Page 8 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“I’ve been without a woman for nearly two years, madam. That’s the only need I have.”

His crudeness was deliberate. There was a look in his eyes, however, that cautioned her to be wary. She took a deep breath and brazened it out.

“I’ve treated a number of male patients,” she said, not adding that they were mostly infants or the elderly.

None of them had been remotely like Hamish MacRae.

However, she continued with her bravado.

“I’m used to the ways of men, as well as the workings of their bodies.

Nothing you could do or say has the ability to shock me.

Shall we not play that game between us?”

“I didn’t say what I did to distress you, Mrs. Gilly,” he said, “but to give you fair warning.”

“Most men in your condition would have other things on their minds.”

“In my condition?” One corner of his lip curved upward in a sardonic smile.

He stepped back, but she noted that he kept his fingers resting in the placket of his shirt, as if that was the only way he could support his arm.

“Why can’t you move your arm, Mr. MacRae?”

“Go back to Inverness,” he said, and this time, his voice sounded as if it could cut glass.

“Your brother paid me to treat you, and treat you I will.”

“I will pay you to go back to where you came from.”

“I can’t do that,” she said, smiling gently at him.

“God save me from interfering women.”

She didn’t know quite how to answer that comment. Granted, she was not always welcome by the entire household when she was summoned to a patient’s bedside. Most of the time, however, the patient wanted her there.

“You need me,” she said, refusing to back down. “The sooner you agree to my treating you, the sooner I will be gone.”

“You’ll be gone in the morning.”

He turned and walked away. But she was not so easily dismissed.

Resolutely, she followed him to the stairs.

“At least let me see your arm.”

He turned and stared at her, the look on his face not at all friendly. “My brother says you’re a miracle worker of sorts. Do you intend to work your miracles on me, Angel?”

“Do not call me by that silly name,” she said crossly. “I have neither the temperament nor the holiness to be addressed as an inhabitant from heaven. I am only too human.”

“But you don’t deny that you have the power of miracles at your fingertips.”

“On the contrary,” she said, irritated. “I’m a student of Matthew Marshall’s, and have read everything he’s written on medicine. If there are any miracles in the work that I perform, it is because of his education and his discoveries.”

“A squirrel tail, severed at midnight? Rat’s whiskers added to three dashes of pepper from the Spice Islands?”

“Are you reciting a recipe?” she asked, frowning up at him.

“I am devising one, rather. Something less miraculous and more suitable to witches, I confess.”

He really was the most annoying man.

“Nor am I a witch, Mr. MacRae. My treatments have nothing to do with snails or beaks or other questionable ingredients. Instead, I believe that washing my hands will do a great deal more to protect a patient than any potions I might give them or any ground up toad infusions.”

His half smile didn’t waver.

“I ask that my patients bathe often, that they adopt a simple diet, and that they take a bracing walk each day. I am here to help facilitate wellness, but the patient is the author of his own health.”

“So you don’t believe in bloodletting?”

“I do not,” she said firmly. “Nor does Mr. Marshall. The medicines I prescribe are simple and easily understood, with ingredients long held to be beneficial. I also believe in cold water, hot poultices, and herb teas.”

She crossed her arms in front of her and continued. “I know of at least nine hundred treatments for two hundred seventy-six named ailments. I would have to examine you first and use my powers of observation before I decide upon a course of treatment.”

“I wash often, Mrs. Gilly, and my diet for the last year or so has been painfully simple. I’ve walked the equivalent of the length of Scotland. Using your measurements, I am facilitating my own wellness.”

She tapped her foot on the floor, impatient at his recalcitrance. No one had ever before asked her to prove her skills. “I have at least seventy successful treatments to my credit, from pustule boils to cankerous throats. Would you like me to enumerate them?”

His smile broadened. “I think not.”

“Then what would convince you to let me treat you?”

“Why should I?”

She blinked at him, surprised by the question. “Why, to get better, of course.”

He surprised her by descending the stairs and returning to the fireplace. Watching her, he asked, “What would you give me for being unable to sleep?”

“Nothing,” she said, and could tell that her answer wasn’t what he’d expected. “Perhaps you don’t need as much sleep as other men. Matthew Marshall believes that a man can sleep too much, that it’s better to be abroad at night than to be captive to one’s pillow.”

“Most physicians would have prescribed a sleeping draught.”

“I don’t agree with most physicians,” she said, wondering if that admission would only strengthen his resolve not to let her treat him.

“I only prescribe morphine for dangerous conditions,” she explained.

“Or for those who are so sick that their condition will likely lead to death. I think your arm should be treated, Mr. MacRae. Otherwise, I doubt your injuries are that serious, however much you might wish them to be.”

He looked startled. “Why would you say that?”

She studied him for a moment, realizing that she’d already said too much. There was nothing left but the truth. If he repudiated her, then so be it.

“I think your sleeplessness, Mr. MacRae, comes about not because of your physical condition as much one of the mind. For that I would prescribe a long, thorough discus sion with another human being. Someone with whom you could purge your soul. Perhaps your brother?”

She wanted to put her hand on his arm, pat his hand, initiate some physical link between them, but knew that he would pull away if she did so.

There were times when that was the greatest help she could give another human being.

That was why she sometimes brought a litter of kittens to her elderly, querulous patients.

Before the visit was over, the patient was smiling, and like as not, Mary had found a home for one of the kittens.

This man, however, with his palpable aloofness, didn’t need a puppy or kitten. But he almost desperately needed the comfort of another human being, that much she knew from the look in his eyes. She could feel his aloneness as if it were the match of her own.

“The passions have a greater influence on health than most people know,” she said softly. “Where they hold sway, there’s little I or any other person versed in medicine can do.”

“You’re a poor practitioner,” he said, turning and speaking to the fire, “if you aren’t attempting to get me to swallow some pill or tonic. How will you make a living at your trade?”

“What would my reputation be if I dispensed pills and tonics with no hope of them working?”

“So you would have me talk to Brendan. What if he doesn’t wish to be the recipient of my conscience?”

“Then I will be.” The words escaped her before she censured them. But he said nothing to her admission, which emboldened her further. “Why couldn’t you sleep tonight?”

“I was thinking of you, Mary Gilly,” he said, turning to face her.

“Me?” One hand went to the base of her throat, as if to ease the sudden constriction of her breath.

“I wondered if you were a lonely widow. Are you?”

Other than asking about her health in a general, desultory way, or inquiring if the day was proving to be a good one for her, her patients never asked her personal questions. They never wanted to know what she thought or how she felt about an issue, and not once had anyone asked if she was lonely.

She clasped her hands together tightly and answered him honestly. “So much so that I want to weep with it, sometimes,” she admitted. Too much bluntness, perhaps, but it felt as if the night had stripped them both of the decorum normally present between strangers.

He said nothing, just studied her in the firelight.

Once more she marveled at his appearance.

He wasn’t at all attractive, not in the way that a handsome man was.

He could have come from any culture or any place on earth and been instantly identified as a warrior, a leader of men.

Yet here he was in an isolated tower, eschewing all that was human or companionable.

“And you, Hamish MacRae? Is it loneliness that keeps you awake?”

“No.” He took a few steps toward her. She didn’t move when he reached out to touch her, straightening her shawl around her shoulders. He let his hand rest there so that she could feel the warmth of his palm through the wool.

“I would be happy to have loneliness as an excuse, Mary Gilly. But it isn’t the reason why I can’t sleep at night. Or, when I do, why nightmares threaten.”

“If you tell me your confidences, Mr. MacRae,” she said gently, “they would remain between the two of us. I would never reveal anything to anyone else.”

“I’m not ready to divulge my soul any more than I am my wounds.”

He bowed slightly and headed for the staircase.

As she watched him climb the steps, exhilaration filled her.

She sometimes experienced that sensation when a treatment resulted in a patient’s marked improvement.

However, she’d never felt this way when embarking upon a case.

She suspected it had little to do with medicine and a great deal to do with Hamish MacRae.