Page 24 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

H ealers required outdoor hours for any number of reasons, and yet somehow, at Strathcairn, they’ve managed to curb even that need—thanks to Cora. Between her, Mason, and Katie, Skylar never had any reason to go outside.

It's ridiculous, really — she sighed to herself as she looked into the flames.

Her chest betrayed her, fluttering like a sparrow in a snare.

Saints, it was only air she wanted. Only air.

Still, when Zander’s knuckles rapped the surgery door that afternoon, and his voice came rough through the wood—“Come out with me today. Just us.”—her fingers stalled on the pestle as if he’d struck them still.

Just us?

“Aye?” she managed, standing up from the hearth and smoothing her apron. “Katie’ll manage Grayson?” she managed to say, though her pulse misbehaved.

“Katie, Mason, the men, and probably half of the saints,” he said. “We’re nae goin’ far. A mile and a bit to Balmachrie—market’s up, pies hot, gossip hotter.”

“Ye’re tempting me with pies now?”

“I’m led by strategy,” he said solemnly, though his eyes warmed. “Bring yer cloak.”

They walked by the inner gate, past the Grayson’s elm — At least that’s what Skylar has taken to calling it.

The morning was sharp enough to pink her cheeks; the road took them along a low stone dyke where sheep wandered blissfully unaware of their surroundings. Zander kept his stride easy for her sake. It should have irritated her, but it steadied her instead.

“Ye’re nae taking a guard?” she asked, glancing back once.

“The guard’s in front,” he said, pointing ahead of them.

Skylar saw nothing and no one so she eyes him skeptically, lifting an eyebrow.

Zander sighed and touched his chest, “Honest, ye’ll probably see them when we get to the market…

And ye bite hard enough for three men anyway.

I daenae ken why ye’re suddenly so worried about it. ”

She snorted, unwilling to let the laugh escape. “ That I do.”

Balmachrie came into view ahead of them. There were whitewashed cottages, between them stood proud stalls full of goods and ready for sales, and the aroma of fresh baked bread wafted in the low, thin smoke that hoovered along the stone walkways.

Zander kept his shoulders loose, his mouth easy. Folk bowed, nodded, pretended not to stare. Skylar felt their eyes follow her, and she stood proudly anyway.

“Me Laird,” someone called, and Cora appeared from a crofter’s kiln, skirts tucked, hands flour-dusted, cheeks bright. “I’ve been gatherin’ the supplies —”

“I can see that, well enough, Cora,” Zander said, gentler than the words, extending his hand toward her silently. “We’re taking air. If ye’ll let us take our leave from ye, we’ll finish the list from here.”

Cora’s gaze flicked to Skylar’s face, quick and clever. “Mistress. Me Laird,” the lass said, quickly handing the list to him with a slight bow, and then vanishing.

Zander moved with Skylar between stalls wordlessly as he reviewed the list from Cora. He navigated them almost expertly through the throngs until they reached their first stall, where he bought a meat pie from a woman who addressed him as if he were a truant son.

With a boyish smile on his face, Skylar observed as he tore the steaming pastry in two, and handed her the half with the visibly crispier edge.

“Hot,” he said, eyes connecting with hers, before she brought the half to her lips. As her lips parted, she watched in amazement as Zander shoved the entire half into his mouth, and unflinchingly devoured it.

“I’ll take yer word for it,” she returned, nibbling the corner, ears burning.

He reached behind him and picked up another pie, lifting it to offer her another half and Skylar shook her head incredulously.

Wha —Are ye mad? She lifted her barely touched, still steaming half of the first pastry.

Zander shrugged and took another massive bite out of the new pie before gesturing the uneaten part ahead of them in an obvious direction for her to follow.

They ate and walked; walked and ate. He bartered with a drover for honey dark as a sermon, tasted it on the flat of his thumb and lifted the jar toward her with a look that said for the boy more clearly than his mouth.

She nodded, throat tight. She peered at dried apples, pressed the seam of a jar with a healer’s squint, chose nothing because everything felt like too much and too little.

At a small cloth stall, she paused. A length of undyed linen lay folded, fine and even. She ran two fingers across it and felt the right softness for bandages and the right strength for washing. Zander saw the feel in her hand and spoke to the stallholder before she could stop him.

“That length,” he said. “And the narrow tape.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it because the cloth in her fingers felt like a prayer answered. “I could have?—”

“Aye,” he said. “But now ye daenae have to.”

He paid. The stallholder wrapped the cloth in brown paper, tied it with string, and Skylar took it.

“Ye’re outrageous,” she muttered as they left the row. “I’ll nae be in debt to ye.”

“Good,” he said. “I like lists. I can pretend they’re orders.”

They quit the market after collecting the rest of the items on the supply list, save for a few that she knew she would have to get from the cart vendors along the road to the keep.

Zander guided them down a narrow path back—not the road they used to get to Balmachrie. The track should have made her wary, but there was something about his uncharacteristic calm and collected behavior that made her feel comfortable instead.

“Ye’ve brought me along the long road,” she said.

“Aye, but it’s the right one,” he answered, quiet.

They walked until the market sounds had gentled to a hum. Skylar kept the parcel of linen tucked in the crook of her arm, as if it might jump free and run, and the bags hooked tightly on her shoulder.

Zander’s hand brushed a twig aside before it could snag her braid; he didn’t touch her hair, only moved the world out of its way. Her breath did something foolish and she talked to keep it in order.

“Ye and Cora,” she tried, casual and failing at it. “She minds ye as if ye were a difficult uncle.”

“She minds everyone,” he said, with the faintest smile.

They reached a bend where the burn narrowed into a rill and leapt glossy over a stone lip. He stopped there, as if the sound of water set a boundary he’d meant to find. “Skylar.”

She looked up sharply, braced because his breath had shifted. “Aye?”

“I feel like I should tell ye a few things,” he said. “If ye’ll hear it.”

She nodded. He didn’t move closer; he didn’t reach. He stood a pace away and stared past her shoulder, as if the words would come easier if he spoke them into the distance.

Zander’s mouth pressed tight before he answered.

“Because I believe ye should ken it all. Ye’ve kept me boy breathin’.

I feel the debt in me bones. If ye’re to stand at our hearth and carry his life in yer hands, ye deserve to ken more of us than just the whispers and guesses. Ye deserve knowledge.”

She hesitated, shifting the parcel. “And if I daenae wish to hear it?”

“Me marriage,” he said, calling her bluff.

“It was for convenience,” he said, the word falling clean.

“And for peace. Alliances make men behave if love willnae.” His mouth twisted.

“I didnae care for love. Never trusted it. But I wanted companionship, a hearth with two chairs, a child at the fire. She wanted… quiet. Safety. Her own door.”

He breathed slowly.

“We were friends,” he said. “Good ones. We laughed. Ate the same bread. Slept under the same roof.” A longer pause. “We did our duty first. I asked that of her plain. I’m nae proud of that sentence, but it’s the right one. I wanted an heir, and I wouldnae pretend I didnae.”

Skylar felt the words go through her, stubborn and square. She didn’t judge him; she weighed him, which was worse. “And after?” she asked, quieter.

“After,” he said, and he turned then, as if he owed her eye to eye for the next piece.

“She told me the truth of herself. Said she had nay hunger for men. Had loved a woman before me, and grieved her like a widow. She’d been forced to trade that life for a safe one because the world we’ve is cruel to women who choose their own roads.

She said the word ‘sorry’ until I couldnae bear it. ”

Skylar’s hand tightened on the parcel. “And what about ye?”

“I told her a safe road was still a good one,” he said. “I told her she’d given me a son. That was gift enough for the rest of a life. We never touched after he was promised in her belly.” He looked away toward the hawthorn, the thorns set with red. “We were… peace.”

Peace . The word sat in Skylar’s ribs and made a new room there, one with a table and two chairs that never tried to be a bed. She didn’t know whether to be grateful or sad or both.

“She died,” she said, because he had not yet said it.

“Aye,” he said, loosing a breath almost gratefully.

Skylar stood in the small hush that follows kindness when it isn’t expected and found that the parcel in her arms had grown heavier. Not with linen. With the weight of a man’s honesty, clumsy as a gift and precious as one.

“Thank ye,” she said simply.

He nodded once. “Ye’ll judge me later — when ye’ve had time to think on it all.”

“Mayhap,” she said, feeling wickedness rise to save her from drowning. “Or I’ll just make a list.”

“Aye,” he said, and the faint smile returned like a swallow finding its ledge. “Do that as well, lass.”

They turned toward the keep by a different curve of path, neither eager to crowd the quiet they’d made. The hawthorn watched them pass, thorns bright as needles, berries like prayer beads, the day drawing its breath for whatever came after.