The Highlander’s Healer (Blood of Duncliffe Series)

by Emilia Ferguson

  “Are we going to ride all day?” she asked.

  Alexander sighed. “Another two hours,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  He sighed. He was actually amazed by how unruffled she seemed to be. He considered, briefly, how he might have reacted in similar circumstance. If his own home had been assaulted, and he'd been forced to run off with complete strangers, whose intent and origin he didn't know, could he have been as calm?

  Furious and afraid, that's how he'd feel, he had to admit. Moreover, if it had happened to him, it would not have even been so bad. At least, for him, the worst thing they could do was kill him. He had claim to multiple homesteads and sources of income so that, even if Lachlann itself were taken, he could count on Merrilin Fort and the cottages.

  “We will stay in the fort two days?” she asked.

  “I don't know yet,” he grunted.

  “You said we might go back to the cottage the day after tomorrow.”

  “Yes,” he managed to say. He sighed inwardly. He couldn't say with any accuracy where they would be in two days' time. All he could say for certain was that, when he sent her back, he wouldn't be able to come with her. He wouldn't send her alone. He glanced peripherally at their riding-companion, who grinned.

  “Talkative, isnae she?”

  “Stop it, Randell.”

  “What, sir?”

  “Get that look off your face and stop smiling.”

  “What look, sir?” Randell asked.

  “May I remind you I can have you expelled from the regiment?”

  “Right, sir. I remember, sir.”

  “Fine.”

  They rode on in silence.

  As they rode, Alexander found himself relaxing. The countryside was beautiful – tall pine trees, mixed with broad-leafed nut-trees and other variations grew on either side. The pathway was rough earth, strewn here and there with leaf and stone. It had rained, recently, and the rich scent of loam drifted up to them.

  At least, he reflected wryly, the danger was drawing off behind them. They had another hour or so to ride.

  The woods drew on and Alexander felt himself slowly falling asleep. He had no idea why, for he had slept quite adequately in the cottage – though it had been cold. It was something about the rise and fall of the horse's hooves, and the close proximity of a warm body beside his own. He sighed.

  “Look! I can see the tower!”

  Alexander looked up, and nodded, surprised.

  “Yes,” he agreed warmly. “That's the fortress. We're almost there. Perhaps half an hour more.”

  “Good,” she whispered.

  Alexander felt a stab of guilt. Here he was, making her ride for hours, when neither of them had even had much time for proper breakfast. She had likely never so much as seen a horse up close, never mind having ridden!

  “I would suggest we stop, if it were not dangerous,” he murmured.

  “I understand,” she said.

  When they reached the fortress, Alexander slipped off first. He reached up to Prudence and was shocked when she settled her feet on the floor, and then crumpled.

  “Prudence!”

  She looked up at him as he caught her, blinking in surprise. “My legs are weary...” she murmured, leaning against him. “Sorry. I didn't think it would happen.”

  “You've never ridden before,” he reminded her gently. He looked up as an officer came out of the fort. Suddenly, the utter absurdity of his position wore through to him. He was here, on the doorstep of a fortress where he was supposed to have ridden yesterday, in the company of a wounded soldier, with a woman in his arms!

  “Captain Lachlann, reporting for duty?” the officer – a lieutenant, junior to Alexander, asked.

  Alexander could have wiped the smirk off the fellow's face for him. Instead, he drew in a slow breath. “I am Captain Lachlann, yes,” he said.

  “Your men are in the barracks, sir.”

  “Good,” Alexander said, trying to remain looking like an officer on parade-ground form while balancing a wounded woman against his side.

  “I will take word of your arrival to my superior,” the young lieutenant said, turning around. Alexander did likewise, though slower, allowing Prudence to keep up too.

  Behind them, he noticed, their wounded comrade had slid off his horse and was doing his best to keep up.

  “Have your men take my wounded soldier to the infirmary,” he said to the lieutenant. As it happened, the youth spoke Lowland Scots, so he spoke it to him in return. He felt Prudence stiffen.

  “No you won't, sir,” she whispered. “Not while I can still tend him.”

  Alexander tensed. It was one thing to arrive here with her, and let the lieutenant giggle at him behind his back, as he doubtless would. It was another thing altogether to have her be seen and heard to order him in public.

  “You will hold your opinions to yourself until we get inside,” he growled.

  “Fine.”

  Alexander was surprised by her sharp retort, and a little stung. He had expected her to accept his demand, and maybe even to be apologetic. Instead, she was curt and brisk.

  She has a lot of steel in her.

  Again, he wondered about the circumstances that had led to her being here alone. Probably a widow of the cause, he judged. But then, why the English?

  There have been Englishmen loyal to the cause, too, he reminded himself. He had heard that some lords and ladies had moved to Scotland, mainly those of the Catholic faith who still had some adherence to the Stuart line for that reason, but some who supported them for other reasons.

  “You can find accommodation with the officers' wives,” he said.

  She tensed. “People will wonder what I am here for,” she murmured.

  Alexander blushed. This was another aspect he hadn't considered. However, then again, he hadn't taken time to consider anything. All he had thought of was the urgency of getting them away, as fast as possible, and into the forest.

  “You will tell them you are a seamstress,” he said. “That it's your task to make repairs for the army.”

  “I hope they will believe me,” she murmured.

  “I'm sure they will.”

  “Not if they ask me to sew anything to prove it.”

  He grinned. “We'll have to hope they don't, then.”

  They reached the interior of the fort together.

  “You will report to Colonel Brewer, sir?”

  “I will,” Alexander nodded. He turned to Prudence. “If you go to the kitchens, the cook will be able to take you to the barracks, to the women's quarters.”

  “I want to see my patient.”

  Alexander sighed. “I will come back here in ten minutes,” he managed at last. “If you're still here, I'll take you to the infirmary.”

  “Fine.”

  He turned and left, heading quickly up the stairs behind the young lieutenant.

  The fellow led him to an office. Alexander waited behind him, inwardly praying that the lieutenant instantly forgot all he had seen. He knew it was ridiculous, but he felt embarrassed. He didn't want word being bandied about the camp that he was bested by a woman. Or even that Prudence was here. It was safer for her if no one knew about her. Safer now and safer for when she returned to her home.

  Always assuming she still has a home.

  Alexander shifted uncomfortably, feeling a stab of guilt. If he hadn't cannoned into her life – quite by accident – she would now be sitting comfortably in her cottage, darning socks. Or whatever it was that she did. He felt his lip lift in a smile – somehow, imagining Prudence darning socks wasn't quite feasible. He felt glad that at least now he could make it up to her by being her protector.

  His mind filled with the image of the ride, the sweet sensation of her body pressed to his. He closed his eyes again, savoring the sensation of her warm, rounded buttocks pressed to his leg, the sigh of her breath as they swayed and jolted down the pathway together.

  “Captain?”

  Alexander r
aised a brow as the door to the office opened. The man behind the desk was grizzle-haired, and looked tired. He wasn't Alexander's commanding officer – that was Colonel Brownlow, who was already further south. All the same, he gave Alexander a keen eye.

  “Yes?” Alexander asked, swallowing hard.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Alexander nodded, wincing. “Yes, sir.”

  “We have a report that your men arrived two days ago. They are stationed in the former granary. They await your command. And there's a letter from Colonel Brownlow for you. He is in the south and sends instructions.”

  “Oh. Thank you.” Alexander let out a breath, grateful that the colonel had sent orders. He desperately wanted to get on down toward Falkirk and the battle there. “Any further duties, sir?”

  “None to speak of,” the colonel raised his brow. “Go and get some rest.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Out in the colonnade again, Alexander looked around sharply for Prudence. He'd asked her to wait for him at the corner! “Prudence?”

  No answer. At the corner where he had told her to wait, a soldier lounged against the wall, checking a list of supplies. A curse on it! Where was she?

  “Prudence?” Again, nothing. Alexander felt his heart start to thump.

  Had she absolutely no instinct for her own safety? The military camp was a dangerous place for a woman alone. Anything might happen, given the proximity of a thousand men who hadn't seen a woman in a long time.

  “Prudence?” he called one last time, looking around the gloomy colonnade. No answer came back, just the tramp and shouts of men, returning from a foraging trip and marching through the great gate into the fortress-common.

  “Why can you not just listen?” he muttered under his breath, even as he shouldered his way out from under the arch and into the cobbled street.

  “Easy, sir,” a soldier said sharply, as Alexander stepped out in front of him.

  “Curse you, too,” Alexander muttered, hastily getting out of the way as a platoon marched past.

  He paused in the town square, confounded. The fortress town was based on an old walled village, he thought, with the big gatehouse, where he had left Prudence, and the square in the center, the homes of craftsmen and small shops dotted about around the stony expanse.

  “Damn it – where would she have gone?” He looked around the square slowly, trying to think. If he was Prudence, where would he go?

  If I was Prudence, I'd probably be too damn terrified to move with this lot around, he thought wryly.

  The soldiers who lurched out of the ale-house, tam o'shanters set woefully askew on their heads, swaying with each step, looked fearsome to him when seen through her eyes.

  However, he reflected wryly, since he was not Prudence, he could only take a wild guess as to what she might have felt, or where she'd gone. He shrugged and turned left, choosing randomly. The town wasn't so big, and there weren't that many women in it now that it had been turned over to the soldiers. He would find her soon enough.

  Cheered, he followed the cobblestone street into the shade of the outer wall. The old inn by the gatehouse was part built into the wall, a tall building with three levels, the roof red-tiled, the outside white daub and black wattle, freshly-tarred. The front wall sported a wooden sign, newly-painted with a cross. By the door, a man with a leg swathed in bandages lounged on a crutch. The infirmary, he realized with a jolt.

  “Damn it! Of course!”

  Quickening his pace, he ran across and into the building.

  “Prudence?” Alexander called sharply, stepping into the hallway. What must have been a bustling inn entryway reeked of carbolic and rosemary burned in the fires, used to sweeten the air. He coughed and stepped back, then called out again.

  “Prudence?”

  He found her on the second floor. She was in one of the bedchambers that served as a ward, standing by one of the three beds, loosely-constructed from planks. As he might have guessed, Randell was there.

  “Prudence!” he said loudly, voice ragged with relief and the first touch of anger. “There you are! You foolish thing! What were you thinking, wandering off on your own? This place's dangerous.”

  “So,” she continued, unconcerned, to Randell. “I know you don't understand a word of this, but you will need to take it twice a day, until you start to feel stronger. Two times.” She nodded, held up two fingers, patted his shoulder lightly, and then turned to the interloper. “I had to tend to him,” she said, raising a mild brow. “What is it?”

  She regarded him as one might regard a troublesome salesman on market day.

  Alexander stepped back, stung. “You should have stayed where I asked you!” he said angrily. “You could have been kidnapped, anything!”

  Prudence raised a mild brow. “I am here as a healer. I think they are enough in need of one in this town to leave me unmolested.”

  Alexander's eyes widened. “You always have an answer, don't you?” he muttered angrily.

  “When there is an answer to be had, then yes,” Prudence said mildly.

  “Oh! You infernal...” He swore, but she had already turned away.

  “Now, then, Randell. I'll leave the herbs with Doctor Maybrooke.” She pointed out of the door, mimed someone taller than herself, and nodded. “He seems a sensible sort.”

  Alexander raised a brow. She'd only been in here five minutes! How was it that she already knew the staff? His temper, and the fire of the confrontation – which he had to admit he'd enjoyed – soured into suspicious possessiveness.

  “Ta, Miss,” Randell broke in annoyingly. He looked up at her as if she was an angel. Alexander wanted to slap him.

  “You are going to cause me so much trouble,” he growled at her.

  “I think you cause yourself the trouble,” Prudence said placidly, walking with him to the open doorway. “I asked for none of this. Now, I understand they have need of nurses here, so I will be staying on at the infirmary. There's sleeping quarters for staff out at the back...”

  “Nonsense!” Alexander expostulated. “You're coming with me.”

  “Why should I?”

  He sighed. Put like that, he had to see her viewpoint. Why should she? After all, he'd done nothing except reprimand her, and was, as far as she knew, no less dangerous than any other man.

  “Fine,” he said. “Look, I'll write you out some sort of pass. I don't know if it will help, but perhaps my men will be less likely to cause you trouble if they see something with my seal on it?” He fished about in the satchel he had – by some strange miracle – not lost yet, and drew out a piece of paper meant for dispatches, and a pencil. He would need a table and a candle, for the wax.

  “No need,” Prudence said lightly. “Doctor Maybrooke will vouch for my safety.”

  “Doctor...?” Alexander protested, but as he opened his mouth, a voice came from the hallway.

  “Miss Prudence? If you could come and look at the...Oh.”

  A tall fellow with a dearth of hair and a serious face came into the room. He had been smiling, for Prudence presumably, but when he saw Alexander he looked at him suspiciously.

  “Sir? You have an injury to attend?”

  “No,” Alexander murmured. “I'm just visiting a comrade.” He felt stupid suddenly, and not more than a little resentful, as Prudence turned to the young doctor and smiled.

  “There you are! You have a new patient?”

  “It's the fellow in the ward downstairs. The one with the sores? I wanted to inquire about that salve of herbs you mentioned…?”

  “Oh! I see! The one with sage and wound wort?”

  “That's the one,” he nodded.

  As they went down the stairs, exchanging notes like two colleagues, Alexander stayed at the top, feeling utterly useless. “Damn it,” he swore under his breath.

  He was, for the moment, utterly extraneous. Prudence had, in the brief ten minutes that he'd been with the colonel, found her accommodation, her place in the camp and a purpose. Whic
h was, he reflected miserably, a lot more than he had right now. He read again through the orders from Brownlow, his captain.

  Caught up at the fort at Sunderland. Stay where you are. Will send for you as reinforcements shortly. Until then, stay at Merrilin. C.M.B.

  Alexander sighed, crumpling it up in his fist, and stuffed the note into his satchel. Grounded here, cut off from the action further south, he felt frustrated, drained, and useless.

  Prudence, in her element, it seemed, had no use for him.

  Surprisingly, that hurt.

  He turned around and went back to the fort.

  CONSIDERATIONS TO CONTEMPLATE

  The light shone down into the courtyard, painting the cobbles from a biscuit brown to cream. Prudence, leaning on an upper sill in the infirmary, guessed it to be about eight of the clock.

  I feel as if I haven't slept in years.

  She had been awake most of the night, tending to a fellow with a high fever. The fever had broken half an hour ago and, utterly drained, she leaned on the windowsill and watched the sun slowly rise over the fort walls. It was the fifth day of her life in the fort.

  At home, I'd be putting on the kettle for a good cup of tea.

  She sighed. Oddly, for all that her life was far more peaceful that way, she found that she was happier here than she had been in a long time. Possibly since before she'd left the village of Pennyford, where she'd been brought up, and gone to work at the big house at Estley Estate.

  “Miss Prudence?”

  “Yes, Doctor Maybrooke?”

  “Patient in the second-floor ward's been asking for you. By name.”

  “Oh,” Prudence scraped blonde hair out of one eye and rose, dreamily, from where she leaned against the window-sill, to see what her patient needed.

  As she walked part of the way behind Doctor Maybrooke, she found herself thinking about him in relation to that arrogant hothead, Alexander.

  Of the two of them, Maybrooke's a nicer sort.

  Calm, level-mannered, kindly, Doctor Horatius Maybrooke was an honest, easygoing sort. Prudence liked him. He seemed solicitous and friendly and, given other circumstances, Prudence could imagine they would have been courting now.