Page 16 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

T he next day passed in a blur of small duties and scribbled notes. Skylar worked on fumes of sleep, and kept herself busy, reviewing Grayson’s pulse and breath with the careful eye of a scribe checking her sums, jotting margins in her journal until the page looked more crowded than tidy.

Katie bustled in and out with broth and clean cloths as she always did, while once Mason himself poked his head into the solar.

“Just— makin’ sure…” he mumbled before Katie shooed him away.

By dusk she had added more questions than answers, but Grayson still slept steady, and for the moment that was enough.

Evening bled slowly into the keep.

“Where has the day gone off to?” Skylar sighed hastily, pulling her loose hairs behind her ear with her free hand before she stepped through the doorway already rehearsing the litany in her head—pulse, breath, color—only to stop short.

Zander Harrison was seated beside his son’s bed with a book open in his hands, his head bent, voice low and even as he read.

The shock of it thudded in Skylar’s chest before her heart betrayed her entirely and tripped into a foolish, fluttering gallop. She didn’t want that. She didn’t want the way her breath caught at the sight of him softened by lamplight, or the way his mouth shaped the words with care.

Grayson’s lashes lifted at the faint scrape of her boot. “Skylar,” he whispered, smiling.

Zander’s gaze came up too, steady and unreadable. “Lady Dunlop.”

She made her face calm and her hands efficient. “Laird.” She nodded toward the book. “Readin’ the bir— the birds, are ye?”

A glimmer tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Aye. This volume is a crime against hawks, according to the lad.”

“They forgot the spots,” Grayson said solemnly.

“Unforgivable,” Skylar agreed, moving to the foot of the bed and setting her satchel on the chest. “I’ll write the author a very stern letter. After I find a quill grand enough to coo him.”

“Bring a sword,” Zander said mildly. “Men who draw poor birds seldom fear ink.”

“Now there’s a Highland proverb if e’er I heard one,” she shot back.

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.

Her laugh surprised her when it came, a short bright thing that rang off stone.

“If this doesnae work,” she told the steam, “then there’s something else going afoot…

I daenae ken what… but perhaps it’s to start with too much indoor time.

” The echo came back to her, thinner and more wry, as if the surgery itself had learned to keep counsel with skeptics.

She strained the draught through linen into a clay cup, watched the liquid turn a deep amber, and breathed the scent again. It smelled exactly how it was supposed to.

Mmm sweet onions.

Her mind darted back to the solar: Zander’s head bent; Grayson’s small smile; the book balanced in a warrior’s hand.

She hated that the picture felt like balm.

The memory of his hands and lips on her burned hotter than she wanted, stoking something restless in her chest. She told herself it wasn’t Zander she craved at all, but the sight of strength bent tender, the sound of a man’s voice carrying a child toward sleep.

That was safer. That she could carry without shame.

She poured a second cup to cool and marked her journal: cool, not hot; small sips; watch pulse; check lips after third swallow.

And then, she added a margin note that had nothing to do with dosage: Festival in six days. Pipers’ gate. West wall walk?

Six days until she’d be on her way to Ariella.

Six days left to cure Grayson.

She leaned over her notes for another heartbeat then sighed and closed the book. Moving back to the prep tables, she capped the kettle, and set both cups on the windowsill to cool.

Duty first.

Cora arrived as quietly as if the surgery had conjured her there. One heartbeat Skylar was alone with steam and lists; the next a small shadow slid across the threshold and the girl’s voice came soft as a shawl.

“I brought more linen,” Cora said, lifting a folded armful. “Old sheets turned, as ye asked.”

“Good.” Skylar met her at the door and took half the stack. “Ye’ve a talent for appearin’ and vanishin’, lass. If I ever need a ghost, I’ll send for ye.”

Cora’s mouth curved. “If I am a ghost, I’m a dutiful one. I haunt only the stores.” She moved to the shelves without waiting for permission and began making tidy stacks from what had been orderly enough already. “How much coltsfoot remains?”

“Enough for two draughts more if I’m careful.” Skylar hesitated, then let curiosity slip past her guard. “Where do ye go when ye vanish?”

“Places men forget to sweep,” Cora said, which was an answer and not one. “The loft, the still room, the darkest corner of the buttery where the good ale hides.” She glanced over her shoulder, a spark of mischief in her eye. “And sometimes the roof, if the wind is right.”

“Up with the ravens.”

“They are better company than most men.”

“On that, we agree.” Skylar reached for a jar, pretending indifference. “Ye said once—yer clan. Zander destroyed it. He took ye in after.” The words were even. But the question lay beneath them, “What happened then?”

Cora did not stiffen. She placed the last of the linen, turned, and leaned her hip against the table.

“After?” She folded her hands, the gesture precise.

“After, he gave me a bed that didnae move with every footfall. He gave me food I didnae have to fight for. He brought me to the surgery and said, ‘Do ye like putting things in order?’ I said I did. He said, ‘Then put this in order. If anyone troubles ye, send for Mason and he will fix it.’ So I put things in order.”

“And Mason?” Skylar asked, testing.

“Like a braither,” Cora said, smooth as cream.

Skylar lifted one brow. “Nae by blood?”

Cora’s smile did not falter. “By sense. Blood is a poor map for a life.”

Skylar could not quarrel with that. Still, the evasion nagged her. “He watches me,” she said, as if stating weather. “From a distance. Should I be grateful?”

“Ye should be careful,” Cora said, and there was nothing coy in it. “Men are easier to manage when they think ye are harmless.”

“Do ye think I am?”

Cora met her eyes. “Nay,” she said after the smallest pause. “But they might. They are men.”

Skylar huffed a quiet laugh. “Let them. While they’re wrong, I’ll work.”

They were silent a moment but for the small domestic sounds of the room. Skylar watched the girl’s hands move—quick, exact, as if each gesture had been made a hundred times and always the same. She liked competence wherever she found it.

“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 could collect 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.”

“Should do that anyway, huh?” Skylar hummed, and turned toward the door, telling herself for the hundredth time that she could hold two truths at once. She could save a lad and plan to leave him. She could despise a laird and still like the way his voice caressed her spine.

She could, and she would.