Highland Hero

by Hannah Howell

  “Weel. Who would have thought it.”

  “Seems the lass kens a lot about what can trouble your skin. Ye wouldnae believe how many questions she asked of me, and some put us both to the blush. I have noticed that she doesnae wear wool, either. And many of your people have already sought her out for help. Donald’s wife Sorcha was one of the first, for she is with child again.”

  “I pray to God that she can carry this one to term.” David scowled. “Tatha hasnae promised that, has she?”

  “Nay. The lass says such things are in God’s hands. But she also said that women must ken a few things to help God’s work be accomplished. She told Sorcha to nay lift anything heavy, to rest with her feet raised several times a day, to avoid strong smells that can oftimes trouble one’s belly, for the retching can be harmful. Then she gave her a verra long list of foods she cannae eat.”

  “Such as what?”

  “Weel, all Donald and Sorcha could recall was thyme, parsley, and juniper berries, but there were many others. Sorcha says she will simply eat verra plain food, nay a spice or an herb. And the lass gave her a sage brew to drink, sparingly. If the bairn still rests in her belly come harvest time, Donald may be asking ye to let his wife stay out of the fields.”

  “I shall tell him today that he need not fret on it. If ’twill give them a bairn, Sorcha can crawl abed now and stay there until the birth. It appears the lass has cured you and, if her advice gives Donald and Sorcha a live bairn, we may ne’er see the lass leave.” He sighed. “And I will confess that e’en in the short week she has been here, the keep is cleaner, e’en to the smell of it.”

  “We didnae have a great problem with vermin such as fleas, but what few were here are now gone.” Leith grinned. “Donald complains that the stables smell like a fine lady’s bath, but I notice he doesnae remove any of the herbs she has hung up in the place.” His smile widened and held a hint of lechery. “She may have e’en helped old Robert with his back trouble. Ye ken it has been a month or longer since he hurt it and it hadnae eased at all. He spoke to the lass and she told him all of the usual things, nay any heavy lifting, rest, and gave him a salve to ease the ache. Then she discovered that he has himself a bonnie new wife and tried to tell him to leave her be until his back is better.”

  “And Robert wasnae going to heed that advice, was he?” David laughed softly.

  “Nay, said so clear and loud. Then he said that, though the lass was blushing as red as her hair, she called him a randy old goat and since he wasnae going to be wise, then he could at least change his ways.”

  “Change his ways?”

  “Aye.” Leith’s voice was choked with laughter. “She told him to let his wife ride.” He collapsed into loud, helpless laughter at the look of utter shock on David’s face.

  David shook his head, then finally laughed. He was also relieved by what Leith had told him. Tatha was not dealing in charms and potions. In truth, her healing skills seemed to depend a great deal upon common sense and getting people to act with a bit more wisdom. That she spoke freely and often of God’s will was also good. Although it caused him a pang, and he muttered a prayer for forgiveness for any unintentional hint of disrespect for his mother, David began to think Tatha revealed a bit more common sense than his mother ever had. At times his mother had shown little tolerance or understanding of people’s fears. It was an arrogance she had learned from her mother, one she had not learned to temper completely, and one that had often made the women seem to spit in the eye of God and church. Tatha seemed blissfully free of that vanity.

  “Ye still havenae said if ye ken where she is,” David said when his cousin finally grew quiet.

  “She could be working in your mother’s herb room or she could be out looking for more herbs and plants. She said there was little time left to gather a goodly amount ere the fall comes.”

  Even as he stood up and started out of the hall, David wondered what he was doing. Ever since Tatha Preston had arrived at his gates he had been overly concerned about where she was and what she was doing. It was true that he worried about her, his mother’s brutal death and the reasons for it ever clear in his mind. Ruefully, he admitted that he just liked to look at her, to talk to her.

  It did not take him long to discover Tatha had ridden to the village, begged by a woman to come and look at her sick child. David had his horse saddled and set out after her. After all Leith had told him, David was intensely interested in seeing Tatha at work. He hoped it would ease some of his concern for her safety.

  Softly praying that she had the skill needed to save the child, Tatha followed the plump woman into the tiny cottage attached to the blacksmith’s shop. The one thing she had never been able to accept with ease, to wholeheartedly embrace as God’s will, was the death of a child. One look at the feverish, thrashing boy on the tiny bed made her heart sink. He could be no more than five, and he looked dangerously ill.

  All the while she looked over every inch of the little boy, Tatha questioned the mother. Finally, Tatha found what she felt was the cause of the child’s dire condition. On one thin calf was a small wound. It was closed, had ceased to bleed, but the area around it was hot, red, and swollen.

  “Where did he get this?” she asked the mother as she dampened a scrap of cloth in some heated water and gently washed the child’s leg.

  “That wee scratch?” The look in the woman’s dark eyes clearly told Tatha that she could not see why such a meager injury would hold any interest. “He cut himself whilst playing with his father’s tools. ’Tisnae bleeding. It closed up verra quickly.”

  “Aye, too quickly. It shut all the filth and bad humors inside. Ye are going to have to hold the wee lad steady so that I may reopen this wound.” Tatha took her knife from its sheath at her side and washed off the blade.

  “Open it? Why?”

  “I will do it,” said a deep voice that was already achingly familiar to Tatha. David curtly nodded to the flustered blacksmith’s wife and stepped over to the child’s bed. “What do I do?”

  “Hold him as firmly as ye can so that I can make a neat, small cut.” Tatha looked at the boy’s mother. “I will need clean rags and verra hot water. Do ye have them at the ready?”

  “Aye.” The woman hurried away to get what Tatha needed.

  After taking a deep breath to steady herself, and checking that David had the child held firmly, she quickly made a cross cut over the boy’s wound, neatly reopening it. The child screamed, then lay still. Tatha wrinkled her nose in distaste at the odor of the muck that immediately began to seep out. She was only faintly aware of how David cursed and the child’s mother gasped in horror. Quickly taking the bowl of steaming water and bundle of rags from the shocked woman before she dropped them, Tatha began the slow process of trying to drain all of the poison from the wound. Once she deemed the wound clean, she washed it once more with water from the well, put a poultice of woad leaves on it, and wrapped it in a strip of clean cloth.

  As she straightened up, Tatha grimaced at the ache in her back and realized that she had been bent over the child for a long time. She forced some blackthorn bark tea down the child’s throat to help reduce his fever, although he was already looking less flushed and troubled. If her instructions were followed she felt the child would survive.

  “A wee scratch and it could have killed him,” muttered the boy’s mother as she sat down on the edge of the child’s bed.

  “ ’Twas the dirt,” said Tatha. “I dinnae ken the why of it, but clean wounds heal better than dirty ones. I have seen the truth of it too often to question it.” She carefully set out some medicines on a stool next to the bed. “I will leave ye the leaves to make another poultice or two and some of the blackthorn bark to make a few more cups of tea to ease his fever. God willing ye will need no more than that. If ye dinnae see him growing better in a day or two, fetch me. I think I got all of the poison from his wound, but I cannae be sure. Aye, and keep him, his bedding, and his bandage verra clean.”

&nbs
p; “Ye didnae stitch it?”

  “Nay, ’twas but a wee wound, e’en after I reopened it. And, because it had become poisoned, I think ’tis best left open. ’Twill leave but a wee scar. I could return and—”

  “Nay,” the woman said, impulsively hugging Tatha. “ ’Twill nay trouble the laddie to have a wee scar.”

  Sir David escorted her out of the tiny cottage, and Tatha frowned up at him when he paused by his horse and stared at her. “Ye dinnae intend to tell me to cease helping people, do ye?”

  “Nay.” He mounted and held out his hand. “I will take ye back to the keep.”

  Tatha warily eyed the huge black gelding and slowly shook her head. “Nay, I dinnae think so.”

  David watched her cautiously back away from his horse then start walking back toward the keep. He considered the look he had seen in her eyes when he had offered to pull her up onto his saddle. Tatha did not ride her pony simply because it was a gift. It was probably the only horse she was not afraid of. He quickly dismounted, grasped his horse’s reins, and hurried to catch up to her.

  “So, ye are afraid of horses,” he drawled, watching her closely, and grinning when she scowled at him.

  “I am nay afraid of them,” she said, trying to sound confident, even haughty. “Stoutheart is a horse, isnae he?”

  “He is a wee, runty pony.”

  “He gets me where I need to go.” She frowned at him. “Just why did ye search me out? Is someone ill or hurt?”

  “Nay. I but wished to see how ye used your skills.”

  “I told ye I would be careful,” she reassured him. “My aunt Mairi was most clear about the danger of raising people’s fears or attracting the critical eye of some churchmon. And I am no heretic or witch.”

  “I ken it. I begin to think your aunt was a verra wise woman, that she taught ye the good sense and caution my grandmother ne’er really taught my mother.”

  “And ye still think your mother was killed because she was too brazen about her beliefs? Hold,” she ordered him in a quiet but firm voice as she moved toward some lichen growing at the base of a tree. “This makes a good poultice.”

  David leaned against the tree and watched as she carefully gathered the plant, wrapped it in linen, and placed it in her sack. “I will confess that your questions and observations have made me begin to wonder. I have many people trying to recall all they can of that time. And if ’tis shown that Sir Ranald had a hand in my mother’s murder, would your father end the betrothal?”

  Tatha sank down to sit on the soft grass and sighed. “I dinnae ken. Nay long ago I would have stoutly cried aye, but that was before he sold me to that drooling old fool, before I realized that he saw me as no more than a means to fill his pockets.”

  When she lifted a large, stoppered jug from her bag, he frowned slightly. “What is that?”

  “ ’Tis what I carry water from the well in. ’Twas that water I used to wash the lad’s wound the first and last time, and I use only this water in my medicines and teas. I felt ’twas the wisest use of its healing powers.” Her eyes widened when he dropped down beside her and grasped her by the shoulders.

  “ ’Tis just water. Clear, fresh, and sweet of taste, aye, but ’tis just water,” he snapped.

  Her expression slowly grew mutinous. Instead of her obstinacy adding to his anger, however, David found his increasingly errant lust creeping to the fore. The frown on her sweet face made him want to kiss the hard line of her lips into softness again. The way her small, firm breasts rose and fell as anger flooded through her had his blood running warm. He cursed softly and pulled her into his arms.

  “Sir David,” she began to protest, but felt her breath stolen away by the feel of his hard body pressed so close to hers.

  “Hush. Ye can scold me later.” He brushed his lips over hers. “I have been thinking of this all week.”

  That one squeaked call of his name was all the protest Tatha intended to make. It was flattering beyond words that he had been considering kissing her all week. She had been thinking the same with an increasing and embarrassing regularity. What lass would not want such a beautiful man to kiss her at least once? Her curiosity demanded satisfaction. How much could one brief stolen kiss hurt?

  When she parted her lips in response to the prodding of his tongue and he began to stroke the inside of her mouth, Tatha became acutely aware of the danger of even one kiss. Everything inside of her was responding with a dizzying strength. Her heart pounded, her skin felt warm, the tips of her breasts hardened, and there was an exciting, heated sense of fullness between her thighs. Aunt Mairi had been a blunt, earthy woman who had believed that Tatha should know all about the ways of the flesh, so Tatha knew exactly what was happening to her. This was lust in all its heady, fierce glory. What frightened her was that instinct told her it was also a great deal more. The moment David paused, she scrambled away from him before he could tempt her with another kiss.

  “We had best return to the keep,” she said as she grabbed her bag, her voice so husky and unsteady she barely recognized it as her own.

  David opened his mouth to protest but Tatha was already striding away. He quickly gathered his horse’s reins and followed. He had felt the passion in her, seen it in her beautiful eyes. If she thought one brief kiss was the end of it, she was wrong. Tatha Preston definitely tasted like more.

  Chapter 5

  “Where is Sir David?” Tatha asked, intercepting Leith as he strode toward the stables and wondering why he looked as if he was fighting the urge to laugh.

  “Out on a hunt,” replied Leith, grinning widely. “I am about to ride out to join him. Do ye have a message for him?”

  “Nay. Naught but a question or two about something we discussed earlier. It can wait.”

  Tatha cursed as she watched Leith disappear into the stables. She had wanted to ask Sir David if he had found out anything more concerning the day his mother had been murdered. Deep in her heart, however, she knew that was not the only reason she sought out the laird of Cnocanduin. It had been only two days since he had kissed her, but she had done little else but think about it. As she tossed and turned on her bed at night she struggled between a fear of what could happen if she returned to his arms and an eagerness to do just that. The knowledge her aunt Mairi had given her about men and women filled her thoughts with detailed images that made her sweat with longing.

  She fetched some water from the well and hurried to the herb room she had restored to its former usefulness. Tatha already loved the place. At Prestonmoor she had never had such a wonderful place to work in. As she began to prepare some of her salves, she prayed she could lose herself in her work. She was sure she would see Sir David at the evening meal, and she did not want to meet him while her blood was still heated from some sensual daydream.

  David cursed as his arrow missed its mark again. Robert stepped forward to neatly bring down the deer. David had hoped that a day of hunting would take his mind off a certain flame-haired woman, but she refused to be shaken from his thoughts. Tatha had sought shelter at his keep. He had offered her safety. It would not be honorable to seduce her, but the constant ache in his body was swiftly pushing aside honor. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman before, and with her so constantly close at hand, temptation was becoming very hard to resist.

  He had also tried to distract himself with the puzzle of his mother’s death, but even that was not fully successful. As little pieces of memory came together, his own and those offered by others, he did begin to think that Tatha was right to wonder. He had readily accepted the tale that fear and superstition had brought about her death, and now thought that was because he had always anticipated such an end for his mother. It began to look as if that expectation had blinded him to the truth, had in fact been used against him to keep him from looking any closer. The men he had killed in retribution had deserved their deaths, but he began to think at least one other had his mother’s blood on his hands.

  “Nay need to look
so fierce, laddie,” said Robert as he rode up beside David. “There will be meat aplenty.”

  “ ’Tis nay my failing aim I frown o’er,” said David. “Of late I have been puzzling o’er my mother’s murder.”

  Robert scratched his gray and brown beard and nodded.” ’Twas an odd thing, but ye took a fine reckoning.”

  “Aye, but I now wonder if I truly found all who were guilty.”

  “Sir Ranald did seem verra willing to let ye hunt down and kill three of his clansmen.” Robert eyed David warily as he added, “Especially when they claimed they had done naught but kill a witch.”

  “I ken it. E’en the Church would have praised them. Yet ye are right, Sir Ranald was verra amiable when I demanded my reckoning. Too amiable. One of the men was his own cousin.”

  “Wee Tatha may ken more about Sir Ranald than we do. I have heard a few rumors and I ken he has buried three wives, but I think the mon visited her father’s keep from time to time. I think they may be allies or friends. She may have more fact than rumor. Ken the mon better and ye can more clearly judge what may have really happened that day.”

  “ ’Twill certainly help me seek out the truth. Ah, here comes Leith.” He smiled faintly at his cousin, who took the departing Robert’s place at his side. “Mayhap ye will bring me luck. My aim has consistently fallen short this day.”

  “Mayhap your mind is on other things.” Leith tried and failed to bite back a smile. “She was asking after you.”

  For one brief moment David considered telling his cousin he was not interested and not to be such a smugly grinning fool, then decided not to bother. He was interested and suspected too many of his clansmen knew it. “Did she now?”