Page 8 of A Highland Healer Captured (Scottish Daddies #3)

B y the time she’d tested the narrow window slit, which was too slim for a body but perhaps wide enough for a note, the oiled hinges, and the solid oak bed frame, the latch lifted, and a woman stepped inside with the stride of someone who’d no time for nonsense.

“Lady,” the woman said briskly, without a hint of the same Isle accent in the word that the riders had, to Skylar’s surprise. “I’m Katie. Ye’ll be wanting food and a bit of sense of where ye’ve landed, I presume. I’ve both.”

Katie was small and sturdy, her sleeves rolled to the elbow, her apron clean, her hair trying and failing to escape a kerchief.

A tray balanced on one hip like it had grown there.

The smell that rolled off it. It was her favorite, barley porridge.

With it was a heel of fresh bread and a ramekin of butter, and something green and clean like nettle soup.

“I’m nae a lady,” Skylar said automatically, taking the tray before Katie could set it down and devouring with her eyes. “I’m Skylar. And I’m being held against me will. Cannae ye help me escape from here?”

“Aye,” Katie said mildly, lighting a taper from the hearth. “I imagined as much. Eat while ye tell me the rest.”

It was disarming, the way the woman didn’t flinch or scold. Skylar ate. With gusto. She told herself she was shoring up strength for the battle ahead, not accepting kindness from the enemy.

The porridge went first — hot, salted just shy of properly, perfect. The bread she slathered with a scandalous amount of butter and nearly moaned at the taste. The nettle brew was bright and good against her raw throat.

Katie watched Skylar’s jaw work with an approving nod that reminded Skylar painfully of Shioban.

“Better,” Katie pronounced. “Ye’ve color in yer cheeks again.

I’m set to see to ye while ye’re here. I’ll bring what ye need within reason, and I’ll say when a thing is beyond me say-so.

I’ll translate Hebridean foolishness when it’s useful, and keep it to meself when it’s not. ”

“Useful,” Skylar said, swallowing. “They’ve more foolishness than most, yer lot.”

“Aye,” Katie agreed without offense. “But we’re clean and orderly with it.”

Skylar’s laugh startled both of them. It died quickly. “Tell me about… this place.”

“Strathcairn? Walls are strong.” Katie ticked things on her fingers. “The laird? Stronger. His son? Poor bairn, but sweet as honey. He needs ye badly.” Katie’s eyes softened for the first time, earnest enough to tilt Skylar’s heart. “We’ve hopes for ye, mistress. Mind me saying so.”

Skylar set the spoon down. “I’ll nae be bribed by porridge and flattery.”

Katie’s mouth twitched. “Then let me try honesty. Ye’re feared, and ye’re resented, and ye’re admired. Most daenae ken what to call or think of ye yet. I’ll call ye Skylar, as ye wish, me Lady.”

It was so plain, so unadorned a truth that Skylar had to look away to keep her eyes from stinging. “And Laird Strathcairn? What will he call me?”

“Trouble,” Katie said promptly. “And remedy. Both, if ye’re any use.”

Skylar considered the door, then the window, then the line of Katie’s shoulders. “The laddie,” she said, because in the end all roads ran to him. “Grayson. If I help him, I’ll go. That’s our bargain.”

Katie did not answer. She wiped her palms on her apron and lifted the empty tray. “I’ll fetch water,” she said. “And a comb. And I’ll ask the laird when he means for ye to see the bairn.”

“Ask?” Skylar seized on the word. “Ye can… ask him such things?”

“I can ask anyone anything,” Katie said crisply. “Whether they answer is on them. I’ll be back.”

The door clicked behind her, and Skylar sagged briefly into the chair as though someone had loosened a screw behind her ribs.

The food had warmed her, the human conversation steadied her, and nausea followed too quickly for comfort.

The guilt was hot and hard, rising at the knowledge that she had eaten while Ariella lay God-knew-where waiting for her arrival.

She pressed her fist to her mouth. “Hold on, cousin,” she whispered.

“Hold on for me. I’m coming as soon as I make this devil keep his end. ”

Steps in the passage set her spine straight. The latch lifted again, and this time the doorway framed Zander himself.

Zander should have felt triumph crossing his own yard with the Dunlop lass now locked in his keep.

He’d gambled half his reputation on the audacity of the plan itself: ride into MacLennan country, lie in the trees outside their walls like a patient wolf, and steal the one woman the Highlands whispered could cheat the death of a bairn.

Instead, what he felt was an iron bar in his chest and the old ache in his jaw where rage liked to clamp.

The yard’s murmurs had been predictable — bride, witch, prize, trouble — spoken in that infuriating brogue that Skylar could never quite catch.

He was grimly glad of that. It was one thing for her to spit at him, but another thing entirely to feed her the knowledge of every wagging, cowardly tongue.

He’d taken her up to a room decent enough not to shame him and locked the door because he had to, not because he liked the sound of it. Then he’d turned to the other fight. One that waited on benches and behind beards.

Now, in the long hall, the heat of bodies and braziers washed up from the flagged floor. Some he trusted to take a blade for him. Some he trusted to take a blade from him if he ever needed it. All of them had too many opinions.

“I told ye we needed to ask MacLennan leave,” said Fergus of the Hook, a barrel of a man with a grey pelt where hair used to be. His voice had been honed for years to carry across lists and fairs. “We’ve nay quarrel with Hamish.”

“We have need ,” Zander said. He kept his tone cool. He did not have to be loud to be heard. His men had learned that. “Need outruns courtesy.”

“Aye, until courtesy returns with two hundred men at its back,” muttered Tamas of the Burn. “Murray in Crawford willnae take kindly to this. Nor Muir. Ye’ve brought the wasps to our eaves, laird. Swat one and we’ll be stung to death.”

“Nay on even kens I have her,” Zander offered, but it fell on the deaf ears of the crotchety, old men.

A soft scrape of chair legs and Mason settled his elbow on the board, his chin in his palm, the picture of idle patience. Those who didn’t know him would miss the sharpened alertness in his eyes. “Ye lot always cry ruin when the ale’s barely on the table,” he drawled. “Eat first. Bicker after.”

Fergus scowled. “I’ll nae eat till we talk about what he’s done.”

“ The man ,” Zander said, cold enough to crust the ale in their cups, “is yer laird. And sits just here.”

A murmur moved. Mason’s mouth ticked. “Aye, and he’s done the only sensible thing,” Mason added lazily. “He brought the healer. We can argue etiquette, or we can get our clan’s heir breathing steady. Only one matters to me.”

“Only one matters to any of us,” snapped Cameron Black, the sour voice from the shadows earlier. He was clever and loyal and chronically incautious with his tongue. “But ye forget that the last time our laird trusted a woman within these walls, we —”

The bench went over like a felled tree. Zander didn’t remember standing.

He remembered only the thinness of the air around his head and the taste of iron in his mouth.

The next heartbeat placed him three strides closer to Cameron, the man’s collar in his fist, the board creaking with the force of it as he pinned him.

“Finish that,” Zander said, quiet as a winter morning, “and I’ll make sure ye never speak again.”

The room had gone so still he could hear the ash shift in the brazier. Ewan’s eyes widened. He was not afraid of most things. He was afraid of Zander when Zander’s voice went to ground like this.

“I meant nay insult,” Cameron choked, and Zander’s hand tightened anyway, because of course Cameron meant insult. He meant warning, which was its own kind of insult. He meant to say what half the room had been thinking and to see if the laird would flinch. Zander did not flinch.

“Speak of me late wife again in any tone,” Zander said, still low, still perfect, “and ye can take yer cleverness to another laird’s table. Or to the ditch. I’ve room in either place for yer bones.”

Mason moved then. Not quickly. The man never moved quickly when defusing a thing, but he did move without hesitation. He tipped his chair upright, stretched like a cat waking, and slid between Zander and Cameron with a yawn big enough to shame a lion.

“That’s enough,” Mason said, amiable as a summer noon. He planted a hand on Zander’s forearm, palm warm, pressure steady. “We’re all loyal men here. Cameron’s mouth runs faster than his mind on a bad day. We’ve had worse days.”

Cameron nodded as best he could with Zander’s grip on him. “Aye.”

Zander breathed once, through his nose. Twice. He let go. The urge to hit something still boiled under his ribs like a pot forgotten too long, but he set his palms on the board instead, felt the grain under his hands, the solidity of the wood, and anchored himself there.

“Listen,” he said.

They did.

“I took the healer because nay prayer and nay or coin thrown at God has steadied me son’s lungs.

” He let his gaze rake them all, one by one, until they had to look away or look up and meet him.

“Ye served me when I broke O’Brian for less insult than the grave has given me.

Ye ken what I do to those who threaten mine. ”

A hum, half uneasy, half approving, rolled and died.

The memory hung heavy. A winter of smoke and salt, a banner trampled into muck, a name ground into blood and mud until it was no longer a threat.

He had razed a clan because they’d bled his people dry along the marches and thought no one would pay the cost to stop them.

Zander had paid. In coin first. Then in fire.

“So daenae talk to me,” he went on softly, “about bringing danger under me own roof. There is nay safer place for the boy than a keep I can hold with one hand while I strangle a man with the other.”

It was crude. It was true.

Fergus cleared his throat. “Nay one doubts yer grip, me Laird. We fear… the noise of it. MacLennan pride. Crawford steel. Muir stubbornness. They may come shouting outrage.”

“Let them come, should they find out,” Zander said.

“We hold the straths west of Oban. We own the ford. We own the hills on either side. I’ll receive any envoy civilly who comes under a white banner to ask after the lass.

I’ll answer for what I’ve done. But if any of them thinks to take her back by force without parley, I’ll show him the cost of misreckoning Strathcairn. And they’ll pay it in blood.”

Mason’s voice, quiet for once, slid under the last words like a balm. “None will be so daft as to try ye at yer own gate, Zan.”

“Men are daft every day they love their own,” Zander said. “I daenae fault them. I plan for them.”

He let out a breath, long and measured, and looked to the side door where he knew, without turning, Mason’s niece Katie would be listening with one ear while seeing to the healer with the rest.

“Now,” he said, “the bairn.”

That word gentled the room like a hand through a horse’s mane. Men who’d fought at his side had seen Grayson’s small chest labor, had watched Zander pace the hall at night like a caged bear because he could not breathe for his son.

The ones who muttered about MacLennans a moment ago looked down, ashamed by their own fear.

“We’ll bring him to the solar,” Zander said, thinking aloud as much as commanding.

“Light’s better. Warmth holds. The healer will have what she asks.

If she asks for quiet, ye’ll see to it. If she asks for yer silence, ye’ll give that too.

” He cut his gaze to Cameron, who had the grace to nod first and fastest.

“And if she asks for ye?” Mason asked, easy, but with something keen in it.

“If she asks for me, ye’ll drag me to her,” Zander said. “Fetch me from hell for all I care. She will have what she needs.”

Mason’s mouth slanted. “Aye, me Laird.”

The sounds of the other councilmen echoed in sync.

The door at the back opened to admit Katie with her trays. She didn’t look toward Zander, but she tipped her chin just enough for him to read what he needed. “The healer had eaten. The healer had nae broken.”

Good. Let her try to escape. Let her scheme. Let her vow to hate me until her teeth cracked. All I require of her was a miracle… then she can go.

And if he had to break the world to purchase it, he would.

“Council’s adjourned,” he said. “We’ve wasted enough breath on fear. Save it for when me son breathes easy.”

The benches scraped back. Men erupted into three dozen smaller murmurs, threads of talk looping. Mason clapped Cameron on the shoulder with enough force to jolt an apology out of him without using words. Fergus squinted over his lists as if he could make parley terms appear like ink from the grain.

Zander turned away from them all. There was a locked door down the passage with a healer behind it whose voice could set a hall on edge and whose hands, God willing, could do the opposite to a child’s lungs.

He meant to put those hands to work before another hour was lost.