Chapter 2
Chapter
Two
Bronmuir Keep, Isle of Skye
The stillroom smelled of yarrow, drying herbs, whiskey, and old blood.
I crushed the dried yarrow between my fingers, releasing the sharp, green scent into the cold morning air.
The rhythm was familiar—grind, measure, fold into linen packets—work that usually kept my hands busy and my thoughts from dwelling on the past. Of everything I had lost. Outside the narrow window, snow drifted across the courtyard in lazy spirals, and I heard the distant clang of steel on steel as the clansmen practiced in the yard.
Another winter. Another season of making myself useful.
“That’ll do for the Forbes bairn,” Moira said from her corner of the room, where she sat mending a torn chemise. Her weathered fingers moved with the same efficiency as mine, no motion wasted. “The mother came by again yesterday, frettin’ about his cough.”
“Aye.” I tied off the packet with twine and added it to the growing pile. “I’ll take it to her this afternoon.”
“Ye could send one of the lads.”
“I could.” But I wouldn’t. The walk would give me an excuse to leave the keep, to escape the weight of the sidelong glances and careful conversations that never quite included me. “The fresh air will do me good.”
Moira made a sound that might have been agreement or skepticism.
With her, it was hard to tell. She’d been Bronmuir’s healer for as long as I could remember, and she’d reluctantly taken me on to help her when I’d returned home almost four years ago at my brother Connor’s request. The laird.
Everyone thought Cameron would be Laird.
Until he was captured and died of his injuries.
I’d returned in disgrace, belly swollen with a child I would never hold, heart broken by a man who had lied about everything that mattered.
The bitterness of that thought was as familiar as the scent of feverfew.
But Moira had been the one to sit with me through the bleeding, through the fever that followed, through the long nights when I’d wanted nothing more than to slip away into the dark.
She’d never once spoken of shame or judgment.
She’d simply handed me herb after herb to identify, remedy after remedy to memorize, until I had something to live for again.
As odd as she was, my sister-in-law, Kate, had sat with me as well, talking of the goings on in the clan, keeping me company.
I owed them both more than I could ever repay.
“You should rest more,” I said, noting the way Moira shifted to ease her hip. “The cold makes your joints ache. I can see it in how you move.”
She snorted. “Listen to the lass, telling me about my own bones.”
“Someone has to. You’re too stubborn to admit when you’re hurting.”
“Learned it from someone else I know.” But her eyes softened, and she reached over to pat my hand—a rare gesture of affection that made my throat tighten unexpectedly. “Ye’re a good healer, Elspeth. Better than I was at your age. The herbs speak to ye in ways they never spoke to me.”
I ducked my head, unused to praise that didn’t feel like pity. “I had a good teacher.”
We worked in silence after that, the only sounds the grinding of the herbs, the pop and hiss of the brazier, and the distant rhythm of daily life beyond these walls. I reached for the comfrey root that needed grinding. The pestle was cold and smooth in my palm, worn by years of use.
Outside, someone laughed—a bright, careless sound that made something twist beneath my ribs.
“Maddie and Brodie are back from Edinburgh,” Moira observed, glancing toward the window. “Arrived last night. Brodie’s wife has that laugh, the one that sounds like she’s surprised by joy.”
I knew the laugh she meant. I’d heard it yesterday when they’d ridden through the gates, Maddie’s dark curls wild beneath her hood, her face alight as she leaned into my youngest brother’s embrace. Brodie had looked at her the way a drowning man gasps for air.
The way Connor looked at Kate.
The way no one had ever looked at me.
I watched their shadows blend together by the fire last night, Kate’s head on Connor’s shoulder, and something in my chest had cracked open like ice giving way to spring melt. I’d turned away before the wanting could take root.
“Good,” I said, grinding the comfrey with more force than necessary. “Connor will be glad to have them home. It will help with the grief over losing Cameron.”
“And you?” Moira’s tone was too casual to be innocent. “Are ye not glad to see your brother?”
“I am.” Brodie had always been the easy one, the charmer, the brother who’d never made me feel like a burden or a disappointment, even when I’d made the choice to turn my back on the clan, to run off with Alasdair MacKenzie.
But watching him with Maddie, seeing the way they fit together like two halves of the same whole, made me ache in ways I’d learned not to name.
I wanted that. God help me, I wanted it so badly I could taste it like copper on my tongue. But wanting and having were two different things, and I’d learned the difference at a brutal price.
The door to the stillroom swung open, admitting a blast of cold air and one of the kitchen girls—Flora, round-faced and perpetually worried. She bobbed an awkward curtsy, her eyes not quite meeting mine.
“Mistress Elspeth, Nessa asks if ye have any of the digestive tonic left. Cook’s been complainin’ of her belly again.
” She hesitated, then added in a rush, “And there’s talk in the kitchens.
MacKenzie riders were spotted on the north road this morning—heading for the Candlemas market, they say. Malcolm among them.”
My hands stilled over the comfrey. The name hit me like a slap of cold water.
Malcolm MacKenzie. Alasdair’s cousin. The one who’d called me a whore in the village square when I’d returned, belly swelling with his kinsman’s child. The one who never missed a chance to remind everyone of my shame, as if his precious cousin bore no responsibility for the ruin he’d left behind.
“Thank you, Flora.” My voice came out steady, though my shoulders had drawn tight as bowstrings. “I’ll prepare the tonic now.”
Flora fled, and I turned to the shelves where rows of bottles and packets stood in careful order. My one small domain, organized and controlled. I found the tonic and set it aside, but my hands were trembling.
“Breathe, lass,” Moira said quietly.
“I’m fine.”
“Ye’re not. And ye don’t have to pretend with me.” She rose, her joints creaking, and moved to stand beside me. Her hand came to rest on my shoulder, warm and solid. “Malcolm MacKenzie is a small man with a smaller heart. His words can only wound ye if ye let them.”
“I know.” But knowing and feeling were different things. I could still hear his voice, thick with contempt, echoing across the village square. Bronmuir takes in whores now, does it? Or just MacLeod whores who spread their legs for MacKenzie men?
I’d wanted to disappear. To melt into the cobblestones and cease to exist.
Instead, I’d lifted my chin and walked past him without a word, because that was all I had left—the dignity of silence.
“I’ll manage,” I said now. “I always do.”
Moira squeezed my shoulder. “Aye, ye do. But there’s no shame in leaning on others now and then.”
I didn’t answer. I’d leaned on Alasdair once, trusted him with my heart and my body and my future, and he’d let me fall so hard I was still picking up the pieces.
I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
By midday, I’d finished the preparations and wrapped myself in my heavy cloak, pulling the hood low against the wind. The walk to the Forbes cottage took me through the village, past homes where smoke curled from chimneys and women called to children playing in the snow.
“Mistress Elspeth.” Old Duncan touched his cap as I passed, his eyes sliding away even as he nodded.
“Duncan.” I returned the greeting and kept walking.
At the baker’s, two women stopped their conversation as I approached. I caught the tail end of their whispers—MacKenzie coming for Candlemas, there’s to be a wedding, put the bad blood behind us all—and felt their stares like pinpricks between my shoulder blades.
I didn’t turn. I’d learned that too—not to look back, not to show that I noticed, not to give them the satisfaction of knowing their judgment landed.
Let them whisper. Let them wonder if I cared.
I didn’t. Or at least, I’d learned to pretend I didn’t, which was close enough to the same thing.
The Forbes cottage sat at the far edge of the village, small and drafty but blessedly separate from the cluster of homes. Meghan Forbes opened the door at my knock, the baby on her hip, her face lined with worry.
“Mistress Elspeth, thank the saints. He’s been coughin’ somethin’ fierce all mornin’, and I didna know if I should send for ye or wait or—”
“Let me see him.” I stepped inside, grateful for the warmth of the peat fire, however smoky. The cottage smelled of porridge and damp wool and the particular sour-sweet scent of babies.
The boy—wee Hamish, barely six months old—was red-faced and fussy, his breathing thick with congestion. I examined him with gentle hands, listening to the rattle in his chest, checking for fever.
“It’s not the lung fever,” I said after a moment, and watched the tension drain from Meghan’s shoulders. “Just a winter cold. The yarrow tea will help ease the cough and keep him warm. If the fever comes or his breathing worsens, send for me at once.”
I showed her how to prepare the tea, how to make a steam tent to ease the baby’s breathing. When Hamish fussed and squirmed, I lifted him from his mother’s arms and settled him against my shoulder, rubbing slow circles on his back until his whimpers softened to hiccups.
He was so small. So warm and alive, his tiny fingers curled against my collarbone, his breath hot and damp against my neck.