She even kissed her father goodbye without any resentment. Duty was something she understood. Being responsible for a half-dozen Knights and another thirty or so employees, some of them family, couldn’t be an easy task. He did the best he could, poor man, and he’d raised her to do the same. So now she was off to heal a wounded highlander and solve a mystery of the deep. She stifled a laugh. Compared to her bustling practice, this would be practically a holiday.
Less than an hour later she stood alone on the deck of a small dirigible, bound for the island of Mull in the Hebrides. She breathed in the clean, fresh air, now that they were free of the city’s smoke and she had removed the breathing mask necessary on the streets below. Tendrils of her curly hair escaped their pins in the wind, fluttering against her snug-fitting goggles, but there were no other passengers to frown at her lack of propriety. Up here, she was free.
Shortly after dawn the following morning, they landed on a wide, rocky meadow with a rough tumble of hillside rolling down to the sea.
The southwestern tip of Mull fairly glowed with bucolic beauty. Geneva looked around in resignation. Rugged. Isolated. Quiet. The antithesis of everything she loved about Edinburgh. It was a pleasant change, though, to walk outside without her air filter.
The crew waved to let her know it was time to debark. She firmed her shoulders and made her way off the airship. A blustery wind whipped even more of Geneva’s hair loose from its knot as she made her way down the gangplank. It was warmer here than in Edinburgh, despite the salty breezes. That was something, she supposed.
A kilted, silver-haired driver with a dour expression on his lined face sat waiting in a cart drawn by a sturdy Shetland pony. One of the crewmen carried her portmanteau and helped her into the cart. Her medical bag, she carried herself. “You must be Mr. Gordon.” According to the teletexts that had flown back and forth before she departed, her father’s Alice was now a Mrs. MacDonald, and this was her servant, Hamish Gordon.
He spat a stream of tobacco into the heath. “Aye. Thought they were bringing a doctor.”
It was a familiar refrain, but it never failed to grate. Geneva stared him down. “I am a physician, fully accredited and licensed, which is probably more than you can say for some of your local hacks.”
Mr. Gordon shrugged. “No skin off my nose if the big bastard dies.” With a brusque nod at the departing dirigible, he twitched the reins. As the cart bumped away from the shore onto something that might almost have been a path, Geneva used both hands to hold on to the seat so she wouldn’t bounce out. She gripped her medical bag between her feet. After perhaps a quarter mile they reached a snug stone farmhouse with a thatched roof, a tiny walled garden and a sturdy barn in the rear. A handful of hairy Highland cattle and a dozen or more gray-faced sheep dotted the greensward around it. A couple crofts hunkered in the distance and Geneva could still see the ocean over her shoulder and hear the crash of waves on the beach.
Mr. Gordon pulled the cart around the back of the house to the kitchen door. He didn’t bother helping Geneva down, but he did at least grab her bags while she hopped to the ground, grateful for her minimal hoopskirt and flat-heeled boots. One of the benefits of her profession was an excuse to dress for practicality rather than fashion.
Before she’d even shaken out her skirts, the kitchen door opened and a woman peered out, shorter and plainer than Geneva had imagined she’d be. “At last. Come in, Doctor.”
Mr. Gordon cocked his head, a minimally polite gesture to indicate she should precede him. Geneva climbed the two steps to the porch and held out her hand. “Dr. Geneva MacKay, at your service.”
“Oh, dear Lord, you’re Fergus’s daughter.” The woman, probably somewhere in her late forties, seemed to catch herself staring and grinned broadly. The brilliance of it transformed her tired face, giving Geneva a glimpse at what her father might have seen in a younger version. “He must be very proud. His little girl is a doctor.”
“Yes, ma’am.” All Geneva knew about Alice was that she was a widow, childless and had some degree of foresight. “Is the patient still alive?”
“Right this way. Hamish, please bring the doctor’s bags.” Mrs. MacDonald led the way through a pleasant dining room and parlor into a ground-floor bedroom. “My husband was an invalid for some years before he died, so we set up his chamber in what used to be the library. Since I live alone, I’ve never bothered to change it back.”
“That must have come in handy a time or two.” Geneva entered a spacious chamber lined with bookshelves. Heavy drapes hung open, allowing plenty of light to filter in, and a hearty fire crackled in the big stone hearth, a kettle on a hob at the ready. The scents of lye soap, iodine and blood filled the air, but she detected no odor of infection. Though she wasn’t a Knight like her father and brother, Geneva did possess the same, unusually keen senses. She walked toward a carved bed, its curtains replaced by sheer mosquito netting. A table sat beside the bed, holding rolled bandages, medicines, and a pitcher and basin. “This is excellent. Where did you study nursing?”
Mrs. MacDonald smiled again. “Thank you. I was with Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. Before that, I’d learned what I could from books and the local healers. My husband was a soldier in India, and wounded shortly after our marriage. I nursed him for three years.”
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
A groan came from the bed, and Geneva turned her full attention to her patient. The big, brawny man lay on his back, his head tossing restlessly back and forth. His face, too rugged to be considered handsome, was pale and bruised, with a tinge of coppery beard-shadow. A neatly stitched cut ran from his left eyebrow to his hairline, and his long, fair hair had been pulled into a messy braid, giving him the look of a felled Viking. After checking and approving the stitches, she laid a hand on his brow, finding it unusually cool, not raging with fever as she’d expected. “Has he been conscious at all?”
Mrs. MacDonald stood off to the side, out of Geneva’s stream of light, her hands folded at her waist. “Not really. His eyes opened once this morning and he muttered something unintelligible.”
“Was it in English? If he fell from a boat, he could be a sailor from nearly anywhere.” Gently, Geneva pulled back the sheet to reveal a torso showing more bandages than skin. Blood seeped through the white gauze on his chest in several locations, indicating a continued loss of blood that worried her. “I assume these cuts were stitched, as well?”
“Of course. I packed the worst of them with peat moss and honey. Not scientific, I know, but our village healer has had great results with that combination.” When Geneva didn’t complain, the older woman gave a small sigh. “As to his speech, I couldn’t tell. I thought I heard the word tor, but it may have been Thor, or even door. Sorry.”
Geneva pulled her stethoscope from her bag. “You’ll get no grief from me for using natural remedies. Not unless they’re of the more revolting variety. Mosses and honey both have recorded success at preventing infection.” Geneva had studied at Lovelace College for Women, the newest school at Oxford University, under the most modern practitioners, but also had access to centuries of recorded knowledge through the Order. Muslim and Hindu doctors had documented things hundreds of years earlier that British physicians were only beginning to rediscover.
She also sensed the tendrils of power radiating from this man, weak though they were. “Who are you?” Why wasn’t he mending? There had to be an internal head injury to account for his continued unconsciousness. That didn’t bode well.
“Let’s change these bandages so I can take a look at the wounds.” Geneva fetched the kettle from its hob on the fireplace and poured boiling water into the basin. Before she’d put the kettle back, Mrs. MacDonald was there, handing her the bar of lye soap and diluting the water with a touch of cold from the pitcher on the table.
“Perfect, thank you.” Both women washed their hands. Together they removed the bandages one by one and Geneva inspected each jagged cut.
“Some were from
being smashed on the rocks at the shore, I think.” The nurse rolled a new bandage onto the man’s shoulder. “Others, like this one, must be bites from the creature itself.”
Geneva believed it. The wounds were horrific, some obviously deep enough to have caused internal damage. “Did you actually see this monster?”
Mrs. MacDonald bit her lip and shook her head. “Hamish did. He drove it to the fish market in the village in our cart.”
“Fish market? You mean it’s to be eaten?” Geneva’s stomach lurched. So much for having a look at the thing to see if it was infected or injured. The Order wouldn’t be happy to lose out on such a find.
“It will feed the entire village for weeks.” Mrs. MacDonald peeled the blanket back further, exposing the fact that the patient wore only a pair of smallclothes, cut away to reveal his legs and hip. “The most worrisome injury, other than his unconsciousness, is the shattered pelvis. I have some…sense of these things sometimes, and I can feel the bone fragments sticking out. If he lives, it will take a miracle to allow him to walk again.”
Gently, Geneva palpated the swollen purple skin over the man’s right hip. “Dear Lord, you’re right. If he were conscious, he’d be in excruciating pain. Can you hold his shoulders, Mrs. MacDonald? I’m going to try to line up the bones and I don’t want his body to jerk around.”
“Of course, Doctor. Call me Alice, please. I don’t get many off-island women to talk to, especially ones who can discuss science and medicine instead of fashion.”
“Geneva.” With that, a new friendship was formed.
It took all of Geneva’s strength and skill to realign the man’s shattered hip. When she was done, she bound his body as tightly as a babe in swaddling, and prayed it would be enough.
“All we can do now is tend him and hope that since he’s strong and healthy, his body will decide to heal itself.”
“Will you be leaving? Hamish can drive you to the ferry to the mainland, or we can teletext your father from my study.” Teletext was the most modern way to communicate long distances—short messages over wires running the length and breadth of Britain, and now, even to the isles and the Continent.
Geneva looked back at the man in the bed and bit her lip. There was something about him that tugged at her—maybe it was only that he didn’t seem to have anyone else. “Not today. It will be easier to take care of him with two of us.” Dr. MacLeod could handle any emergencies that cropped up at her practice tomorrow morning.
A sigh of relief escaped Alice’s lips. “Thank you. Maggie—that’s Hamish’s wife and my housekeeper—believes him to be a monster himself since he washed up with the kraken.”
“Is that why I haven’t seen her?”
Alice nodded. “Yes. She’s refused to leave her cottage, though she’s sent Hamish over with food. At least in that respect, we shan’t have to fend for ourselves.”
“I take it your gifts tell you no such thing?” Geneva laid her stethoscope on the table with the bandages and instruments.
“No. My only sense of him, beyond the pain, is a profound loneliness. He has power of some sort, but he’s not an evil man, just a sad one. Perhaps that’s why I went to Fergus for help. Had I married your father, we might have had a son around this one’s age, with a similar aura of magick. I’d hate to think of such a child alone and sad.” She stroked a hand across the patient’s temple before moving to the door. “Let me show you your room, and where you can wash up while I make us some tea. I’m sure Maggie will send over luncheon in a bit, but I could use a cuppa right now, and I’ve some nice shortbread.”
Geneva allowed herself a happy little hum. Tea and shortbread sounded like manna at that moment. “Lead on, Alice. You’re a woman after my own heart.” While they ate, she could find out if Alice knew anything about giant squid.
* * *
The darkness tried to drag Magnus back into its depths and he had little will to fight. It was comforting, this darkness, warm and free of pain. You’ve struggled enough, it seemed to whisper, let go.
He would have, but for another voice, one not as subtle but far more sweet. “Come now, sir. Open your eyes for me.”
Magnus tried. The rich, feminine voice held the soft burr of a lowlander, with educated overtones. How had such a one come to his island? How had he not known? He was laird of Torkholm, and all who came here had to be approved by him.
“Who are you, sir? Won’t you at least wake and tell me your name?” Soft, cool fingers stroked Magnus’s forehead.
He moved his lips to answer the lass. From the silkiness of her touch and the sweet scent of her leaning over him, he might have thought her an angel, but he knew better. Dead in battle or not, he’d have never ended up in Heaven. A valkyrie, perhaps? The Valhalla of his Norse ancestors was a far more likely fate for him than the vicar’s pearly gates.
“His heart rate and breathing are weaker,” the sweet voice said. “I’m worried, Alice. He didn’t wake at all last night. Though his wounds haven’t festered, he seems to be losing strength.”
“He’s in God’s hands,” said another female voice, a little older, a little deeper, and oddly familiar. A door opened and closed, but he still felt the touch of strong, feminine hands, the fingers laced with his own.
At long last Magnus was able to unglue the lashes on one eyelid. The light in the room blinded him for a moment, but his vision adjusted and soon he was able to see. A woman sat by his bedside, her flowing hair the color of his favorite roan stallion. Her fingers tightened on his as she realized he’d woken. “T-Torkholm,” he gasped between lips as cracked as a mud path on a hot day.
The lass—pretty in a strong, country sort of way—pressed him down when he tried to sit. “Your hip is injured. Don’t move.” With her other hand, she held a water-filled sponge to his lips. “Only a little to start with.”
The cool liquid felt wonderful on his parched lips, but a single sip was all he could manage. He blinked again, this time both eyes focusing on her. “Magnus Findlay.” His name seemed to be dragged from his lips. Pain seared through him from more places than he could name, and he’d never once felt this weak. What was wrong? Why hadn’t the island healed him, as it always did?
He blinked again and the answer swam into focus, for a moment at least. This was a strange room—one he’d never seen before. Magnus sagged back against the woman’s arm, and let her ease him down to the pillows. The darkness began to close in again. One thought registered, ringing through his brain.
He wasn’t on Torkholm. He was going to die.
Chapter Two
“Home.”
Geneva leaned over her patient, straining to hear his words. Through the course of the day, Magnus Findlay had continued to weaken, though his bleeding stopped and there was no sign of infection. She’d been on Mull for twenty-four hours now, and the only changes in his condition had been this gradual dampening of his strength, and his few brief moments of wakefulness. Most terrifying to her, his magickal aura had weakened, as well. She’d only ever seen that before when a patient was lost.
“Must. Go. Home.”
“To your island, my lord?” She tried to get him to converse, to stay awake long enough to get some nourishment into him. “You want to return to Torkholm?”
“Must.” He slid into unconsciousness again, and Geneva gripped his hand.
“Stay with me, Magnus. I mean Lord Findlay.” She’d confirmed his identity via teletext with the Order. One Magnus Robert Findlay, age thirty, was indeed Baron Findlay of Torkholm, a small isle about thirty miles southwest of Mull. According to the Order’s sources—likely Debrett’s, as he was a peer—he was a widower, the last of his line and had no living relatives. Torkholm was not on teletext lines, so she couldn’t contact a servant or friend. That there was no one she could summon to what might be his deathbed was the main reason Geneva had stayed. Alice couldn’t sit with him every moment, and no one, especially someone who’d fought such a valiant battle, should have to die alone.
&
nbsp; His haunting blue eyes, piercing and sad, had nothing to do with her decision.
Geneva wiped his brow with a cool cloth. He wanted to go home to die. That was what he was asking for. His face was so gaunt and pale that she didn’t think it would be long. Perhaps by the next morning he would be gone.
It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and the sea was mild. Alice entered the room, her footsteps almost silent.
“Alice, do you think we can find a boatman willing to go to Torkholm?”
“I imagine we could,” Alice said. “It isn’t that far, though I’ve never had reason to go there. I’m sure Hamish can find someone. Do you want to send for his kin?”
“I want to take him home.” It sounded stupid, but she couldn’t shake the notion that it was the right thing to do. “He keeps saying he must. If that’s his only dying wish, I’d like to honor it.”
“I see.” Alice bit her lip. “Perhaps—”
Hamish tapped on the door to the sickroom, holding his faded grey cap in his hands. “Beggin’ your pardon, ma’am, but there’s someone comin’ up the drive.”
Throwing open the curtains, Alice and Geneva looked out to see two kilted behemoths, one dark and one ginger streaked with gray, climb out of a delivery wagon. They made their way up to the door and the ginger wiped his hand on his kilt before he knocked.
“Aye?” Hamish barked when he opened the front door.
“We heard you’ve a man here.”
They’d moved away from the window, preventing Geneva from seeing which man spoke.
“We’re looking for a big fair-haired gentleman,” the other said, his tone more educated and surlier than the first. “Washed up on shore, and wearing the Findlay plaid. Is he here?”
“What’s it to you if ’e is?”
Alice winced at Hamish’s rudeness and left the sickroom, Geneva a few steps behind.
“Gentlemen,” Alice said. “How can I help you?”
Editor's Choice Volume I - Slow summer Kisses, Kilts & kraken, Negotiating point Page 2
