Page 27 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

Outside, the yard argued cheerfully with bunting again, the keep pretending it hadn’t heard anything at all.

The days tightened their circle until the keep felt like a cupped hand holding one small flame. Zander lived in that circle: the solar, the surgery, the short corridor between, the chair by the bed where a father learned the shape of his patience.

Grayson had grown talkative in his quiet. “Da,” he said, chin propped, “if ravens ken faces, d’ye think they ken mine? Might they like me if I wore a feather?”

“They’ll like ye if ye feed them and they’ll love ye if ye cheat them,” Zander said, dealing the dice into his palm so the click made the boy’s eyes brighten. “But they’ll never trust ye. They’re too like men for that.”

Skylar laughed under her breath at the foot of the bed, where she sorted a neat misery of poultices as if cards in a game only she knew how to win. “He’s nae wrong,” she said. “I’ve seen ravens keep books. Better than some lairds.”

“Watch yerself,” Zander told her, but his mouth couldn’t find sternness with her eyes smiling like that.

They played when Grayson had breath for laughing, read when he had breath for listening, sat quiet when he needed quiet.

Skylar moved between them and what might harm him with an ease that made Zander’s chest sore: a cloth turned, a cup checked, a hand at the boy’s wrist, a word like a feather at the right time.

The stillroom was coming right in the next chamber, and though Zander had wanted to hand her the key that instant, he held it. He’d give it when the smell of lime had gone, and the room would be truly hers.

Kirn was in three days’ time.

Everywhere he looked, men were talking tar and bonfires were alight. Women were threading rope with scraps of color and quarrel. Fiddles were trying their strings in corners. And Grayson heard it all in the hum and thirsted.

He tried it soft the first time, as if testing the fence. “Da? Will there be a sheaf crown this year?”

“Aye,” Zander said, counting it out without thinking. “And a fool stuffed with straw that looks like me if the women get their way.”

Skylar put her hand over her mouth to hide the grin.

“Could I—” Grayson began, and stopped.

Zander’s ribs went iron. “We’ll see from the window.”

Skylar’s head tipped, not toward him—toward the boy. “What would ye do there if ye went?” she asked Grayson.

“Look,” he said instantly, eyes wide. “At the sheaves. And the women’s hair. And the ravens bein’ bold. And—” He stopped, swallowed. “And hear the pipes. Proper. They didnae sound the same through walls.”

Zander looked away. She made him look back with nothing but quiet.

“Ye could hear them from the edge of the green,” she said, voice thoughtful, as if she were measuring rope and not pleading a cause. “Nae from the crush. A hill up from it. Where the wind can fetch the sound without fetchin’ the fevers.”

“Ye’d set a throne for him?” Zander asked, trying for scorn and hearing how thin it came.

“A blanket, laird,” she said. “And a seat. And a span of time ye pick.”

Grayson breathed like a pup at the scent of the door. “It could be a wee time,” he said quickly. “I’d wear two shawls. I’d nae ask for bannocks. I’d mind if ye said ‘home’.”

Zander scrubbed his beard because it bought him seconds and because if he didn’t do something with his hands he’d grip the world until it cracked. “We’re baiting a trap,” he said, forcing his mind to the work him and his shadows had set. “We keep him close till we ken whose hand?—”

“A trap didnae spring on a green,” Skylar said, gentle. “The snare’s in the cup, Zander. Nae in the wind. Let him hear the world that’s his while ye guard the bit that can harm him.”

He lifted his eyes and found hers steady as a law. She’d put a hand on nothing and then on everything—weighting the right side of the scale with a boy’s small hope. It made him want to curse, then bow, then carry her on his back through a fire for the insolence of being right.

“Mason,” he said, because saying his friend’s name bought him sense. “We’ll need his ghosts.”

“As many as ye like,” Skylar said. “And I’ll sit at his elbow. If he coughs mad, we go. If the pulse runs, we go. If ye look at me and I shake my head, we go.”

Grayson nodded rapid and solemn, as if she’d written a treaty in his hearing. “I’ll go home when Skylar shakes,” he promised, earnest as a vow.

Zander’s mouth tried—fool that it was—to form no. He saw it on the boy’s face like a slap that hadn’t yet landed and stopped himself as if he’d caught his own hand. He exhaled slow.

“Ye’ll wear the shawls,” he said to the lad, pointing a finger like a general. “Two of them. Ye’ll sit the hill, nae the green. Ye’ll eat nae a crumb. Ye’ll drink only what Skylar brings and from her hand. Ye’ll stay within reach of me and within sight of Mason’s scowl. If ye flag?—”

“Home,” Grayson finished, shining.

“Home,” Zander agreed, and let the boy’s joy hit him like sun in the eyes.

The lad tried to clap and made a wheeze of it that had them both leaning forward in the same instinct; Skylar caught herself first, covered it with a tidying of the blanket.

“We’ll practice,” she said briskly. “Sittin’ on a stool in the stillroom with two shawls till ye can bear the warmth and nae grumble. ”

“I never gr—” Grayson began.

“Ye grumble like a mill,” Zander said, and the lad’s laugh showed how little insult could find him under the happiness.

They set the hour for the practice as if they were planning a raid.

Skylar fetched shawls and tested how best to wrap him for warmth and ease of breath; Zander watched her hands, learned the fold without thinkin’.

Grayson pretended the stool were a hill and named everyone who crossed the solar: “There’s a piper witha bent reed…

there’s a lass with hair like a fox… there’s a fool throwin’ flour. ”

Skylar named birds over the scene he drew. “Curlew on the wall… crow on the gate… little wren hop-hoppin’ near yer foot.”

Grayson fell into slumber the way blissfully unaware children do. Zander sat without moving.

“He should go,” she murmured, finally, so low it might have been the fire. “Nae for long. But he should .”

“Aye,” he said, because fighting her when she’d laid it out so clean would only mean he’d have to fight himself after.

“And when he has,” she added, gaze still on the boy, “I’ll… I’ll send for a horse.”

The words were quiet as cloth folded, but they made a sound in him like a board cracking. He didn’t answer. The right answer would have been I ken . The wrong one would have been no . He said neither, because the boy slept between them and some truths should not shout in a child’s house.

Instead he reached across the small table and set his big hand palm-up on the wood. Not touching her. Not asking. Offering, the way a man offers a ride when a woman looks tired, and he’s finally learned not to grab.

She looked at his hand as if it were a new tool. Then she laid her smaller one on it, light, not a pledge, not enough to cost her anything if she pulled away. She didn’t pull away.

Zander spoke at last, voice as even as he could make it. “We’ll make it safe. He’ll hear the pipes.”

“Aye,” she said. “He will.”