‘See to the laird’s call and then we will finish this.’
Davidh stood as Robert signalled to him to approach. He nodded to Parlan for there was much to be said about the widow’s knowledge and her ability to destroy someone with gossip.
* * *
It took longer than he expected to speak with the chieftain. It took another couple of hours to sort through arrangements for a forthcoming journey that Robert would undertake to the Tor Castle, his former home. And it took more time to hunt, unsuccessfully, for his friend who had disappeared. Finally, he made his way to the village.
The house stood quiet and he eased his way in the door. It was late enough that all would be sleeping within and Davidh was practised at arriving and leaving in the dark of night. When his duties called, it mattered not the time when he must answer them. The smell of something aromatic and delicious rose from the hearth and Davidh saw the small pot at the edge of the fire.
A place was set on the smaller table that they used for meals with a pitcher at its side. As he looked around, even in the lowlight of the fire, everything was neat and clean and organised. As he paced around the main chamber, the scents of the herbs and plants she, Anna, was drying floated in the air round him. Davidh wondered if she was yet awake, so he knocked lightly on the door of the bedchamber she and her son used.
The light footsteps approaching from within made him take a breath and hold it. The door opened and Anna stood there fully clothed before him. No, not ready for sleep yet either.
Rather than closing the door behind her as was usual when she tried not to wake her son, this time she left it open as she stepped into the main chamber. Davidh could see into her room and the smaller pallet where Iain slept was empty.
‘Where is Iain?’
Chapter Seventeen
‘He stayed up at the keep this night. He said they begin very early in the morn and ’tis easier to be there.’ With her hands clenched tightly into a ball, Anna began to pace in front of her doorway.
‘Ah,’ he said, watching the anxiety fill her gaze. ‘You allowed this but worry over him.’ He shook his head. ‘Lachlan’s grandson lives with him above the stables. If that is where Iain is—’ she nodded ‘—then he will be well.’
Anna let out a breath and shook her hands to loosen them at his assurances. From the way she continued to wrap her arms across her chest and from the fact that she still paced, Davidh understood there was more to her upset than her son’s first stay up in the keep.
‘Anna?’ She looked over at him. ‘We need to speak about Lilias.’
‘And I need to speak to you about your son.’ She glanced at the door to his bedchamber and nodded. ‘I do not wish Colm to hear any of this if he wakes. Come into my chamber.’
Blood rushed to that part of him that he did not wish to have aroused at this moment at the innocent invitation of hers. He tamped down the growing desire within himself and swore that this would not end up as their last two encounters had.
He followed her inside and watched as she lit another tallow candle and placed it on the table that sat next to her pallet. She’d arranged a sitting area there, with a chair and a stool close to the table. A large basket filled with garments waited there, as did a smaller one of sewing supplies. He sat on the stool when she took her place in the chair.
‘Firstly,’ she said softly, ‘we must speak about Colm.’
His son? He’d been doing so well these last weeks under her care.
‘Colm? Has he misbehaved in some way?’ The words no sooner left his tongue than he thought of the other, dreaded possibility. ‘Is he...worse?’ He closed his eyes with the pain of it.
‘Aye.’ The single word nearly ended his own life. His heart pounded hard in his chest as he waited for more.
‘But he has not coughed. He has been playing. He has...’ He thrust his hands into his hair, raking them back and pressing on his head. ‘Worse?’
‘The cough is not the problem, Davidh. He struggles to breathe more often. Colm will not say so, but I have observed him and he is worsening.’
‘What can we do?’
His voice cracked as he asked the question and Anna’s own heart tightened as she watched Davidh absorb this blow. Then she heard the question as he’d asked it—what can we do?
‘I am changing the medicaments I’ve been giving him and changing the number of treatments each day.’
‘What can I do?’ he asked. The hunger to help in his voice brought tears to her eyes.
‘I am sorry, Davidh. There is not much we can do. I think he should avoid the stillroom until I have finished cleaning it. Dusty places like that will make it harder for him.’
‘There is nothing else? How can I sit by and let this happen?’
He stood then and walked to the shuttered window. Leaning his head on it, he shocked her by slamming his hand against the stone wall. She gasped as he did it again and then a third time.
‘That will not help,’ she said, walking to his side and grabbing hold of his arm before he could do it again. ‘Look! You have injured yourself.’ She guided him to the chair and pushed him into it. ‘Wait there.’
Anna quickly gathered some cloths and an ointment and some warm water from the pot that sat near the hearth. Going back into the chamber, she found him staring at the wall that separated their rooms. She dragged the stool over and sat facing him.
‘Give me your hand,’ she said.
She placed his warm, strong, cut and bleeding hand on her lap over the basin and cleaned it. If he felt pain, he gave no sign of it. Anna understood that all the possible outcomes for his son were racing through his thoughts right now and he would not feel a sword plunging into his back if someone did that.
He hissed once as she applied an unguent to the torn knuckles, but that was his only reaction. Once she’d wrapped a bandage around his hand, she let it rest on her lap and placed the bowl of bloodied water on the floor.
‘Will he die?’
His usually bright eyes and direct gaze filled now with stark grief and loss. He watched her and waited for her to give him some shred of hope. She had been fortunate for Iain had been strong from birth and through his childhood. He suffered few injuries and no illnesses, so facing this situation was not one she had any experience in handling.
She wanted to ease his pain.
She wanted to promise she could help his son.
The sad truth was she could not.
‘Aye.’
The word echoed in the silence of the chamber. A death sentence proclaimed for a young boy of eight years.
Davidh moaned then in anguish and slid to his knees. When Anna stood, he wrapped his arms around her legs and pressed his face against her. The shuddering tremors as he quietly sobbed out his grief tore her apart. She managed to guide him over to sit on the pallet and she held him until the storm had eased within him.
It was a terrible thing for a father to face and he must face it so that he could help Colm through it.
‘I will do whatever I can, Davidh,’ she promised. ‘I will seek out knowledge about his condition and try to slow it.’ She stroked his back and held him close. ‘And if God wills it so, ’twill be many years before death comes.’
‘Whatever the price, I will pay it, Anna. Whatever you need, I will get it,’ he whispered. He lifted his head and stared at her. The devastation there hurt her.
‘We will do our best, Davidh.’
When he began to stand, she took hold of his arm and pulled him back to sit at her side on the pallet. She wanted to give him comfort. She wanted to ease the horrific pain there in his gaze. He followed her back down as she laid on the pallet. Taking him in her arms, she held him close. He leaned his head down against her and did not move or speak, accepting her embrace.
* * *
Some time later, as his breathing levelle
d and he eased into sleep, she still held him close. And in the dark of the night, she turned on her side and he turned with her, sliding closer and closer until their bodies touched from head to toe. His warm breath against her ear soothed her and she fell deeply asleep.
* * *
‘Mam?’ Iain called out.
It was Davidh’s daily custom to wake quickly, clear-minded and ready to see to the day. This morn was different.
His eyes felt as if someone had poured tar over them to keep them shut. With effort, he opened them to find Iain standing over the bed. Then, he felt the warm curves of a woman’s body against his erect male flesh and under his hands and Davidh understood this was not his usual morning ritual.
When she shifted against him, his flesh hard as it usually was in the morn, ached for more. His hand cupped a breast, Anna’s breast, and her bottom nudged against his hardness. None of which he minded, but it should never happen in front of her son in the same room. In her bedchamber.
‘Anna,’ he said. ‘Wake up.’
As he released his hold on her and shifted away, she moved with him, letting out a breathy sigh before opening her eyes.
‘Davidh,’ she whispered. Then she caught sight of Iain standing in the doorway and she froze. ‘Iain.’
She scrambled away from Davidh and her tangled skirts slowed her ability to climb from the pallet. Davidh offered up a silent prayer of gratitude that they were both completely dressed even if they were wrapped around one another in her bed. He pushed off the pallet and stood next to it, nodding at the lad.
‘Iain,’ she said.
As she walked towards her son, she tried to gather her hair back out of her face and over her shoulders. The unruly mass did not co-operate at all. Instead it spilled over her shoulders in a riot of brown and gold and red curls that made her look as though she had been doing something absolutely decadent in bed with him.
He wished it had been something like that.
Memories of the stark grief that had filled him returned in a flood, as did the cause of that grief. He would have to handle that after they handled this situation.
‘Iain,’ he interrupted. ‘Why are you here?’
Anna sputtered and turned to face Davidh, but he shook his head at her and looked at her son. One thing he’d learned about raising a son was that they could be simple creatures with simple needs. Trying to give too much of an explanation just made things more complicated. So, Davidh crossed his arms over his chest and waited for the lad to answer.
‘Someone was hurt in the yard, sir. They asked me to fetch my mother.’ Iain responded as Davidh thought he would—a direct answer to a specific question from the man in authority.
‘Anna, can you gather your supplies and come outside when you are ready?’ He thought she might argue, but she nodded and walked into the main room and began picking out what she thought she would need.
‘Iain, walk with me.’ He put his hand on the boy’s back and guided him out of the house. When they’d taken a few steps away, Davidh faced the boy, leaving his hand in place on Iain’s shoulder. ‘Do you have anything to ask me?’
When Iain shook off his hold, Davidh thought there might be a problem. But the lad stood up straight and met Davidh’s gaze without flinching.
‘Nothing to ask, sir,’ he said. ‘Just something to say.’
‘And that is?’
‘If you hurt my mother, I will make you regret it.’
Stunned at the words and the tone and the vow made, Davidh nodded at the lad...young man. Part of him was proud of the son that Anna had raised. Part of him feared what would happen in such a situation.
‘I will not hurt her.’
‘Aye, see that you do not.’
‘I am ready,’ Anna said, rushing out of the house with a huge basket on her arm.
Iain lifted it easily from her and nodded towards the keep. When Davidh would have followed, Anna tilted her head at the door.
‘Colm is waking and needs the first doses of the tincture in the blue jar. Mix it with heated water. He knows how to do it,’ Anna directed. ‘I will return as soon as possible.’
Davidh watched as they hastened along the path and disappeared around the corner. His foot was on the first step when Colm called out from within.
‘Papa?’
The stab he felt through his heart as he realised the truth of his son’s condition had the intensity of a true blow. How he was not bleeding out as he stood there, Davidh did not know. But his pain mattered not. Only Colm did. And Davidh refused to give up the last vestige of hope that remained in his heart.
With a deep breath taken and released, Davidh entered his house readying himself to face the biggest challenge of his life—not letting his son know the truth.
* * *
It was a simple and clean break. One of the lads working with Lachlan had dropped a beam as they were placing it. It had fallen and struck another worker, Lachlan’s grandson Simon as it turned out, who had raised his arm to stave off the impact. The result was a fracture in his forearm.
It took little time for Anna to stabilise Simon’s arm and give instructions for his care to his grandfather. She promised to check on the boy on the morrow. Lachlan got the group back to work. Simon, who seemed quite proud of his injury, stood with his grandfather then, directing the others and resisting Lachlan’s attempts to get him to rest.
When things had settled, she looked for Iain, hoping to explain what he had seen this morning. She nodded to him and he met her a few paces away from the stables.
‘Mam,’ he said before she found the words to explain, ‘have a care.’
‘Iain?’
‘Just have a care here. We are still outsiders and I do not trust him.’
‘Iain,’ she said, placing her hand on his arm. ‘You do not trust the commander?’
‘Nay. He is loyal only to his chieftain and will not stand by you if he has to choose.’
‘I have no plans to make him choose, Iain.’ The lie in the words burned as they left her mouth. ‘There is nothing for you to worry over, my son.’ Her son’s words had surprised her. Clearly, he had been more perceptive and more observant than she’d realised.
‘Iain!’ Lachlan called out. ‘If yer mother doesna need yer help with her things, come back to work.’
‘Just have a care with him, Mam,’ he warned as he stepped away from her and heeded Lachlan’s call.
Of all the things he could have said after finding her lying in Davidh’s arms in her bed, that was not anything she’d considered possible. As she watched him walk towards the man overseeing his work, Anna wondered how much he did know about her plans for him.
She’d confided in no one back in her mother’s village and no one since. How would he know she was planning to use her position and closeness to Davidh to help her son take his rightful place? Oh, she’d been clear that she was bringing him here to meet his father’s clan and to find a place there among them. She’d never told him that place was one in line for the high seat itself.
Her stomach grumbled then, protesting its emptiness, so she returned to the village to begin her day again. With each step back, through the gates and down the path into the village, something told her that this strange day would get even stranger.
Davidh was at his house when she returned there, so she began as she usually did by making porridge for them. Colm sat eating, blissfully unaware of the turbulence swirling around him and his father’s distress. Anna was aware of it, though.
A few brief glances from Davidh over and around his son at the table told Anna that he was being watchful, listening to every sound and breath from the boy. Just as she watched Davidh’s every expression and movement. He surprised her by sending Colm to the well for water, warning him not to run or fill the bucket past the half-mark inside it.
‘I wanted to...give
you my thanks for telling me the truth about Colm.’ He lifted his gaze to hers and nodded. ‘How long have you known?’
‘From the first time I saw him. That morning at Suisan’s.’ He slid his hand across the narrow table and covered hers. ‘I could not be certain then.’
‘But you are now?’ The weight and warmth of his hand on hers eased the ache in her heart as they spoke of his son.
‘Aye. But, Davidh...’ she covered his hand with her other and continued ‘...I am not the Almighty with the power to give or take lives and neither am I giving up.’ The tears welled in her eyes and she blinked against them. ‘I hope you ken that.’
‘I ken.’ Davidh smiled then. ‘I did not realise that the burden of worrying over him had eased since you came and began seeing to his care. Not until now.’ He stood, taking his hand from hers. ‘As I said last night, no matter the cost.’
She nodded, understanding his deep need to save his son. At first, he turned to leave and she picked up the bowls from the table. Then he walked that one pace back to her and kissed her.
This was not a hungry, possessive kiss. Nor a passion-filled one.
Nay, this was the softest kiss she’d ever been given.
And yet, when he lifted his lips from hers, she felt changed in some way by it. She opened the eyes she’d not known she’d closed and stared into his. Deep in those brown eyes was something else. Something she’d seen only once before in a man’s gaze and something that shook her to her core.
Davidh stepped away. When he lifted the latch of the door and opened it, Colm came in. His stride was slow and measured as he attempted to keep all the water inside the bucket. Worrying his lower lip, he took one cautious step after another until he reached the hearth and placed the bucket there.
‘My thanks, Colm,’ she said. ‘Exactly half the bucket!’
When Colm laughed at her words, she reached out and wrapped her arm around his shoulder in a hug. She looked up at his father and realised she wanted this boy to live. She wanted his father to never face his loss.
She wanted...
A Healer for the Highlander Page 16
