Chapter 6
Chapter
Six
Dawson came to the stillroom near dusk, as he had promised.
The swagger from earlier was gone, replaced by something quieter, more thoughtful. He stood in the doorway for a moment, watching me work, and I had the strangest sense that he was seeing something most people missed.
“You said to come,” he said finally.
“I did.” I gestured to the stool across from my workbench. “Sit. Let me see your hands.”
He obeyed, settling onto the stool with a wince that told me his back was worse than he had admitted. When he held out his hands, I saw the damage immediately—red, raw patches across his palms where the pitchfork handle had rubbed the skin nearly raw.
“You should have stopped sooner,” I said, reaching for the salve.
“I wanted to finish.” He watched as I scooped a bit of the ointment. “Angus was watching from the fence line for most of the afternoon. I think he was hoping I’d quit.”
“Did you?”
“I got three posts replaced before my hands gave out.” A rueful smile. “So, no. But also not exactly a triumph.”
“Angus MacLeod has been testing new arrivals since he was a boy. His father was the same.” I took his hand in mine—and immediately was aware of how warm his skin was. How the calluses on his fingers were in strange places. How his palm dwarfed mine, broad and strong despite the damage.
His hands were not the hands of a nobleman. They were rougher than I had expected, marked with small scars and old calluses that spoke of labor—though not the kind of labor our clansmen knew. The calluses were in the wrong places, formed by gripping things that did not exist in my world.
I began spreading the salve across the worst of the raw patches, focusing on the task and not on the way my pulse had quickened.
“This is good,” he said quietly. “The salve. Smells like summer.”
“Comfrey, calendula, and beeswax. Moira’s recipe.” I kept my eyes on my work, but I could feel him watching me. “You will still have blisters by morning, but this will ease the worst of it.”
“Thank you.” His voice had dropped, gone soft and warm in a way that made my stomach flutter. “You’re good at this. The healing.”
“It is what I do.”
“It’s more than that.” He flexed his fingers experimentally as I worked, and the movement brought his hand more fully into contact with mine. Neither of us pulled away. “The way you focus... the care you take. This isn’t just a job for you. It matters.”
I didn’t know what to say. His words settled over me like a warm cloak, and I found myself looking up to meet his gaze.
That was a mistake.
His eyes were green as new leaves, bright even in the dim light of the stillroom.
There was no mockery in them, no calculation—only a quiet intensity that made my breath catch.
He was looking at me the way I imagined painters looked at landscapes they wanted to capture.
The way no one had looked at me in years.
I noticed again how the firelight caught the planes of his face—the strong jaw, the slight crook in his nose that suggested it had been broken at least once, the laugh lines that bracketed his mouth.
He was handsome, aye, but it was more than that.
There was a solidity to him, a presence that made the small stillroom feel somehow smaller.
Our fingers were still touching. Neither of us moved.
I finished with his hands and set the salve aside—but when he moved to stand, his whole body went rigid and a sharp hiss escaped between his teeth.
“Your back,” I said. It was not a question.
“It’s fine.” But the way he gripped the edge of the workbench told a different story. “Just a little stiff.”
“Sit down.” I was already moving toward the shelves where I kept my dried herbs. “You’ve been swinging an axe and hauling posts all day with muscles still recovering from nearly freezing to death. You’re lucky you can move at all.”
“Has anyone ever told you that your bedside manner is terrifying?”
“Frequently.” I pulled down jars of dried willow bark, meadowsweet, and valerian root, measuring each with practiced hands. “Moira says I could curdle milk with my sympathy.”
“I believe it.” But there was warmth in his voice, and when I glanced back, he was watching me with something like fascination. “What are you making?”
“A tea for the pain.” I set a small pot of water over the brazier to heat. “Willow bark eases aching muscles and joints. Meadowsweet does the same and will help with any swelling. And valerian root will help you sleep tonight—which you need, whether you admit it or not.”
“You’re drugging me?”
“I am healing you. There is a difference.” I measured the herbs into a clay cup, watching the water begin to steam. “Though if you’d prefer to spend the night unable to find a comfortable position and wake tomorrow barely able to move, I can certainly put these back.”
He held up his bandaged hands in surrender. “I’ll drink whatever you give me.”
“A wise choice.”
The water reached a rolling boil, and I poured it carefully over the herbs, releasing a sharp, slightly bitter scent into the air. I let it steep while I returned to my workbench, tidying the jars and mortar I had been using earlier.
“How old are you?” The question escaped before I could think better of it.
“Thirty-five.” He tilted his head, a hint of amusement crossing his features. “Why do you ask?”
“You seem...” I searched for the right word. “You carry yourself like a man who has lived more than his years.”
“Is that a polite way of saying I look old?”
“It is a polite way of saying you look tired.” I strained the tea through a bit of clean linen into a fresh cup, then carried it to him. “Tired in a way that has nothing to do with sleep. Drink this. It will be bitter, but it works.”
He took the cup, wrapping his bandaged hands around it carefully. The steam rose between us, fragrant with meadowsweet and the sharper note of willow bark. He sniffed it experimentally.
“Smells like a forest floor.”
“It tastes worse than it smells. Drink it anyway.”
He took a tentative sip and grimaced. “You weren’t joking.”
“I rarely joke about medicine.” I settled onto my own stool across from him. “Finish all of it. The valerian takes time to work, but by the time you reach your chamber, you should feel the muscles beginning to ease.”
He took another sip, his face screwing up at the taste but his throat working obediently. “That’s... surprisingly accurate. About looking tired, I mean.”
“And you are not married.” It was not a question. I had noticed the bare ring finger, the way he spoke of no one waiting for him except his mother and his assistant. “A wealthy man of five and thirty with no wife? That seems unusual, even in your time.”
“It is.” He took a longer drink of the tea, as if using the bitterness as an excuse to pause and collect his thoughts.
“I was engaged once. Twice, actually. The first time, she realized I was more in love with my next expedition than with her. The second time...” He let out a breath.
“She told me I wasn’t looking for a partner.
I was looking for someone to witness my life. She was right.”
“That is... uncommonly honest.”
“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. Standing on top of mountains, floating in the middle of oceans—plenty of time for uncomfortable self-reflection.” He looked up from his cup, his green eyes catching mine. “What about you?”
The question caught me off guard, though it shouldn’t have. I had opened this door; I could hardly be surprised when he walked through it.
“I am eight and twenty,” I said carefully. “And I am not married because no man of any standing would have me. Not anymore.”
“Because of what happened with Alasdair.”
My hands stilled on the edge of the workbench. “Kate told you.”
“She mentioned it. Not the details—just that someone hurt you. That the clan was not kind about it.” His voice was gentle, without pity or judgment. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”
I should have stopped there. Should have let him finish his tea and sent him on his way. But something about the quiet of the stillroom, the way he sat so still with the cup cradled in his bandaged hands, made the words come before I could stop them.
“I was four and twenty when I met Alasdair MacKenzie,” I said. “He was charming and handsome. He said we would build a life together.”
Dawson’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He took another drink of the tea, his eyes never leaving my face.
“I believed him.” My voice came out flat, stripped of emotion.
It was easier that way. “I followed him to Inverness. I gave him everything—my virtue, my reputation, my heart. And when I found myself with child, I went to tell him the happy news and found him with his very pregnant wife. Their home was warm and welcoming. Their love was obviously real.”
“Christ,” Dawson breathed.
“I lost the bairn a while later. Whether from grief or stress or simply bad luck, I’ll never know.
” I watched him drain the last of the tea, his throat working around the bitter dregs.
“Connor had asked me to return to Bronmuir. Malcolm—Alasdair’s cousin—has made it his mission to remind everyone of my shame and ruin whenever he can.
And most of the clan believes I got what I deserved. ”
The silence stretched between us. I waited for the judgment, the careful distance that always followed when people learned the truth of what I had done.
Instead, Dawson set down the empty cup and reached out with his bandaged hand to cover mine where it rested on the workbench.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Not for what you did—you have nothing to apologize for. But for what was done to you. For the years you’ve spent carrying that weight alone.”
Something cracked open in my chest—something I had kept carefully sealed for four years. I blinked hard, refusing to let the tears fall.
“You do not think less of me?”