Page 11 of Highland Crown
“He’s young and strong. So long as he doesn’t come down with a fever, he should recover.”
“How soon can we turn him out?”
“If you think he’ll wake up and walk out of here in the next hour, I’d say you’re expecting too much.”
Jean shoved a bowl to the side and grumbled under her breath. The fire hissed back at her. Having two outsiders here clearly wasn’t what the old woman had bargained for when she’d agreed to help her nephew.
If the man were found under her roof, Jean would be facing a great deal of trouble with her people. Helping Isabella hide in the cottage paled in comparison with concealing and nursing someone from the wreck.
Whatever John gave his aunt from Sir Walter, she thought, it wouldnt be enough.
Isabella picked up her instruments and dropped them into a pot of water boiling over the fire. Her attention stayed on the old woman’s hands. The excitement of last night and this morning had made the shaking worse. She wracked her brain for something she could do to help Jean. Somehow, she’d have to repay her for the risks she was taking.
She started to clean her equipment. For a moment, her thoughts turned to her father, a student of ancient Roman medicine. In his teaching, he’d always been a strong though lone advocate of cleanliness. But what mattered most to him would not have been the conditions under which she’d operated. She’d saved a man that many others would have allowed to die. Isabella had no doubt what she did last night and today would have made Thomas Murray proud.
“I don’t understand ye.” Jean’s hand was shaking hard enough to cause a soft, steady drumming on the table.
Isabella left her medical instruments in the pot and dried her hands on her skirt.
“I don’t understand going through all this trouble,” Jean complained. “To be sure, he’ll kill us both when he’s strong enough.”
Isabella hadn’t had enough time to think everything through. Last night, she’d run up to the cottage and fetched a blanket. Rolling the man onto it, the two women struggled but somehow managed to drag him inside where she’d immediately operated.
He was wounded, and she needed to help him. It had been the same in Edinburgh. Sick and injured men and women had arrived at their door, and she’d reacted. She had very little interest in whether they could compensate her and her husband for their care. And what was to become of her patients in the future was the worry for another day.
Jean’s short temper boiled over. “I can’t have it. Ye, I might be able to explain. But him?” She snorted.
“Perhaps he’llwantto go when he wakes up,” Isabella suggested. Of course, it was impossible. She’d seen enough gun wounds to know her patient was in no condition to walk out of this place alone.
“What if he doesn’t?”
She didn’t have all the answers. And right now, the thought of making a decision for someone else was overwhelming.
The trials of these past weeks never left her. She’d lost Archibald. Maisie and Morrigan’s future depended on her making good, clear choices. She had little faith that all would turn out well for any of them. But one thing Isabella was certain of was that she’d done right. And saving this man had restored a vestige of the confidence she had in herself and her abilities. She still had a purpose to serve.As powerless as she’d been feeling while her life collapsed around her, she still had something valuable to offer.
“I can’t handle him when he wakes up,” Jean kept on doggedly. “And neither can ye. I say we drag him back to the beach now and let—”
“Take this,” Isabella cut in, slipping the gold ring from her finger. Archibald had given it to her on their wedding day. A token she was ready to part with.
She’d spent her youth studying and working beside her father while many other young women dreamt of love and courtship. She’d had no interest in such things in married life. And as for Archibald, his true love had been Morrigan’s mother, the woman he’d lost a year before he offered marriage to Isabella.
None of the past mattered anymore. He was gone, and a different life lay ahead of her. She laid the ring on the table in front of Jean. “It’s yours.”
“Why give me this?”
“To pay for his keep,” Isabella said, motioning toward the sleeping patient. “He’s lost a great deal of blood. To let him stay and mend.”
Jean picked up the gold ring and turned it over, staring at the engravings.
“Let him stay until your nephew comes back. John will know what to do with him.”
Her hostess had confirmed this morning that, because of the fiery explosion, not much of value had washed ashore with the wreckage from the ship, and the villagers would certainly be blaming the crew.
Isabella had witnessed how ruthless they could be. She had no doubt this man’s fate would be sealed the moment they put him back on the beach. They’d kill him iffor no other reason than to satisfy their anger over what had been destroyed.
Jean pushed the ring back toward Isabella. “I’ve seen wedding rings afore, and I’ll not take yers. But while we’re at it, where is yer husband?”
Isabella shook her head, too tired to explain. It was safer this way. “Can he stay or not?”
