Page 14 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

T he yard had emptied to the quiet that came after fires were banked and songs gave up.

Zander liked the keep best in that hour.

No petitions. No clatter. Just the honest sounds of the early evening.

A horse coughing in the stable, a guardsman shifting weight on the wall-walk, the lazy creak of the elm as the wind worried at its higher limbs.

Mason circled him in the torchlit ring of the practice yard, blunt sword up, weight forward. “Ye’re thinkin’ again,” Mason said. “Dangerous habit to partake in after dark.”

“I’m stoppin’,” Zander answered, steel kissing steel as he met the man’s strike and rolled it off. “On the next hour.”

Mason snorted, swung again. “The next hour can kiss me arse. Ye’ve never met one ye didnae drag into the next three after it. Ye’ll be brooding still when the cocks crow.”

They worked a long pass in silence, blades clapping like hard applause, until Zander cut left and drove Mason back three steps. Their old rhythm came easy.

It would have soothed him if not for the way his thoughts kept sliding to the solar.

Mason dropped his blade point and cocked his head. “Ye’re quieter than usual… and that’s sayin’ somethin’, considerin’ it’s ye I’m talkin’ about.”

Zander glanced toward the open arch that looked into the inner court. Beyond it, the shadow of the stair curled up into the keep’s belly. “I’m countin’ what has to be done before Kirn.”

“Oh sure?”

“Aye,” Zander said, and didn’t finish.

He lifted the practice blade again. “Ye have one more in ye?”

Mason answered with steel.

They traded strokes until sweat slicked his back under the linen shirt and the torch threw wavering shadows of two large men trying not to think. Mason finally dropped out of range and rolled his shoulder. “Ye want straight talk yet?”

As if anticipating the question, Zander quickly replied, “The straight talk, then.”

“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 paused beneath 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. “Could ye ?”

The way her wrist curved as she pushed the lock back looked deliberate, practiced—but saints, mayhap it wasn’t. His neck strained under the heat that shot through him, blood hammering until his tongue felt heavy in his mouth.

“I could and have slept through me own guards’ training, he said, fighting to keep his tone flat. “But an attack? Never. A laird sleeps on his feet with one eye open.”

“That explains the scowl,” she said, and he heard the smile she didn’t show. The sound of it ran a jagged line down his spine, rough and sweet.

He spread his hands to say fair , then let them fall. His palms itched to climb that stone wall to reach her. “Grayson?” he asked, though he already knew; he would have heard the wrong kind of silence.

“Steady,” she said, and in the tilt of her chin he read a healer’s pride. “Katie’s with him.”

After a beat, she continued, voice softer: “He was cheerful this evenin’. Couldnae get him to sleep. Said ye visited him for a bit.”

Zander hadn’t expected her to mention it. The admissions hung between them, dangerous as a spark in a dry field. He let the pause breathe, then gave only a small nod and a hum of assent. “Aye.”

Skylar stared at him blankly, her mouth tipping down just enough to make her look unimpressed, though the candle-glow from the hall gave it the shape of a pout. He fought the urge to laugh, kept his face in order, and let the silence draw a line between them.

She straightened suddenly, as if she’d caught herself leaning too far into him. The shift of her shoulders pressed the linen tighter against her chest, and he cursed inwardly at himself for noticing. For burning.

“The draught sits well when the air is clean,” she said briskly, business sliding back into her tone.

He nodded, jaw tight. “I’ll set more men to sweep the hearths tomorrow. Less smoke.”

Her gaze dipped briefly, lashes sweeping dark. He couldn’t tell whether that small motion was acknowledgement or something else—some thought she wasn’t ready to air. The quiet thickened. His pulse thundered in his throat until he thought she might see it.

The elm creaked above them. A moth battered itself against the torch glass.

Then. “Zander.”

His name in her mouth at that hour felt like he’d been called to the right room in a burning house. Every muscle in his neck went tight, holding him back from climbing to her window like some lad drunk on spring.

“I— I hope ye sleep well tonight — might storm…”

Her fingers lingered against the lattice, pale against the dark. Too long. Too graceful. Is she doin’ it on purpose ?

“Aye, ye as well,” he managed, though his tongue felt chick, “And yer aunt will have word by noon two days hence.”

The faintest frown touched her brow, her lips parted but no sound came. For a heartbeat she looked less healer, less prisoner, more woman — one who knew what it was to be kissed against all sense. His own chest tightened at the memory of her mouth under his.

She was silent long enough that he wondered whether he’d broken something by bringing up her family.

“Good,” she said at last, but the word trembled, stretched like a stitch pulled through cloth to hold it from tearing.

Another long moment. It should have broken. He should have left. Instead he stood rooted in the dark, heat coursing through him like he’d taken a blade to the belly.

“Get inside,” he said finally, softer than he meant to. The plead bled through before he could shape it into command. “Ye’ll be cold.”

Her laugh was brief, almost teasing. “Ye, ordering me kindly. Careful ye might get a reputation.”

He almost groaned.

The strain in his neck made his teeth ache as he forced a smile to his mouth, a stiff nod, before turning away from her stare that burned hotter than any torch.

“Ye have nay idea, lass,” he said, though it was too quiet for her to hear.

The shutter drew softly when he reached the landing.

He didn’t look back. Couldn’t. His veins burned with want, his hands curled fists at his side.

She was supposed to be his son’s salvation, not his own undoing.

And still the taste of her kiss lingered, defying every vow he made to care for nothing but Grayson’s breath.

Zander took the inner stair two at a time and made a straight path to the solar.

Katie sat there at a stool with her knitting and lifted her chin in greeting. “All quiet,” she murmured. Grayson slept open-mouthed, hair damp at the temples, breath the even, unremarkable sound that now counted for music.

Zander nodded and then made his way back to his chambers for the evening.

Sleep would not come.

Skylar lay on her pallet in the narrow chamber, the quilt drawn up to her chin, her journal shut beside the candle. Her eyes burned with weariness, but every time her lashes touched she saw the wrong things.

She saw Zander.

Standing below her window where she’d caught him looking back at her as if… as if he skipped supper and she was the only thing that would sate his hunger ? —.

She growled at the thought, annoyed, and turned onto her side, then her back, then her side again.