Page 39 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

He looked up slowly, as if he had expected her at just that moment. There was nothing cruel in his face. There was nothing soft either.

“I did,” he said.

“Because ye found me letter,” she said, hearing too late the tremor.

“Aye.”

She stepped forward, palms flat on the table between them, and tried to make sense out of the small rawness where her breath had lived all day. “Ye wrote him what?”

“That ye were alive,” he said. “That I took ye. That ye saved me son. That there was a man vowed against us both, and I would put his head on a spike.” His mouth didn’t so much as twitch. “I kept that last bit for meself.”

She should have laughed. She did not. “And now?”

“Now he is at me gate,” Zander said, each word clean as a pinned line on vellum, “and I will open it to him.”

It was the right answer.

It was the only answer.

But it made her feel as if the floor had shifted without moving at all.

“Ye were distant,” she heard herself say, the stupidity of the admission making heat lick at her ears. “I thought… I thought ye’d gone cold to me.”

He studied her, not unkindly. “I went to war on me steps and sent for a faither I’d wronged. If I was cold, it was to leave room for me men to be hot.”

She wanted to take the words and fold them into something that didn’t scrape. She wanted to tell him she’d have warmed him if he’d let her. Instead she set her jaw and nodded once. “I’ll gather me things.”

He didn’t flinch. “I’ll walk ye to him.”

“I can walk meself.”

“I ken.” A beat. “I’ll still walk ye.”

She looked down at the map to escape his eyes. Someone—Mason, likely—had made a crude ink X on the courtyard where the spike stood, as if to make sure history remembered the geography. She looked back up. “Do ye mean to be laird now to me, or man?”

“Both, lass,” he said, and somehow that hurt more than either answer alone.

“Fine,” she said, and was grateful her mouth still obeyed orders.

He shifted the paper he’d been reading. She saw the first line and recognized her own hand—last night’s farewell she’d left on the desk. He had not unfolded it. Or perhaps he had and put it back the way it was to spare them both a second ripping.

“Yer father waits,” he said, voice even. “I’ll nae keep him.”

She stepped back from the table so fast the legs rasped the rushes. She wanted to ask him What am I to ye? , but she already knew his answer.

Free .

It was the right answer; it was the wrong one; it was the only one she could carry out under her own power.

“Let’s go, then,” she said, and made herself turn before she could ask for another night.

He followed, which was its own kind of kindness.

The courtyard was all edges—shadows with armor in them, the spike’s dark lesson, the west gate flung open under guard.

Beyond it, the glen shone with the cold light of a day already fraying.

Hamish MacLennan sat straight on a horse that had seen better oats, the MacLennan banner lifting and falling once, twice in the mild wind.

Skylar’s steps slowed at the sight of him, and then she was running without remembering how her body had decided to do it. “Faither,” she called, and Hamish’s head swung, his hand out, the old grin breaking his beard even before she reached him.

He lifted her cleanly off her feet the way he had when she was small and had scraped knees and had no notion men carried wars in their pockets. “Sky,” he said into her hair, voice thick and hoarse, “are ye whole?”

“Aye.” She pulled back to show him the proof of it. “I’m whole.”

His eyes raked her face the way a father’s do—counting bruises, making saints’ bargains behind his teeth. Then his gaze cut past her to Zander, and the welcome in his mouth died into something flinty. Hamish said nothing, which was worse than curses.

Zander stopped a measured distance away, one hand on Grayson’s shoulder. The boy leaned hard into him, eyes red-rimmed and swollen in the way children get when they have kept themselves quiet too long and see at last the person who will allow them to be loud.

“Ye’re leavin’ us,” Grayson blurted, and the words tore her in two.

“Aye,” she said, and her smile broke. “It is time for me to take me leave, little hawk.”

He stepped out from under his father’s hand and flung himself against her skirts, arms tight around her waist. “Da says ye have to,” he said into the wool, the words thick with fear and fury both. “Tell him nay.”

Her hands found his head. She bent and pressed her cheek to his hair. “Oh, me heart.” She could not make promises she couldn’t keep. She could not lie to a child and call it mercy. She stroked once, twice, enough for memory. “I have to go, Gray. But I?—”

He tore free and glared up at Zander, tears streaking clean lines through the grime on his face. “Da, daenae let her go.”

Zander’s jaw worked. For a heartbeat she saw the man who had kissed her like he was drowning and the father who would drown for this boy. Then the laird put both hands on his son’s shoulders and knelt, bringing his face level with the child’s.

“We gave our word,” he said, voice steady enough that Skylar’s breath hitched with the effort it must cost him. “She came when I took her. She stayed when I asked. She saved ye. We’ll nae keep her when she asks to go.”

“I’m nae askin’ ye!” Grayson cried, stamping a foot—small, infuriated, tragic. “I’m tellin’ ye!”

Zander’s mouth twisted. He pulled the boy into his chest and held him hard enough that Skylar felt the hug in her own ribs. Then he stood, keeping one hand at the back of the child’s head, and looked at her.

“Say goodbye,” he said softly.

It wasn’t cold. It wasn’t cruel. It was a blade he put in her hand so she could cut herself free cleanly, not by inches.

She bent and kissed Grayson’s damp cheek, then his forehead, then the tip of his nose as if ritual could save any of them from the next part.

“Be wicked at dice,” she whispered, and he hiccuped a laugh that made everything worse.

“Mind Katie. Argue with yer faither, but only when ye’re right.

Feed the ravens when Mason isnae lookin’.

Learn the names of the wee birds at the hedge and tell me in a letter.

I’ll write back and scold ye if ye get them wrong. ”

“I’ll get them right,” he said, fierce and wrecked. “I’ll get all of them right.”

“I ken ye will,” she said, and forced herself to stand. “I love ye, Grayson,” she added before caution could steal it back. “Very much.”

He folded into Zander without a word. She kept her eyes on the boy until she could risk lifting them to the man.

Zander stepped close. Hamish’s voice snapped from the saddle, “I would think twice about where yer hands go, Strathcairn.”

Zander didn’t look away from Skylar. He lifted a hand—so slowly a skittish horse would not have shied from it—and set his knuckles against her cheek, a touch light as breath. “Goodbye, Skylar,” he said, and the rawness in it stripped her to something true.

She leaned into the touch for one stolen second, then stepped back before she could anchor herself so deep she’d never tear free.

Hamish swung down and offered a hand to help her into the small carriage that had rolled forward under the banner. She climbed up without looking back and then immediately looked back, because she was not strong enough to make a clean cut without one last wound.

Zander stood where she’d left him, one hand on his son’s shoulder, blood seeping through the edge of clean linen at his shoulder bandage, face pale and set in that expression she’d learned meant I will not break while ye can see me.

Grayson’s mouth trembled; he lifted a hand. She lifted hers. Neither of them waved.

Hamish slapped the side of the carriage and the mare leaned into the traces. The gate began to swallow the view of the yard she’d learned by heart. She shut her eyes for a breath, opened them again, because she would not let the last image be darkness.

“We’ll talk when ye’ve had somethin’ to eat,” he said, his horse walking alongside the carriage slowly. “And sleep. And I’ll nae say a word ill of the man till ye’ve the breath to argue me down.”

She huffed something like a laugh and wiped her eyes with the heel of her palm. “Ye’ll need plenty of breath,” she said.

Her father simply huffed a response.

“I wasnae a prisoner. They fed me, faither.”

“Aye, so ye say.”

“Faither—Ariella. Have ye word?”

Hamish’s beard shifted on a grim smile. “Aye. She’s well now.”

Her head whipped toward him. “Well?”

“Aye. The fever broke. Woke near the end of last week, hungry as a colt. Yer aunt says the lass healed herself.”

For a moment Skylar could only stare. Relief crashed through her, fierce and dizzying, so strong it near stole her balance on the seat.

Ariella was safe.

Alive.

Whole.

The weight she had carried these many weeks loosened from her shoulders like a shroud cut away.

Her eyes blurred, not from sorrow this time, but from joy too sharp to hold. And when she turned, when she looked back—Zander was still there at the gate. Grayson had been led inside, but the laird had not moved.

He stood alone.

Broad and unyielding.

Watching her go.

Skylar’s breath hitched hard enough to sting.

Relief made her lightheaded.

Love made her reckless.

Before her father could shape her name into warning, she shoved the carriage door wide and jumped.