Page 11 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

M ary and Brendan sat at the kitchen table after the noon meal. Hester was baking bread on the other side of the room, while Micah sat opposite her, mending harness. The room had become, in one day, their communal meeting place, since it was the brightest and warmest spot in Castle Gloom.

“It doesn’t look appreciably different from chess,” Mary said, watching as Brendan laid out the board she had brought down from Hamish’s room.

“It’s an older version of it, called shatranj, played in India.”

“He has a great many things around him that remind him of India, doesn’t he?”

“Hamish allowed you into his room?” Brendan asked, surprised.

“I looked inside,” Mary said, shrugging. She was trained to notice things quickly.

He glanced at her, but didn’t comment. Instead, he showed her the game pieces.

“The layout is similar to that of chess. However, elephants replace bishops, and generals take the place of queens. The board is different as well. You’ll notice that the kings and generals are transposed, facing each other.”

“On the way here you said that India changed him. What did you mean?” She propped her elbows on the table.

“A man is more than his health, just as a patient is more than his disease,” she explained in his silence.

It was a sentiment espoused by Matthew Marshall.

Her words, however, concealed a curiosity that had nothing to do with altruism or medicine.

“There’s a reserve to Hamish that was never there before,” Brendan said, speaking softly so that Micah and Hester couldn’t hear his words. “As if he’s on his best behavior around me. I’d much rather he would be himself.”

“In what way?”

“Once he had a booming laugh,” Brendan said. “And a wry sense of humor. He used to smoke the most godawful pipe, simply to annoy our brothers, I think. He was the brother in the middle, the one most consistent. Hamish was always the same. Always just himself.”

Standing, he went to the cask they’d opened the night before, pouring four mugs. He handed Micah and Hester each one before returning to the table. Pushing one across to Mary, he continued. “Sometimes, I’m not even certain I know him anymore.”

“Why did you never rescue him?”

He stared at her, and for the first time since she’d met him, Brendan wasn’t affable or genial. Instead, anger blazed in his eyes.

“Do you think I didn’t try? I scoured every port in In dia. I wouldn’t give up, no matter what evidence I saw or what tales I’d heard. I knew he had to be alive.”

She didn’t speak, waiting for the rest of the story. The anger she’d seen burn so quickly wasn’t, she realized, directed at her.

“I never found him.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest that you didn’t try, Brendan. Please forgive me.” She reached across the table and placed her fingertips on his wrist.

He shook his head as if to negate her words. Or perhaps he’d discerned her compassion and refused it as ably as his brother.

“Seven months after the rebellion had been put down, the British authorities showed me a grave. They told me that Hamish was buried in it, that the body had been so badly burned that he was nothing more than scorched bones.”

“What happened then?”

“I became a coward,” he said, smiling humorlessly. “I couldn’t go home and tell my parents, and I didn’t want to go to Gilmuir and let Alisdair know. So I remained in India.”

“And found him alive, finally.”

“He found me,” Brendan corrected. “Evidently, he’d crawled out of the desert on his hands and knees, and was in such bad shape that they didn’t expect him to live. But he fooled them, recuperating from his ordeal. Still, I almost didn’t recognize him.”

“Don’t you think a year of being imprisoned would have changed a man?” Or did Hamish now hate humanity to such a degree that he would rather hide in an isolated castle than live among people?

Brendan glanced down at the board. “Perhaps. But he’s different.

He doesn’t talk about that year.” Unexpectedly, he smiled.

“You’ll have to get Hamish to tell you. I don’t doubt you will.

You got him to play shatranj with you. I must warn you, however.

Hamish doesn’t play with many people, but when he does, he unfailingly wins. ”

“You discount any abilities I might have. I used to play chess with my husband when we were first married.”

“Did you win?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Mostly, I just learned.”

“You won’t have a chance to just learn with Hamish. He’s very competitive, and very skilled.”

She smiled but didn’t comment. She suspected that Hamish MacRae’s civility would come to her rescue.

A man with the character to note and to apologize for his churlish behavior despite his own internal struggles would allow her to win.

At least she was hoping so. By losing at this wager, he’d be able to concede to her treatment of him while still keeping his dignity.

“Tell me the rules,” she said, concentrating on the board.

“The quickest way to learn shatranj is to understand how it’s different from chess. In addition to the elephants and the generals replacing the other pieces, there is no initial two-step move. Stalemate is always considered a win. So, too, is a bare king. Lastly, the board is not checkered.”

“Otherwise, do the pieces move in a similar direction?”

“Except for the elephant,” Brendan said. “It can only move in a diagonal jump.”

She listened intently, making mental notes and acquitting herself well enough when they played a few practice games.

The intervening hours passed slowly, as if knowing how impatient she was for the game. Finally, dinner was finished, and the kitchen put to rights. She said good night to Hester and Micah, and walked with Brendan back to the tower.

Brendan had taken a dinner tray to Hamish earlier, returning deep in thought. She’d not asked why he looked so pensive, or what the two men had discussed. Perhaps Hamish had taken her advice and spoken to Brendan after all. If so, then she’d already won a partial victory.

They both glanced upward to the soft glow of candlelight in the top of the tower. The deserted castle enveloped Hamish, offering refuge. She felt as if they were unwanted there, that Hamish and Castle Gloom suited each other very well.

“Who owns this place?” she asked.

Brendan shrugged. “From what I could discover, the McLarens. But they abandoned the castle a decade ago.”

They entered the tower, Brendan lighting the wall-mounted sconces from his candle.

“I’ll leave you, then,” he said, hesitating at the base of the steps.

“Wish me luck, or your brother will not allow me to treat him.”

“Then I wish you success. After all, you’ve had a great teacher.”

He grinned at her, and she smiled in response, wondering why she’d never seen it before. He reminded her of Elspeth. Her friend in Inverness was a few years younger, but the closest friend Mary had. Brendan was similar in temperament and nature.

As he headed up to his room, she went to the fire, building it up with one of the logs the men had cut only that morning.

The new wood popped and sizzled, the sound accompanying her thoughts.

She should have donned a new dress, or changed her scarf.

At the very least, she should have brushed her hair.

He is a patient.

He is a man.

He has been wounded. Tortured.

You have suffered as well, Mary.

That thought drew her up short. What arrogance to think her own sense of loss the equal of his experience.

But he suffered from nightmares, and she couldn’t sleep without a candle, and the two seemed not unalike.

So much so that she couldn’t help but wonder if memories and restlessness kept him awake as well.

She knew most of her patients, cared for them as people, as friends.

What she didn’t know about them she learned, snippets of information that helped her decide how to cure the patient and not just the disease.

She used the information to personalize the treatments, give a little comfort where there was only pain or illness.

If a man disliked the feel of wool against his skin, she wrapped a poultice in linen, instead.

If a woman loved the scent of lavender, she often dropped a few sprigs into the water used for bathing.

A child’s favorite toy was often used to help alleviate a child’s fear.

Illness brought out the worst in people, made them feel vulnerable, angry, and afraid. Often those feelings were directed at her. She had to overcome those emotions before she could be an asset to her patients, before she could begin to cure them of what made them sick.

But she’d never before had the desire she did now, to know everything there was to learn about the man she waited for, to flesh out that missing year, sketch in the de tails Brendan had told her.

She wanted to know about those unknown months, about the time when no one had seen or heard of Hamish.

What had happened to him? Where had he been?

Why was he here?

“I should make you come to my room,” he said from behind her.

She held herself tight and turned to look at him.

He’d prepared for their meeting as she had not. His shirt was different, a beige linen that looked to be soft to the touch. His trousers were immaculate, and his boots as well polished as before. His brown hair seemed to gleam with golden highlights from the fire.

“I thank you for sparing me the journey,” she said.

“You don’t like the stairs?” he asked, frowning.

“I don’t like heights,” she admitted, then clarified. “I feel a strange disorientation on the steps. But I never suffer the same dizziness at a window. I suspect it is a flaw in my balance, but I’ve not investigated it further.”

“Yet you brought my breakfast tray. Are you that desperate for a patient, Mary Gilly?”

“Perhaps I am,” she said, smiling at his teasing.

He held out a chair for her, and she sat at the table. The shatranj game had been laid out and she’d not noticed it, being so entranced in her own thoughts.