Page 71 of A Highland Healer Captured
Silence cracked between them, both of them trembling from what they hadn’t done as much as from what they had.
Finally, Skylar lifted her chin, eyes blazing again, the healer’s fire back in its place. “Take me back to the keep, Zander,” she demanded.
He nodded once, short and brutal. He would. But as he led her across the dark green, the taste of her lingered on his mouth,and the ache of her pressed into his veins. He knew restraint wouldn’t last forever.
And judging by the way she kept her shawl clutched, her lips bitten, and her steps too quick — she knew it too.
22
The night before Kirn had always been a brag, no matter where you were from, or what vendors you’d secured. The glen telling winter it would not go down quiet.
Skylar stood at the small slit window of the surgery and watched sparks lift to the stars. The tiny, half-window let her see a scrap of sky, no more; enough to dream by, never enough to climb. She had set her jars straight twice, and her notes thrice, and her hands would not stop fidgeting.
Cora tilted her head. “Ye hear more than that.” She glanced toward the yard where Zander had gone to speak with men over barrels. “Go look with yer own eyes, if it’ll quiet ye.”
“I’m nae his keeper,” Skylar said, heat rising where she wished it wouldn’t.
“Nay, but ye are yerself,” Cora replied, and then left her to it.
The bonfires called her feet out of the cool of the stones and into the night. The yard spilled full of children chasing their own shadows, girls shrieking when sparks spat too close, old men bragging of harvests fatter than truth, their ale sloshing proof enough they lied. Skylar kept to the edge, the way a woman does when she wants and fears in equal measure.
She found him near the east wall, half-lit. Zander, with his head bowed to listen to a crofter’s complaint about tar, then straightening to settle it with a word and a clap on the shoulder. He looked bigger under firelight, more carved.
He turned and saw her like a hawk.
“Ye’re— out,” he said, crossing to her.
“I could say the same of ye,” she said, tilting her face up. He smelled faintly of smoke and malt, and something clean beneath it that was only him. Something that she hated to admit that she noticed.
“How’s the lad?”
“Steady. Drowsed off late. Katie’s near insulted I came to look.”
“Aye, she does like to mind me house witout witnesses,” he said, the corners of his eyes creasing. He offered an elbow like a courtly man making a joke of himself. “Walk?”
She hesitated, only for a moment, a grin playing at the corners of her lips, before she took it. She should have refused because walking arm-in-arm with the laird among the clansmen would have caused lips to wag, but she didn’t because refusing would have been drama, and she had always preferred medicine.
She took it, her hand slipping to the crook of his arm. The heat of him bled through linen and wool, and she cursed the way her pulse jumped at the contact.
They walked the yard’s edge, small talk for the first few steps, the sort people make to keep from falling into a hole of their own digging. She kept her eyes forward, fighting not to remember the press of his mouth at the elm, the feel of his fingers between her thighs, the taste of the hint of whiskey on his breath.
He broke it first. “The stillroom’s aired,” he said. “We’ll set yer hooks tomorrow. I’ve a key.”
Her breath hitched. “Ye are a maddening man.”
“So I’ve been told,” he said mildly. “By folk I like less than ye.”
The piper struck up a reel. A ring of girls danced in a circle, skirts flashing, elbows linked. Someone laughed and grabbed Skylar’s hand, tugging her toward the ring. She stumbled, skirts tangling, until Zander’s palm settled against the small of her back.
“Ye—” she began.
“Dance,” he said, eyes warm. “Aye, and ye?”
She only smiled back at him. It had been years since a reel had taken her like that—drive in the music, heat along her limbs, laughter jumping out before she could seat it.
Zander moved with a heavy grace that made space for her; he did not crowd, did not steer too much, did not make a show of being a laird. He was a man who wanted to feel the beat and see her smile and keep his promises.
They broke apart on a turn, found each other again, hands joining like a mistake repeated on purpose. Her braid slipped; a handful of hair came loose. He saw it, and the look that moved through him stole her knees. Want. Clean, hungry, not polite. She felt her own answer, terrifying as a cliff’s edge.
