Page 19 of The Highlander’s Enchanted Healer (Spellbound Hearts #2)

“Ye look like ye are about to fall where ye’re standing.”

Isla’s voice pierced the mist blanketing my sleep-deprived mind. I blinked and tried to form a response, but my thoughts were sluggish from two days of tending to Tomas as he fought the fever that had taken hold of him.

“Sit down,” Isla insisted, as I had done to her earlier today when she’d looked as if she were going to drop where she stood.

I paused with the rag I’d just dipped in the water basin suspended in midair.

Droplets fell from the cloth, plopping into the water below as rivulets of cool water ran down my wrist and up my forearm.

“I’m fine,” I assured her, wringing out the rag to return to Tomas.

I still needed to sponge his arms and face.

“Ye are nae fine,” Isla insisted, gaining her feet from where she’d been trying to catch some sleep sitting on the ground. “Ye look awful.”

“Ye’re one to talk,” I retorted, still amazed at the odd sense of kinship I’d developed with this woman in the last two days as we had worked together to keep her brother alive. “Ye’ve dark smudges under yer eyes, and yer hair looks like a bird’s nest.”

“Ye have black smudges under yer eyes, too” Isla responded, “and yer hair looks like a bird’s nest as well.”

We both laughed at our traded barbs as she came to stand before me, and I got a whiff of her sweat-soaked gown. I wrinkled my nose. “Do I smell like ye?”

She arched her eyebrows at me as she placed a hand on her brother’s sweat-glistening forehead and frowned. “I do nae ken. Do I smell like sour milk?”

“Aye.”

“Then, aye,” she replied, turning her gaze from Tomas to me, “ye do smell like me.”

“Och, we stink.”

“Aye.” She gave me a weak smile and then took a deep breath. “Does the fever seem down to ye at all?”

I’d been sponging Tomas, so I knew the fever still had a grip on his body. “A bit,” I responded truthfully. “It’s nae where I hoped it would be, though. We will keep at it.”

She opened her mouth to reply, but the ancient iron hinges of the healing room door groaned in protest as it swung open.

“How is he?” Laird Campbell demanded, ducking his towering frame beneath the doorway.

His woolen braies clung precariously to the sharp cut of his hip bones, leaving the rest of him bare to the golden light of the afternoon sun that streamed through the window.

Droplets of water from a recent washing clung to the dark hair on his chest, trailing down the ridged valley between abdominal muscles that rippled with each breath.

He looked expectantly between Isla and me with a bright, searching gaze.

My tongue cleaved to the roof of my mouth, useless as a dried leaf.

The man hadn’t merely been carved by the gods; he’d been polished, perfected, and presented as their masterwork.

“I would have come sooner,” he said, speaking into the silence, “but I had to go to the Fraser clan to tend to a problem, and I only just returned,” he finished, clearly misinterpreting my and Isla’s silences for possible anger with him for not checking upon us sooner.

I was amazed that he even cared. He was laird, after all.

A quick glance under my eyelashes at Isla confirmed what I suspected.

She was gawking at him, clearly as bemused as I was by his physical presence and the commanding way he filled the room just by standing in it.

I cleared my throat. “A fever took hold after ye left, Laird.”

“Call me Ross,” he replied, moving to stand beside me and look down at Tomas.

I nodded. I supposed after a shared kiss, mayhap he felt odd about my calling him laird.

“We’ve nae left his side, Laird,” Isla replied, and I thought I detected an emphasis on his title by her, and given the way Ross flicked his green gaze to her in surprise, I kenned he’d heard the inflection on his title as well.

But he did nae offer her to call him by his given name, which I realized with a start made me feel oddly happy and special.

I was losing my mind to be glad my enemy wanted me, and only me, to call him by his given name.

“Aye.” Ross nodded, and devil take the man if I could not help but notice how a lock of his thick dark hair swung over his right eye with his movement. He raised his arm, muscles rippling as he did so, and shoved his hair back out of his face. “Ye two look like death.”

“Do ye always use such honeyed words with the lasses?” I quipped, dismayed at myself the moment the words slipped out. Was I flirting? I was not certain because I’d never done it before.

A brief smile tipped up his lips before a serious look settled on his face. “I did nae mean offense. I simply mean I can tell the two of ye have nae left his side. Why do ye both nae retire to yer chambers, and I’ll stay with Tomas and sponge him or whatever else ye tell me to do.”

“Nay,” Isla and I responded in unison, our gazes meeting and acknowledging our shared need to remain with the lad until the fever broke.

Tomas was her brother, so her stubbornness was understandable, and I…

Well, I needed to save him, given it was a warrior from my clan who had shot him. I felt personably responsible.

Ross glanced between the two of us once more and nodded. “I can see by the stubborn set of both of yer jaws that there will nae be any changing yer minds.”

“Nay, Laird,” Isla responded first. “Imagine if it were yer brother or sister lying here. Ye’d nae leave their side.”

“Aye, ye’re correct,” he said, the words gentle.

I felt compelled to voice my own reasonable explanation aloud or risk looking strange for my refusal to depart. “I’m his healer. I’ll stay until he’s out of danger.”

“Also understandable,” Ross replied, locking his green gaze on mine. I vowed I saw a hunger in his eyes, and with it came the return of that tightness in the pit of my belly and between my thighs that he’d caused before. Heat stained my cheeks at my wantonness.

“And admirable,” he added.

Had his tone dropped low and husky, or was I imagining things? I stole another glance at Isla, and she glanced between Ross and me.

Ross cleared his throat as he took a step back. “I’ll just leave ye ladies to it, then,” he said, exiting the room before either of us could respond.

When the door shut behind him, Isla made a derisive sound from deep in her throat.

“What is it?” I asked, wiping the rag over Tomas’s forehead and trying to forget the image of Ross’s hard body, but the blasted thing was seared in my brain.

“‘Call me Ross,’” she said, her tone snippy. I looked to her and saw her roll her eyes. “I’ve been trying to catch Laird Campbell’s attention for years, and ye stroll in but a few days ago and he’s telling ye to call him Ross and gazing at ye as if ye were a sweet treat he wished to lick.”

Heat swept my entire body even as unwanted excitement leaped in my chest. This was wrong and bad to be happy that my enemy—or at least, I thought he was my enemy—was lusting after me, as I was him. I was so confused. “I do nae think he was staring at me in such a way.”

“Please!” she snapped, grabbing the cloth from me and shoving it so hard into the wash basin that water sloshed over the edge.

“’Twas like this,” she said, and gave me a look akin to my hounds when they wanted me to pet them.

I pressed my lips together on my desire to laugh.

“I may as well nae have even been here for all he cared about my presence!”

“He answered ye!” I protested.

“Because he’s polite. Do ye ken,” she said, facing me and shaking the cloth in my direction, “he has nae been with a lass since his parents died and his sister was ravished?”

“I did hear something about that,” I said vaguely.

“He made a vow,” she said, her tone vehement.

“And all of us, all of us lasses, have wanted to be the one to get him to break it,” she said, turning to run the cloth down Tomas’s right arm and then his left.

“And nae just to bed him,” she added, grinning wickedly.

“Though he is most certainly one of the finest men I’ve ever seen. ”

I agreed, but I pressed my lips together on saying so aloud.

“He would make a fine husband, and nae just because he’s a laird. He’s a good man.”

“How so?” I asked, curious. Others’ opinions of a person could be very telling.

“He’s honorable, fair, generous, and kind. He used to be wild, but since his parents’ deaths, all his wicked ways have changed.”

I thought about what Allan had said regarding Ross rebelling against his father’s harsh rule of him, and I was curious if Isla saw his actions of before in the same light. “Why do ye think he was wicked before but nae now?”

“Oh, ’tis simple. His da was verra demanding with him. We all saw it. He could practically nae do right in his da’s eyes, so he quit trying and did the opposite of what was expected of him.”

“Was his da cruel?” I asked, thinking of the church and the poisoning.

“Nay, nay. He was worried for the future of the clan, what with the Gordons pressing into our land, and I think he just wanted to make Ross into a strong leader.” She shrugged, and before I could ask more, the door to the healing room creaked again, and there stood Fenella with one arm full of blankets and the other holding a trencher of food, a wine jug balanced in the middle.

“Laird Campbell said ye two needed some comforts in here,” she said as she entered the room.

She set the trencher down and handed each of us a blanket.

As I took mine, I couldn’t help but admit that the fact that Ross had thought of us and had gone out of his way to see to our needs truly did speak to a caring man.

“How’s Tomas?” Fenella asked.

“Still with fever,” I replied.

She made a derisive noise in her throat. “Mayhap leave a foot in the water.” Her gaze came to me. “I do nae mean to overstep. I ken ye’re the healer, but my mama always swore a foot in the water helped bring fever down.”

Given I wasn’t truly a healer, I was willing to try anything. “I thank ye,” I replied.

“I have to get back to the kitchens,” Fenella said. “We’re busy preparing for Laird Fergusson’s upcoming visit.”

“Roger Fergusson?” I asked. “Lady Alba’s, er, friend?”

“Aye,” Fenella replied. “He sent word that he’ll be returning in the next sennight, and he has a sweet tooth. And well, we all in the kitchens like to try to give him all his favorite foods when he’s here.”

“Because ye all hope his visits will aid Alba?” I guessed. “And ye wish him to keep coming back?”

“Nae, just Alba,” Fenella said. “If Alba’s mind returns, then Laird Campbell will be a step closer to forgiving himself for what happened to her and his parents, and if he does that, then mayhap he’ll allow himself happiness.”

“Ye all truly care for him,” I blurted.

The older woman nodded. “Aye. He’s a verra good man. I’ll check back in on ye both tonight.”

Once Fenella was gone, Isla finished sponging Tomas, and we agreed to leave one of his feet in the cool water for a bit to see if it helped with the fever.

After all this was seen to, Isla and I ate our fill of food from the trencher, drank all the wine, and snuggled under the blankets.

I immediately felt the pull of sleep, and just as my eyelids were fluttering shut, Isla spoke.

“Mayhap ye will end up healing Alba and wedding Laird Campbell,” she said with a teasing tone.

I pretended to snore. It was the only choice.

I could not respond. What would I say? Even if it turned out that Ross’s father hadn’t poisoned my family, the sea of deceit between us was great, and much of it my making.

I could release my anger toward him for going on the defensive, if that was the case, and warring with my clan to protect his own, but I suspected he would not ever allow himself to love a Gordon, let alone one who had lied to him.