Page 12 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“I trust Brendan taught you what he could?”

She nodded, feeling absurdly shy. What nonsense. How could she gain his trust if she acted as foolish as a girl? “You don’t sound as if you have much faith in Brendan’s instructions.”

He smiled again, a halfhearted attempt at humor that managed only to be distantly pleasant. As if it were an expression he used to mask what he truly felt.

“I’m just anxious to conclude our wager.”

“The sooner you win, the sooner I’m gone?”

He nodded.

She wished the firelight were not so bright, casting an almost festive orange glow over the two of them.

She could see him well enough, and the one thing that stopped her from staring unabashedly at Hamish was his own hooded gaze.

From time to time, she would look up from the board to find him contemplating her.

He seemed to know the pieces well by touch, his fingers spreading over his portion of the board as if to mark their position with his palm. He was a more aggressive player than Brendan, and much more adventurous than Gordon. Little time elapsed between the end of her move and his.

“Brendan said you were a widow. Did your husband die recently?” An acceptable question, but it nevertheless surprised her. But he’d done that before, evinced an interest in her that was the equal of hers in him.

Not a normal patient.

“A year ago.” In September, when the winds howled of winter to come and the rooms were chilled and the shadows lengthened, a time for burrowing into havens and gathering with family. However, other than Charles, who’d been like Gordon’s son, she’d no other relatives.

“Do you miss him?”

She glanced up at him, her fingers still resting on a pawn. “Yes, I do. He was so much a part of my life that it would be unusual if I didn’t.”

“Tell me about him.”

She sat back and considered her words. Her fingertips rested on the edge of the table and she examined them.

“My husband was a goldsmith. An artisan of some renown. He was talented, but a good businessman as well. He cared about his customers, and our neighbors. Is that what you want to know?”

“Not really,” he said. His voice was abrasive but not his tone. “When did you marry?”

“When I was seventeen.”

“Brendan said he was much older than you.”

She frowned at him, but her irritation was reserved for Brendan.

“It’s true he was an older man, a friend of my parents. My father ran a tavern, and Gordon came often, especially in the winter months. He was a sociable man, for all that he’d never married.”

“So, he saw you and decided you should be his new wife, is that it? Was there no one to stay him from marrying a girl so young when he was so old?”

“It was considered a very good marriage for me,” she corrected him.

“A very prosperous union. Gordon was not only a wealthy man, he was a good one. After my father died, he kept the tavern open to provide income for my mother. When she became ill only weeks later, he took her into our home and was always unfailingly kind and polite to her. Any woman would have felt grateful to have him as a husband.”

“Did you nurse your mother?”

She studied him in the candlelight. “Yes,” she said finally. “I did.”

“And your husband as well?”

“Yes.”

“Do you never grow tired of the aged or the infirm?”

What an odd question. His gaze was steady, and she couldn’t discern his thoughts. Had he learned the ability to hide himself in plain sight in India?

“I find great satisfaction in making someone well.”

He nodded as if content with her answer.

“Is that why you became a healer?”

Again, he surprised her. “Yes,” she said.

“Did your husband make you laugh?”

Now, that was hardly a question he should be asking her.

Because it irritated her, she embellished the truth a bit.

“He had a wicked sense of humor and could imitate almost anyone who came into our shop. He collected anecdotes the way a child would accumulate pebbles in his pocket.” She looked into the fire, thinking that it was better to remember the early years than the difficult times. “So, yes, he made me laugh.”

“How did he die?”

“He had a sickness in his stomach. Probably a tumor.”

Silence hung between them as thick as the shadows in the corners.

“You have no children, do you?”

She shook her head. “Are you a father, Mr. MacRae?”

“To the best of my knowledge, I’m not. Didn’t you wish to have children?”

“Isn’t that question presumptuous on your part?”

“Perhaps it is. But no more so than your determination to have me be your patient.”

She nodded, unwillingly conceding that point.

“Why are you? Are there no patients in Inverness craving your talents? Or are you here because of Brendan? He holds you in great esteem.”

Was his voice a little frosty, or did she simply imagine it?

“He’s concerned about you,” she said.

“Enough to spend a fortune to hire a healer to come to an isolated castle for the purpose of badgering me.”

“It wasn’t greed that brought me here,” she said, amused. “The money he gave me will go to the free clinic for the poor.”

“Then what brought you here?” he asked sardonically.

She didn’t tell him that she was beginning to yearn for adventure. But what she did say was perhaps as revealing. “Perhaps the idea of traveling so far outside Inverness was too tempting.”

“Have you never left the city before?”

She moved a piece on the board before glancing at him.

“You mustn’t sound so contemptuous, Mr. MacRae. Not all of us can be ship captains from birth.”

“Did Brendan tell you that?” It was his turn to be amused.

“Most of the journey was spent with him telling me of your family, how they left Scotland many years ago, how your father, despite his dislike of the sea, began a thriving trading company. You have twenty-two ships now in the MacRae fleet, I believe, and each of the brothers has had his turn at being a captain.”

“You have an impressive memory.”

“It was an exceedingly boring journey.”

“What did Brendan tell you about me?”

Had he heard their earlier conversations? “Enough to make me think you need me more than you say.”

“As you can see, I’m not the wreck that my brother no doubt portrayed me to be.”

“But you can’t move your left arm, and I suspect that you’re not healing as well as you would like me to believe. A few times now, your right hand has brushed across your chest. Is there a wound there that bothers you?”

He stared at her. “It’s disconcerting to be defined by my symptoms.”

“How am I to judge you otherwise? We’ve spent most of our time in conversation with your questioning me.”

He nodded once, a concession she accepted.

“Would you consider it a loss, if I don’t allow you to treat me? Some celestial battle between good and evil, with a black mark on your side of the score sheet if you fail?”

“Do you think that life is measured so easily? I don’t. But I will worry about you, and that’s a nuisance.”

He smiled fully then, the first time he had truly done so.

“So in order to prevent your worry, I should simply acquiesce and allow you to do what you will? So that I’m not a nuisance, that is.”

“I would appreciate it,” she said, propping her chin on her hands. “There are so many other people who need my thoughts more than you.”

“But if you don’t treat me, I’ll be at the forefront of them?”

She didn’t tell him that she was very much afraid he would be there whether or not she tried to heal him. He was an immensely fascinating man.

He shouldn’t be sitting there with her. The firelight accentuated the darkness of her eyes and the subtle sheen of auburn in her hair. There were tiny marks at the corners of her eyes as if she laughed often. But she was young, for all her protestations of wisdom.

Tonight, she smelled of bread and ale, scents that nonetheless managed to accentuate her voluptuousness. Her lips fascinated him, so much so that one part of his mind sat back in bemused wonder, almost ridicule, and watched the mature Hamish act as if he were a lovelorn youth.

Her top lip did not have an indentation, but curved almost like an inverted bottom lip. The effect was curiously pouty, as if she begged for a kiss with every word that began with an “h.” He began to watch for it, or for her to say “you.”

The Angel of Inverness was an earthbound spirit.

Her mouth wasn’t the only feature to attract his attention.

Her eyes, soft and brown, were worthy enough in their own right.

They were deeply colored, encircled in black, giving them definition and depth.

Perhaps that’s why they appeared so much darker than his.

But then, he had not seen himself in a great many months.

Perhaps he should be thankful for that omission.

She had a way of clasping her hands tightly together, thumbs aligned in military precision.

She tapped them against each other in an oddly rhythmic way, or placed one over the other.

He wanted to reach across the table and still her hands, but he was so entranced with the movement, and the fact that it betrayed her nervousness, that he did nothing, simply watched her.

Sometimes, she took a deep breath, and the gauzy scarf at her neck lifted by several inches. Such an effect did not hide the fulsomeness of her bodice.

What would she say if he told her that the only treatment he wished was her mouth on his?

He wouldn’t say it, of course. It was better to wish her gone, however much he might want her.

Women like Mary Gilly remained fascinating long beyond their time.

He didn’t want any additional memories. His were blackened by his nightmares and tinted with regret.

They played in silence for several more minutes, he content to simply study her. The firelight’s glow was diffused only a little by the scattering of candles. She was equally as lovely in daylight, another youthful thought from a man who’d long since put his adolescence behind him.