world if she had to stay, and he’d only just remembered that she had to go.

You won’t tempt me, she silently vowed as the whisper of his breath burned on her neck.