Page 63 of A Highland Healer Captured
“Gossip rinsed thrice isstillgossip,” Skylar returned, but her mouth twitched.
They moved between stalls—lint, a bolt of coarse cloth for slings, a pinch of gentian root wrapped tight in paper. Cora pointed out a peddler with needles cheap as sin; Skylar refused, buyingbetter ones from a woman who did no business on lies. “Needles touch blood,” she said. “Buy the ones that daenae break when the hand trembles.”
“Aye,” Cora murmured. “Ye’d scold the pope, I dare say.”
“I would, but I’d still set his bones,” Skylar said.
They reached a barrow of jars then—honey, preserves, treacle, cordials with sprigs of this and that caught like memories in amber. Skylar’s stomach… shifted. Not with hunger. With an old echo—the faint, unpleasant sweetness she’d sworn she’d only imagined the other night. She put her hand to a jar, lifted, sniffed. Honey. Only honey. Her heart eased and then scolded itself for being daft.
“Fine stuff,” said a voice smooth as cream.
Skylar looked up.
The man who owned the voice stood too near; strangers always did. His cloak was decent, boots muddied from honest travel, beard trimmed better than most men bothered. Not tall; but there was a way he filled the space that argued he wished he were.
“Aye,” Skylar said, stepping to make enough room to breathe. “Quite.”
“From the south hives,” he went on, as if she’d asked. “Wildflower. Keeps a child sweet in a bad night.”
“A spoon of honey keeps a child awake,” Skylar answered, a smile tucked in where it could excuse the edge. “Ye’re sellin’ or sayin’?”
“Merely… admirin’.” His gaze went franker than she liked; she felt it touch her face and then the parcel at her elbow like a hand she’d slap away if it were touchin’ anything but air. “Marcus,” he added, offering a name like a coin tossed to a poor man. “From up Braeloch way.”
Behind her, Cora went very still.
Skylar cocked her head. “Do ye give names the way folk hand out peppermints?”
“Folk like to ken who’s admir—” He cut off, eyes shifting to Cora, who had taken one bare half-step behind Skylar’s shoulder. Not hiding. Putting herself at angle. Defensive as a cat that has decided it’ll fight if pressed.
“Ye all right, lass?” Skylar asked without looking back.
“I’m grand,” Cora said, too bright. To the man, she said firmly, “Move on.”
He smiled as if he enjoyed disobedience. “Have we met?”
“Nae if ye want yer teeth,” Cora said, and the humor in it could not hide the tiny quake in her hands where they gripped the basket.
Skylar caught the quiver and filed it where she kept things people told her bodies before their mouths did.
Afraid?
Nay — alert.
Afraid and alert both.
The man named Marcus lifted his hands a fraction, a gesture that meantpeaceon some men andI’m counting exitson others. “Nay harm meant, lassies” he said. “I like to ken who keeps the laird’s healer company these days.” His eyes went back to her. Probing silently, curiously, and complacently in a way that made her spine lengthen. “Folk talk.”
“Folk always do,” Skylar said evenly. “They’re weary of their own houses.”
“Aye.” He took a slow step back. “Good markets to ye, mistress.”
“Gooddistanceto ye,” Cora muttered.
He half-bowed, turned, and wandered toward the girdle cakes as if he’d never stirred a hair on a head. The basket’s bent handle creaked under Cora’s fingers.
“Ye ken him?” Skylar asked. The lane carried other voices—men arguing over fleeces, a child wailing about a dropped bannock—but her own felt loud in her head.
Cora’s mouth went small. “I ken he’s nae a regular here. Vendors here have to earn yer trust before we bring anything they’re sellin’ into the keep.”
