Page 17 of A Highland Healer Captured
Not fury at her, she realized belatedly, although the heat of it made her stomach flip. Fury that seemed to belong to something not entirely unrelated to her.
For once, he did not answer her tirade. He simply stepped aside and jerked his head in a gesture that brooked no refusal. “Come.”
Skylar hesitated, caught between outrage and curiosity. She wrapped the satchel around her body, lifted her chin, and followed.
The hallways twisted with torchlight, voices echoing in the distance, the shuffle of boots on stone. She walked a half pace behind him, her questions sharp on her tongue, but something about the way he moved, shoulders rigid, that made her hold them.
They reached a chamber that was warmer than the rest of the keep, looked similar to the solar in MacLennan Keep. A fireglowed bright in the hearth. A boy lay propped in a bed much too large for his frail frame, his hair damp with sweat, lips pale. At his side was the woman she knew to be Katie.
Her attention snapped instantly to them as they entered, and she stood.
“Grayson,” Skylar whispered.
“Aye,” she heard Zander mutter over his shoulder.
Her heart softened against her will. He had his father’s dark lashes, but his face was thinner, sharper. He blinked sluggishly, yet his lips curved faintly when he saw Zander stride in.
“Da,” he whispered, voice too weak for a child so young.
The giant brute of a laird bent his head and kissed the boy’s damp hair. The movement was so tender it startled Skylar more than any threat could have.
Zander straightened, his voice clipped as he turned to her. “Do what I’ve brought ye here to do. If ye wish to leave this place, ye’ll earn ithere.”
And then, without another word, he left the chamber.
Skylar’s lips parted, outrage catching in her throat. He had kidnapped her, threatened her, dragged her miles from herfamily, and now he dared throw her at his sick son as if she were a servant brought to prove herself. Fury surged hot. But then she looked again at the boy, at his thin arms, at the faint rattle of his breath.
All her anger drained out of her feet, leaving only the steady ache of a healer’s instinct.
She dropped her satchel by the bed and bent low, brushing a gentle hand across his brow. Heat clung there, not a raging fever, but a lingering warmth that spoke of nights gone restless. His pulse fluttered quick beneath her fingers. His lungs labored faintly, each breath an effort.
“Grayson, is it?” she asked softly.
He blinked at her, exhausted but curious.
“Aye,” Katie said brightly, filling the silence. “Grayson is six years and bold as a knight, arenae ye, laddie?”
The boy gave the smallest of grunts.
Skylar’s throat ached. She reached into her satchel, pulling out sprigs of thyme, a vial of willow tincture, linen for compresses. She meant to set to work, to let her hands take over where her heart twisted, but Katie’s voice bubbled on, eager and open.
“The men all say that ye pulled a Fergus MacReady out of death’s own hand last winter, and saved some lass named Bess’s bairnwhen she was born too soon. Ye’ve a reputation across the Keep already, Skylar.”
Skylar’s jaw tightened. “He didnae fetch me, Katie. He stole me.”
Katie winced, but not from shame. “That sounds like him,” she admitted. “He doesnae ask, he takes. But he takes for those he loves.”
Skylar kept her eyes on Grayson, brushing damp hair from his temple. “And is that what ye call love? Kidnappin’ and threats?”
Katie fell quiet, then said softly, “Half of himself is that laddie, there.”
Skylar frowned and rolled her eyes, but she knelt beside the boy anyway. Her braid slipped forward over her shoulder as she worked. She pressed the back of her hand against Grayson’s chest, feeling the shallow rise and fall. She wanted to hate Zander Harrison with every fiber of her being, but this frail child, so sweet and so trusting, had nothing of his father’s brute force.
And damn her, but she wanted to save him.
Katie hummed as she bustled around, fetching warm cloths, telling stories of the keep, of how the laird walked the halls sleepless at night, of how fiercely the men loved their laird even when they cursed his temper.
Under different circumstances, Skylar realized, she might have liked Katie. Might even have called her friend.
