Page 15 of A Highland Healer Captured
“I can ask anyone anything,” Katie said crisply. “Whether they answer is on them. I’ll be back.”
The door clicked behind her, and Skylar sagged briefly into the chair as though someone had loosened a screw behind her ribs. The food had warmed her, the human conversation steadied her, and nausea followed too quickly for comfort. The guilt was hot and hard, rising at the knowledge that she had eaten while Ariella lay God-knew-where waiting for her arrival. She pressed her fist to her mouth. “Hold on, cousin,” she whispered. “Hold on for me. I’m coming as soon as I make this devil keep his end.”
Steps in the passage set her spine straight. The latch lifted again, and this time the doorway framed Zander himself.
Zander should have felt triumph crossing his own yard with the Dunlop lass now locked in his keep. He’d gambled half his reputation on the audacity of the plan itself: ride into MacLennan country, lie in the trees outside their walls like a patient wolf, and steal the one woman the Highlands whispered could cheat the death of a bairn.
Instead, what he felt was an iron bar in his chest and the old ache in his jaw where rage liked to clamp.
The yard’s murmurs had been predictable — bride, witch, prize, trouble — spoken in that infuriating brogue that Skylar could never quite catch. He was grimly glad of that. It was one thing for her to spit at him, but another thing entirely to feed her the knowledge of every wagging, cowardly tongue.
He’d taken her up to a room decent enough not to shame him and locked the door because he had to, not because he liked the sound of it. Then he’d turned to the other fight. One that waited on benches and behind beards.
Now, in the long hall, the heat of bodies and braziers washed up from the flagged floor. Some he trusted to take a blade for him. Some he trusted to take a blade from him if he ever needed it. All of them had too many opinions.
“I told ye we needed to ask MacLennan leave,” said Fergus of the Hook, a barrel of a man with a grey pelt where hair used to be. His voice had been honed for years to carry across lists and fairs. “We’ve nay quarrel with Hamish.”
“We haveneed,” Zander said. He kept his tone cool. He did not have to be loud to be heard. His men had learned that. “Need outruns courtesy.”
“Aye, until courtesy returns with two hundred men at its back,” muttered Tamas of the Burn. “Murray in Crawford willnae takekindly to this. Nor Muir. Ye’ve brought the wasps to our eaves, laird. Swat one and we’ll be stung to death.”
“Nay on even kens I have her,” Zander offered, but it fell on the deaf ears of the crotchety, old men.
A soft scrape of chair legs and Mason settled his elbow on the board, his chin in his palm, the picture of idle patience. Those who didn’t know him would miss the sharpened alertness in his eyes. “Ye lot always cry ruin when the ale’s barely on the table,” he drawled. “Eat first. Bicker after.”
Fergus scowled. “I’ll nae eat till we talk about what he’s done.”
“The man,” Zander said, cold enough to crust the ale in their cups, “is yer laird. And sits just here.”
A murmur moved. Mason’s mouth ticked. “Aye, and he’s done the only sensible thing,” Mason added lazily. “He brought the healer. We can argue etiquette, or we can get our clan’s heir breathing steady. Only one matters to me.”
“Onlyonematters to any of us,” snapped Cameron Black, the sour voice from the shadows earlier. He was clever and loyal and chronically incautious with his tongue. “But ye forget that the last time our laird trusted a woman within these walls, we —”
The bench went over like a felled tree. Zander didn’t remember standing. He remembered only the thinness of the air around his head and the taste of iron in his mouth. The next heartbeatplaced him three strides closer to Cameron, the man’s collar in his fist, the board creaking with the force of it as he pinned him.
“Finish that,” Zander said, quiet as a winter morning, “and I’ll make sure ye never speak again.”
The room had gone so still he could hear the ash shift in the brazier. Ewan’s eyes widened. He was not afraid of most things. He was afraid of Zander when Zander’s voice went to ground like this.
“I meant nay insult,” Cameron choked, and Zander’s hand tightened anyway, because of course Cameron meant insult. He meant warning, which was its own kind of insult. He meant to say what half the room had been thinking and to see if the laird would flinch. Zander did not flinch.
“Speak of me late wife again in any tone,” Zander said, still low, still perfect, “and ye can take yer cleverness to another laird’s table. Or to the ditch. I’ve room in either place for yer bones.”
Mason moved then. Not quickly. The man never moved quickly when defusing a thing, but he did move without hesitation. He tipped his chair upright, stretched like a cat waking, and slid between Zander and Cameron with a yawn big enough to shame a lion.
“That’s enough,” Mason said, amiable as a summer noon. He planted a hand on Zander’s forearm, palm warm, pressure steady. “We’re all loyal men here. Cameron’s mouth runs faster than his mind on a bad day. We’ve had worse days.”
Cameron nodded as best he could with Zander’s grip on him. “Aye.”
Zander breathed once, through his nose. Twice. He let go. The urge to hit something still boiled under his ribs like a pot forgotten too long, but he set his palms on the board instead, felt the grain under his hands, the solidity of the wood, and anchored himself there.
“Listen,” he said.
They did.
“I took the healer because nay prayer and nay or coin thrown at God has steadied me son’s lungs.” He let his gaze rake them all, one by one, until they had to look away or look up and meet him. “Ye served me when I broke O’Brian for less insult than the grave has given me. Ye ken what I do to those who threaten mine.”
A hum, half uneasy, half approving, rolled and died.
