Page 25 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

They continued down the long fold of ground home, speaking in pockets and silences.

Zander didn’t fill gaps; he let them hold, as if silence could carry a share of the weight when words were tired.

Skylar wondered when she’d last been walked beside without being tugged, hauled, or fenced.

The thought warmed her, then chilled her because it was foolish to soften when the road ahead was stone.

“What about Cora?” She prompted at last, when the keep’s rooflines showed like teeth over the rise.

“Aye, Cora...” His mouth went hard the way a wound does when weather shifts.

She waited. He took them off the path again, into a stand of birch thin as needles, leaves shivering like secrets. When he spoke, the words came flat, as if he had hammered them into planks to cross a swamp and dared not look down.

“Me faither died,” he said. “Old, as men hope. The house went quiet for a time—grief does that, and relief, both. I took the seat. We kept the gates open the way he had when he remembered his best self, and shut them when he forgot. Folk tested me; that’s the right of folk. I held.”

He plucked a leaf and worried its stem. “Cora came to the keep. Nae at first. Later. After . A lost thing with a straight back. She didnae ask for warmth. I gave it anyway because I thought if I outspent the world’s cruelty, I’d owe it less.”

Skylar said nothing. The birch made its own music, dry as paper.

“Her clan,” he went on, “had rotted from the core—faither cruel, brother worse. I had heard it in whispers for years, done what I could with the law men listen to. It’s a poor law for girls. Ye ken it.”

“Aye,” Skylar said, and her mouth tasted like old iron.

“We were at our peace—nae happy, Skylar, but… steady—when Marcus decided his faither’s teeth werenae big enough.

He tested me by testing me house. Came to me gate with a handful of men who called themselves more than they were, caught us thin on the east wall because a storm had pulled stone.

He ran like a fox when the yard turned against him.

That part, folk ken. The part I didnae say in these halls is what came between his run and his end. ”

He stopped moving. She stopped because walking alone felt careless.

“Me wife died that night,” he said. “Nae by his blade. By the fear, the crush, the smoke.” His jaw clenched.

“I was nae at her side. I was cutting men off the gate. I chose the yard over the chamber and tell meself still that it was the right choice, that the living needed me more than one lass. It’s a good lie some days. It breaks me teeth on some others.”

Skylar felt the birch leaves’ shiver down in her skin. She imagined a room with smoke under the rafters and a woman—no friend of men’s bodies, but a friend to a man’s house—trying to breathe. “She kent ye’d have saved her if ye could.”

“Aye,” he said roughly. “And if that helps, it’s a penny where a purse was taken.” He crushed the leaf in his fist. The green went dark where his fingers squeezed. “I blamed the man who set it moving. I keep doing it. It doesnae bring breath back to the dead, but it keeps breath in the living.”

He looked up then, and she saw the place behind his eyes that he’d kept shuttered. It wasn’t empty. It was full of things put away so carefully they’d become sharp.

“I chased Marcus,” he said. “Nae like a laird or with any sense of propriety. I hunted him like a hound hunts the hog. And he laughed. Laughed when I told him he’d answer for his insult against me clan. And he — he vowed to take me son’s life.”

The birch hush went out. Skylar’s hand closed on the parcel of linen as if it were a charm.

“I couldnae have him live with that vow in the air,” Zander said, very quiet. “Nae for the men behind me, nae for the women in me yard, nae for a wee lad who’d sleep safer if there were one less shadow in the world. I killed him. In a blind rage. I killed him.”

He didn’t look away. He didn’t ask forgiveness. “That’s between me and the Lord, now,” was all he said.

Skylar’s throat worked.

She was healer enough to see the shape of a fever when it raged through a house; she was woman enough to know some fevers take men and leave rage behind like a coat that never dries. “Cora, was Marcus’ sister?” she asked, slowly putting pieces together.

“She’s nae his sin,” Zander said swiftly.

“She was his prey. I took her out of that house and put her in mine because I kent she was safer here. She and Marcus shared blood the way a lamb and a fox share a field. She doesnae ken that he led the attack against us. He’s evil, and deserves none of her love, but I’ll nae be the one to taint her idea of him further. ”

“I’ll nae say anythin’ about it,” Skylar said, stung that he’d think it.

“Aye,” he said, and some of the whipcord in him eased. “I ken.”

They stood there until the birch’s whisper turned to a hiss under a rising wind. Skylar felt the shape of the tale settle in her, heavy as a winter cloak and needed as one. He had handed her a cut and a needle and told her to make of it what she pleased.

“I daenae ken whether I like the man ye were,” she said, because honesty was a muscle and went weak when neglected.

“Neither do I,” he returned, bare.

She glanced toward the keep, its edges softened by distance. “But I’m working for the man ye are now,” she said. “And for the laddie.”

He exhaled, a long, careful letting go. “That’ll do.”

They started toward the gate again. On the ridge above, a rook scolded them.

The yard took them back with its ordinary racket—bunting arguing with wind, boys chasing each other with reeds like swords, a woman scolding a hen that refused to admit the coop was safer than pride.

Skylar kept her cloak tight and her face set, because the world did not need to be shown what lived in her hands.

Zander paused at the foot of the inner stair and grabbed the bags of supplies they had gathered that she was holding. “A word more.”

“Ye’ve a store of them today,” she said, but softer than her mouth made it sound.

He didn’t smile. “I’m grateful,” he added, roughly. “Grateful ye’ve stayed still, grateful ye saved him when I had nothing.”

“I ken it,” she said. Gratitude pressed against her skin. She wanted to shrug it off, and she wanted to keep it. Both working at once made her throat sore.

They climbed the main stair. In the passage, where the stones held other folks’ footsteps, he halted and reached into his belt. “Also, here,” he said, and put a weight in her palm.

A dirk. His. The hilt worn smooth by his hand; the blade clean and honest. It wasn’t ceremony.

Skylar stared at it, at the sheen where light caught the edge, at the scuffs on the guard that meant it had lived work, not display. “Yer givin’ me a blade?”

“Aye,” he said. “A small one. But sharp. A guest in me house should nae go without a tooth.”

“Are ye nae worried I’ll use it against ye?” she asked, testing the weight as if the question could be measured the same way.

“Nae even in the slightest, Skylar,” he said coolly. Her name on his lips sent a not so slight shiver through her body.

Heat climbed her throat, treacherous and sweet. She sheathed the blade and tucked it under her cloak, feeling its shape against her ribs like a new bone. “What else, laird? A key to the keep?”

“Aye,” he said, and her mouth went dry like a field.

“What?”

He nodded toward the passage that led down to the surgery.

“The wee room beyond—stillroom, if ye’ve the will for it.

It’s a midden the now. By nightfall it’ll be limed and aired, shelves up, table strong enow to hold what ye must. Ye’ll have a lock.

The key’s yers. I willnae use the door without knocking. ”

Skylar blinked fast and hated the heat behind her eyes.

He had spoken her language without asking for a translation: space, order, a door that was hers to open or close.

“Why?” she asked, and made it sound like a challenge because gratitude frightened her more than blade-work.

“Why the knife, the room? Why the telling? Why the day out?”

“Because the clan owes ye,” he said. “And I owe ye more than the clan does.” He looked at his hands; at the knuckles she had bound.

The corridor tilted. She steadied herself with anger because it came quicker than joy and cost less to spend. “Owe me?”

“Ye can leave, lass,” he said, plain as a map.

“I’ll nae chain ye. I’ll send riders to bring ye safe to yer kin.

But I’ll ask ye—ask, nae steal— to hold a handful of days while we catch the hand that’s hurt him.

If ye stay beyond that, it’ll be because ye choose it.

If ye go, the door will nae lock behind ye. ”

Her mouth shaped Ariella without sound. The name ran an old path in her chest, wearing it deeper with every pass. Duty bit; love bit too. She could feel both teeth and not pull free of either.

“And why the telling?” she asked, because deflection was a life skill. “Why give me the cut of yer old life?”

“So ye ken where I’m thin,” he said, and there was no armor left on the words. “So ye didnae swing at it by accident.”

She swallowed. The dirk felt heavy against her ribs, like truth with an edge. “Ye cannae buy me with a room and cutlery.”

“I’m nae buying ye,” he said, reaching out and tucking a stray hair behind her ear. “I’m putting me thanks somewhere ye can have when me words fail me.”

Silence stretched. She did what she always did to keep from breaking the wrong thing: she asked a question that she knew that was ready to be answer given.

“The stillroom,” she said. “Shelves waist-high on the south wall. Hooks for strainers. A peg set low for a boy to sit and nae be underfoot but nae left out. A window that opens. A bolt inside. I’ll want the table smooth as a bone.”

“Aye,” he said, the corners of his mouth easing. “I’ll tell Mason. He’ll make sure the steward gets it taken care of.”

“Tell him if he splinters it, I’ll splinter him,” she added, because threats kept her from trembling.

He huffed something like a laugh. “I’ll pass along the charm.”

They walked again.

In silence.

At the solar door, she paused, the dirk’s weight reminding her she could cut herself free of anything she pretended was ribbon. “I’m—” she began, then stopped because thank ye and I’ll stay and I must go all pressed at once, jostling like drunk men at a narrow door.

“Ye’ll do as ye must,” he said, saving her, because sometimes kindness was closing a door for a woman’s jumbled words to rest behind. “When the hour comes, we’ll both ken it.”

She nodded. “And until then?—”

“Until then,” he said, “we’ll make the world small. The lad, a cup, this door, a key.” He touched two fingers to the jamb and not to her. It felt like restraint worn as honor.

She slipped inside to Katie’s hum and Grayson’s soft, stubborn breath.

The new dirk a line of cold along her side, but what lingered warmer still was the place he hadn’t touched, the air between them still humming like nectar bird.

The imagined key a warm circle in her palm though it did not yet exist.

It was love. It coursed through her. The warmth of it was unmistakable.

Horrid and wretched… creeping… accurate.

It was love for a child that wasn’t hers, for a life’s work, and for a man who she had no right to want, for a life she could never keep.

It moved in her veins like the weather moved across the country. Unrelenting. On a war path, even.

And yet, duty still waited. It always waited. Ariella’s name clung to her like a shadow, whispering louder the closer Skylar drifted toward Zander’s fire.

Four days.

Skyler dragged another breath, rolling her shoulders back stiffly.

She had four days to get Grayson well enough to stand on his own. Four days to catch the hand that had meant to harm him. Four days left to lie in the same air as Zander and pretend that she could walk away whole.

She set her hands to the rest of the day, every motion taut with the battle in her chest. Love clawed at her ribs, and duty at her spine, and neither would let her go.

Four… days.