Page 19 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

T he world had room for breathing again.

Morning ripened into something gentle, and the old elm threw a patch of dappled shade broad enough to cradle three bodies and a basket.

Katie had pressed bread and a small round of cheese on them with the air of a commander sending men into a skirmish, and Zander had accepted it with a look that almost counted as gratitude.

Now they sat beneath the branches. Grayson was wrapped in blankets and propped on a pillow like a small king on a modest throne, Zander was cross-legged with his cloak pooled behind him, and Skylar with her skirts tucked neatly under her knees, the clay cup of her latest draught cooling on the grass.

They tried to make the business of breathing a holiday.

Grayson’s face had more color than it had yesterday—less white chalk, more pink.

That alone would have been enough to ease the tightness in Skylar’s chest. But the boy’s smile did more; it spread in slow, genuine increments whenever a breeze stirred or a bird wheeled above them, each small joy like a stitch pulling him back to himself.

“Look—two of them,” he whispered, pointing. “See how they turn together like they’ve a string between them? Kestrels. The book’s picture was wrong about the tail, but right about the hangin’.”

“A grievous crime to lie about a tail,” Skylar murmured, and Grayson’s answering grin dried the damp in her eyes before it could shame her.

Zander had brought the bird book and laid it open across his knee, and he had a sketch book lying next to him.

“Aye. We’ll forgive the artist if he mends his sin in the next chapter.

” He glanced at Skylar when he said it, like a man checking a compass.

Not for approval, but to test if they were walking the same line.

Aye, we are. God help her, they were.

She tore bread into precise, healer’s portions and passed them, letting simple tasks quiet the quickness of her pulse. Each time Zander’s fingers brushed hers, heat climbed her throat; each time she made herself look away, her gaze looped the long way around and found him again.

He didn’t press. He seemed to have decided that pressing her only gave her another reason to brace. Instead he let the quiet do what arguments never could: soften the space between them.

“Tell me something ye wish to learn more about,” Skylar said to Grayson once he’d chewed and swallowed and breathed without rattling. The question had become her habit, a way to anchor him to the world so it wouldn’t slip.

He gave it his serious consideration. “Ships,” he decided. “Uncle Mason says ships are just houses that dare.”

Zander huffed a laugh, one of the rare ones that came without sharp edges. “He would say that.”

“What do ye wish to ken more about ships, Grayson?” Skylar started and then eyes Zander. “I’ll admit, I daenae ken much about them meself.”

He nodded with understanding. He knew he was going to be the one answering this one.

“I daenae ken,” Grayson said, thoughtfully. “How do they float?”

Zander swiped a hand down his face with a feigns grave expression. “Wood floats, son. Ships are made of wood. More wood means more to float. And if the shipbuilders measure out everything correctly, they’ll stay afloat even when a lot of stuff inside.”

Skylar let their exchange wash over her like warm water.

It did something treacherous to her. It made her want things she’d not given herself permission to want, like another hour like this, and then another.

Like the sound of Zander’s voice softened by sunlight, or the sight of a small boy learning the world around him.

Wanting made her angry, and anger made her stubborn, and stubbornness kept her upright. She ate a crust of bread and looked away toward the gate to steady herself.

Her mind leapt the wall as conveniently as a sparrow, flew south and east, and landed hard on a pale face with fevered eyes. Ariella. The memory struck her like a hand to the breastbone.

How many days has it been since the letter?

The storm; the flight; the capture; the debate; the kiss that had upended the floor of her chest; the boy’s small laughter; the nights of steam and tincture.

It felt like a lifetime and a breath at once.

Guilt rose fast and hot. Every smile she coaxed from Grayson seemed to cost her cousin a sigh.

What if Ariella worsened because I spent a morning learning the way Zander pronounced kestrel?

Zander’s voice cut gently through the tangle. “Ye’re scowling at a tree. What offense has it given?”

She blinked and found she had indeed fixed the elm with a look fit for enemies. “I was thinkin’ of me cousin.”

“The one who needs ye still?”

“Aye.” She pressed her thumb into her palm to stop the tremor that wanted to start. “Guilt is a loud companion.”

“And necessary,” he said, surprising her. “Else a man forgets he owes anything.”

She studied him sidelong. “Do ye ever feel it?”

“Now?” The corner of his mouth tipped. “Less than I did this morning. Me son is outside with the wind in his hair; guilt can wait its turn.”

She hated how reasonable that sounded when he said it.

She hated more that it cracked something tender in her she hadn’t asked to expose.

So, she set her jaw and decided to steer the day toward simple pleasures, toward lists of birds and the precise architecture of perches and the way a mast might be lashed to a limb.

She asked Grayson how high he thought a kestrel could see a mouse, and he argued from authority, having been a boy for six years.

She asked Zander what kind of wood he trusted to bear weight for a ship, and he answered like a man who had built a life out of making decisions that held.

The sun climbed. They ate. They laughed in small, careful measures that didn’t tax the boy’s breath.

Twice Skylar took Grayson’s wrist and counted, felt a little steadier each time.

Twice she lifted the cup to his mouth and watched him sip, making a note of how the draught sat in his belly when it was taken warm and slow beneath the sky.

“Tell me a story,” Grayson demanded at last, sated with bread and birds and praise.

Zander looked at Skylar, a question without words. She arched a brow. “Go on, laird. Amaze us.”

He rolled his eyes at the title but obeyed, calling up some tale of a fisherman who tried to bargain with a selkie and had his boots stolen for his boldness.

Zander was in no way a bard, nor did he pretend. But his voice did a small magic anyway—something to do with how he moved through sentences like a man who meant to carry them where they were going without dropping them.

Skylar let it weave around her. She didn’t fight the loosening it brought. For a handful of minutes she let herself be nothing but ears and skin and the warm weight of a small life leaning against her thigh.

When the story ended, Grayson’s lashes had drooped, and his breathing was even.

Skylar smoothed the blanket, pressing the lines flat as if fear could be ironed out like wrinkles.

Zander’s hand came, uncharacteristically, to rest near hers on the boy’s blanket.

Not touching her. Not quite. The nearness lit a fuse in her belly.

“If ye sit any closer,” she said without turning her head, “folk will talk.”

“Folk talk when men sneeze.”

She risked a glance. His eyes were on her mouth again. Saints, he was shameless.

“Daenae look at me like that,” she whispered, a warning to herself as much as him.

He didn’t move. “Like what?”

“Ye ken what I mean, Zander. Daenae continue to make this harder.”

His gaze flicked to the boy, then back to her. “I willnae. Nae here.”

The quiet that followed wasn’t empty. It carried the shape of something that might destroy them both if they let it, and the comfort of knowing they would not, at least not while a child slept between them.

She breathed. Counted to ten. Let her shoulders drop. Heal him, she told herself. Then run. Or run, then heal what ye can after. But choose.

She would not be the woman who drew hope from a man’s mouth and left a cousin to fight fever alone. And yet Grayson’s small fingers had curled in her skirt without waking.

At last the wind turned and brought with it the smell of the kitchens beginning to wake. Grayson stirred, opened his eyes, and smiled, and Skylar decided she could live with guilt for another hour if it bought him one more laugh.

They did not speak of the Kirn. They did not speak of escape. They did not speak of kisses or vows or who owed whom what. They packed up crusts and cheese rinds and the cup, and Zander lifted the boy and took him in with a care that made Skylar’s throat feel strange.

By the time they crossed the yard again, her mind was already turning like a mill wheel. Draught this evening, steam before sleep, keep him raised on pillows, check pulse at dawn.

And Ariella. Always Ariella. The name beat time under every plan.

She told herself that if the boy is stronger before the Kirn, it’s working, and I’ll be able to go. Even though, the Kirn will hide me steps, Katie will nae be looking, and the west gate will be mine.

Then she told herself she was monstrous for thinking it while Grayson’s small head rested against Zander’s shoulder next to her.

Skylar managed to be both monster and healer until midday. Zander was called away by Mason on clan matters, and so he snuck away between his son’s soft snores.

Katie urged her back to her chambers, next, as she helped Grayson back into the solar. “I’ve got this. I’ll call if anythin’ changes,” she said smiling widely and even shooing Skylar back to her chambers.

Grateful for the break, Skylar bathed and let herself find slumber.

“What is it?” Zander said in a hushed voice, as he closed the distance across the glen to meet Mason.

“Sorry to interrupt, but it’s about a week until Kirn and there are villagers here with… issues.”

“Issues?”

“Aye,” Mason said, rubbing his temples. “I’ve tried to ease them, but a lot of it is up to ye.”