Page 17 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“Brendan does not smell of flowers, Mary. How can you ask that I trade him for your presence?”

He teased her, she knew. However, his banter had an edge to it. The prettiest rose also bears a hurtful thorn.

“What would your life be like if you’d not found healing to occupy you?”

She hesitated, her hands flat against his chest. Her gaze met his, and for a second, she thought she could see herself in his eyes. Did he merely think her a pretentious woman? Someone who dabbled in the hobby of treating illness to keep her days full?

“I’d have been content to live my life just as it was. A normal life, an ordinary one.”

“I think you would not have been content with that, Mary.”

“As you were not?”

“Perhaps,” he admitted.

“You’re an example of why I shouldn’t wish for too much adventure, Hamish.” She pressed gently against his chest, as if to emphasize the rendition carved into him by the Atavasi.

He looked surprised at her words, as if he’d expected her to take his barbs and not return one of her own.

They fell silent once again; the only sounds those of the slosh of the water in the basin and the slap of the cloth against his skin.

“Will you play shatranj with me again tonight?”

“I would probably be bored,” she said. “Especially if you allow me to win again.” She glanced up to find him smiling.

“You weren’t surprised,” he said.

“Not truly,” she admitted. “I’d hoped that you’d concede the game and allow me to treat you. I trusted in your gentlemanly impulses.”

“That was a mistake.”

She ignored that comment. “Your loss was very skillfully done. Someone who was not as good a player could not have managed it, I think. But then I might have won on my own.” She pulled out the neighboring chair and sat.

“Another error on your part, to believe yourself that skilled.”

Sitting back with the cloth wadded up in one hand, Mary stared at him in amusement. “You’re very arrogant.”

“I’m very good. While you have the capability to be a good player, you’re not yet a great one.”

“But I learned quickly. You have to admit that.”

He nodded, smiling.

“As far as improving, perhaps all I need is practice.”

“I’ll set up the board in my room. Shall we say after dinner?”

She really shouldn’t. They both knew that. “Yes,” she said. “Will you join us for dinner?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“You’ve seen me, and you still ask that question?”

“Brendan has seen you as well. But unless you’re going to take your shirt off for Micah and Hester, they wouldn’t have a comment on your appearance.”

True, his back and chest was a frightening scene. But his face wasn’t that badly scarred. The small marks would probably fade in time, being no more visible than a milkmaid’s pox.

He was far from ugly.

“I think people would notice you, Hamish, but not because you’re scarred.”

One of his eyebrows lifted, but he said nothing. She felt an unaccustomed blush suffuse her face. She was not used to complimenting a man on his appearance.

“Do I not frighten you, Mary?”

Her gaze flew to his. “Of course not,” she said quickly.

That first moment she met him half shrouded in darkness, he’d been only a subject of fascination, not revulsion.

Even now, with his chest and his back revealed, she could only think one startling thought.

He was too much a man for them to kill him.

If he didn’t feel rage toward his captors, she did.

He reached out and touched her cheek with his fingers. Mary turned her head, and before she realized what she was doing, held his hand against her face. Worse, she compounded the error of the moment by keeping his hand there long after she should have pulled away.

She should have told him that it was a gesture Gordon had often made, and that she’d been caught up in a moment of memory. But the truth was that she’d not remembered her husband at all. In fact, she would be hard-pressed to remember his face at this moment.

When his fingers moved slightly and touched her lips, she should have pulled away completely and stood, moving to the other side of the room.

But in actuality, she wanted him to touch her.

It had been so very long since she’d felt tenderness or the slow, heavy pounding of her heart that preceded desire.

Slowly, propriety returning to her in droplets, she stood and skirted the table.

Handing him a dry cloth, she watched as he wiped his chest in deliberate strokes.

When his skin was dry, she picked up his shirt.

The stitches were finely sewn, and she wanted to ask him who’d made this for him.

Was it a mother, a sister, a sweetheart?

“Have you ever married?” she asked as she handed the garment to him. There, a normal enough question between almost strangers. A healer and her patient might pass the time learning of each other.

“Never,” he said abruptly, the words sounding bitten off.

“Did you never wish to?”

“There never seemed to be the time. Nor did I find the right woman. The sea became my wife, mistress, and sweetheart.”

“A watery companion, Hamish,” she said, and was rewarded for her teasing with his smile. “You should give some thought to marriage. My married patients live longer and have more contented lives than those who remain single.”

“Do you counsel your women patients as well as men?”

“Women rarely need advice about marriage,” she said calmly. “They know that the natural order of things is to be joined in life.”

“Not all of us are willing to settle for the type of marriage you had, Mary.”

Startled, she stared at him.

“What type of marriage do you think I had?”

He shrugged and donned his shirt.

“I shared a great friendship with my husband. And loved him as well.”

He looked dubious.

She wiped down her instruments, placed them back in the case, and returned the vials to their positions.

One was missing, and she ran her fingers over the hole its absence created.

She’d used most of the mixture in the nightly tonic she’d given Gordon and had misplaced the container soon after.

Perhaps she’d not yet replaced it as a way to remind her of her own failings, a warning to be humble in the face of disease.

“What would you have in your marriage, if not companionship and friendship, Hamish?”

“Passion. Adoration.”

She blinked at him several times. “Passion is fleeting, and adoration is best reserved for God.”

“Then you’ve never truly seen a happy marriage, only one that’s a pale shadow.”

He stood and smiled down at her.

For her peace of mind, she should limit her acquaintance with Hamish.

This fascination she felt about his adventures and tribulations would gradually pass, as would her curiosity.

Or if it didn’t, she could satisfy it by asking questions of Brendan.

But she shouldn’t be in Hamish’s company any more than was necessary.

He made her forget that he was a patient, and she a healer.

“Will you join me tonight?” He hesitated on the stairs, and she looked up at him. Now was the time to offer him an excuse, to be wise and proper.

“Yes,” she said, knowing that it was the worst possible answer.