Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
"Who left these here?"
The young kitchen lad stopped in the doorway, bucket in hand, and blinked at her. "Miss?"
Catriona held up the bundle. Two stems, narrow, pale underside, tied with plain cord. Set on the corner of her worktable sometime between her leaving for James's chamber that morning and returning just now.
"These. On me table. Who brought them?"
The lad looked at the herbs with the expression of someone being asked to account for something they had absolutely no part in.
"I daenae ken, Miss. Wasnae me."
"Did ye see anyone come in here while I was gone?"
"Nay, Miss." He shifted the bucket from one hand to the other. "I only just came up meself. To fill the basin."
"And before ye? In the corridor?"
He thought about it with genuine effort.
"I saw Fergus go past earlier. And the laird was in the study across the way for a while." He looked at the herbs again, helpfully. "Could've been anyone, Miss."
"Aye," she said. "Go on then."
He filled the basin and left with the speed of someone relieved to be excused.
Catriona set the bundle down and picked up the second one. Different plant, flat grey-green leaves, faintly sweet when she pressed them. She'd run through her last of them two days ago and hadn't spoken the absence aloud to anyone.
Mairi appeared in the doorway a minute later, breathless from the stairs. "Did ye call for me? Evan said ye were askin' about some herbs."
"The herbs on me table. Do ye ken who left them?"
Mairi looked at the bundles. Frowned properly, the way she frowned when something didn't fit her existing information.
"Nae. I didnae bring those up." She stepped closer, picking up a stem and turning it over. "These arenae from the stores either. The stores have everything dried and bundled since autumn. These are fresh pulled, see? Still got soil at the base of the stems."
Catriona looked. She was right.
"I'll ask below," Mairi offered, already brightening with purpose. "Someone in the yard might have brought it up."
"Daenae bother."
Mairi stopped. Looked at her. Then at the herbs. Then back at her, with the expression of someone whose theory had just been confirmed without a single word being spoken.
"Right," she said, in a tone that meant the opposite.
"Mairi."
"I'll be on me way now, Miss." She turned toward the door. Paused with one hand on the frame. "For what it's worth," she said, not quite keeping the satisfaction out of her voice, "those are exactly the ones ye said ye needed. Nae approximately. Exactly." She left before Catriona could respond.
Catriona stood at the table and said nothing to the empty doorway.
Catriona turned to face the corridor.
Across the hall, through the open doorway, she could hear Anthony's voice. Low, unhurried, the particular tone of a man going through the ordinary business of the afternoon.
"The eastern pasture boundary, has MacNeil responded?"
"Nae yet, me Laird." Fergus. "I'll send again tomorrow."
"Do that. And the roof repairs on the stable, are they finished or are they finished on paper?"
A pause. "On paper, me Laird. Largely."
"Then tell Duncan he has until Friday or I'll finish them meself and send him the bill."
"Aye."
"That's all."
Footsteps. Fergus moving away down the corridor. A pause.
Then the scrape of a chair, the small sounds of a man settling back to work. Completely ordinary. Not the voice or the movements of a man who had done anything unusual that afternoon.
She looked at the herbs.
Freshly pulled. Still got soil at the base.
She looked toward the doorway. At the ordinary corridor, the ordinary afternoon light, the ordinary sound of him turning a page on whatever he was reading.
Nay, it cannae be.
She picked up the bundle. Set it down. Picked it up again. The stems were tied with plain cord, the same cord she'd seen on the edge of his desk two days ago when she'd walked past and he'd been working on correspondence.
She set it down for the last time and left it there.
She opened her satchel. Took out the mortar. Began to work, hands steady, eyes on what was in front of her.
She was a practical woman. She dealt in evidence, in what was measurable and real.
The herbs were real. The soil on the stems was real. And across the hall was a man who had not looked at her once since she'd walked back into this room, which was, in her experience, exactly what a person did when they were trying not to be caught doing something kind.
She ground the root without looking up.
By the time she was done preparing all the herbs, it was already late afternoon. She went back to James's bedside to check how he was doing.
He was awake.
Sitting up against his pillows, blankets pushed back to his waist the way children pushed blankets when they'd decided they were done being ill regardless of what their body thought.
He was small. Smaller than she'd expected for six, fine-boned in the way that chronic illness made children fine-boned, the kind of slight that spoke of energy spent on breathing rather than growing.
Dark hair, Anthony's coloring, a little damp still at the temples. But his eyes were open and sharp and entirely his own.
Fox was on the bed with him. That was new. He had his chin resting on James's knee and his eyes half-open.
Catriona stopped in the doorway.
She'd been in the herb room for most of the afternoon. Clearly, things had progressed in her absence.
"When did that happen?" she asked.
James didn't look up. "He came up on his own. I didnae invite him." A beat. "I didnae discourage him either."
Fox's ear twitched. He did not move.
"He chose ye," Catriona said. She came to the bedside and sat, pressing two fingers to his wrist to check his pulse. "He doesnae do that quickly."
James considered this with visible satisfaction. "He's countin' something now though."
He nodded toward Fox, who had descended from the bed and begun pacing the length of the room in slow, deliberate circuits.
"He does that too," she said. "He's checkin' the room."
"For what?"
"Threats. Exits. Where the warmest spot is."
James considered this seriously. "Uncle Anthony does that too."
She kept her expression neutral. "Does he?"
"Aye. When he walks into a room, he always looks at the windows first. Then the doors." James watched Fox complete another circuit. "He taught me to do it. He says it's how ye keep people safe."
She moved her fingers to his ribcage, feeling the rise and fall. "Breathe slowly for me." She listened. Better, the wheeze lighter, the effort less visible. "Good. Again."
He obeyed.
"Are ye going to stay?"
She glanced up. He was looking at her directly, with the particular steadiness of a child who had learned to ask the things adults danced around.
"Until ye're better," she said.
"And after?"
"After I'll go back to the glens."
He was quiet a moment. "The fox likes it here," he said. As if offering an argument.
She looked at Fox, who had stopped his circuit and was sitting in the patch of afternoon light from the window with his eyes half-closed and his tail curled around his feet. The picture of a creature that had decided on its location.
"He likes warmth," she said. "He'd like anywhere with a fire."
James looked unconvinced. "He near bit Callum yesterday."
She raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"Callum tried to put him outside." James's tone made the verdict on this perfectly clear. "Fox disagreed."
"Aye," she said. "He would."
She stood, smoothed his blanket, checked the angle of the shutters. "Sleep before supper. Yer lungs do their best work when ye're restin'."
"Nobody has ever said that."
"Well, I'm telling ye now."
He lay back in one motion, boneless the way only children managed, and pulled the blanket to his chin with both fists, not for warmth, but for the grip of it.
Within minutes, his breathing had settled into the deeper rhythm of genuine sleep, and she took her satchel and left him to it.
Supper in the hall was its own education.
She sat where Eidith directed her, between Mairi and Donal, the grey-bearded clansman who'd acknowledged her that first morning with a nod and nothing more.
Anthony sat at the head of the table. He didn't perform the role. He simply occupied it, eating, listening, speaking when required. Fergus leaned over occasionally with something that needed a decision and got one, quickly, and that was that.
He didn't look at her.
She didn't look at him.
This took more effort than it should have.
Donal spoke mid-meal without preamble. "The boy's breathin' settled this mornin'."
"Aye," she said. "The treatment is holdin'."
"His mother had weak lungs," he said, quieter. Not broadcasting it, offering it, the way a man offered information he'd been deciding whether to share. "Before the fire. Nae many folk remember that."
She looked at him. "That's useful to ken. How long before the fire?"
"Since she was a girl, by all accounts. Married into the clan and never said much about it." He took a drink. "Anthony's mother noticed. She kept a close eye on the bairn from the start."
"Did she?"
"Aye." He said nothing more for a moment. Then, "The old healer, the one who died this winter, she knew it too. She managed it careful. Ye seem to be managin' it the same way."
It was, she understood, as close to approval as Donal was going to give. She took it for what it was.
"Thank ye," she said.
He returned to his meal as if the conversation had never happened.
Mairi leaned close from the other side. "Donal hasnae spoken at this table in years," she murmured, impressed. "That was practically a declaration."
"He gave me information. That's worth more."
Mairi looked at her with frank admiration. "Ye're very strange," she said. "I mean that kindly."
From the far end of the table Anthony was staring at his cup. She felt his gaze lift to her twice. She didn't meet it either time. She was not giving that ground away for free.
The night crisis came without warning.
She'd been back at his bedside an hour when his breathing changed. Not gradually, suddenly, one moment steady and the next thin and high and wrong.
The wheeze filled the room before she'd fully stood.
"Mairi." Calm, direct. "Hot water from the kitchen. Now, daenae run."
She was already at her satchel when Anthony came through the door.
He arrived the way she imagined he arrived at everything. Already alert, already taking stock, nothing wasted.
He swept the room once. Landed on James. Something moved behind his eyes that he locked down immediately.
He stepped forward.
"Stand back," she said.
He stopped. She felt the room hold its breath.
"I can help," he started.
"Ye can help by standin' back and stayin' quiet." She didn't soften it. "I need to hear him breathe and I cannae do that with ye at me shoulder."
A pause. Then he stepped back to the wall.
She heard it again from the doorway. That faint collective intake from the watching servants. She filed it away and forgot it immediately. She had James.
"Lift him," she said to the nearest servant, the young lad from earlier, pale-faced now, hands uncertain. "Gently. Both hands supportin' his back, aye, like that. Hold him forward, just slightly, so his chest can open."
Mairi arrived at a controlled run, the pot steaming in both hands.
Good girl.
Catriona added the compound. Measured, precise, and held the pot at the right distance, close enough for the steam without the heat.
She pressed two fingers along the boy's ribs and felt the resistance there, the way his body was working against itself. She guided his breathing with her voice the same way her grandmother had taught her, low, steady, a pace to follow when everything else had gone wrong.
"Breathe with me, James. Slow, in. Aye. And out. Again. Just like that."
His eyes were open, wide and frightened. She held his gaze.
"Ye're all right," she said. "I have ye. Keep breathin' with me."
Anthony had not moved from the wall.
She was aware of him with the part of her attention that was always tracking the room. Not interfering, not speaking, the effort of both visible in the absolute stillness he was holding himself in.
A man who'd spent six years being helpless in this room, and had learned to be still about it.
The steam worked. The wheeze eased. James's shoulders dropped a fraction, then another. The fist his hand had made in the blanket loosened slowly.
"There," she said quietly. "Well done. Keep goin'."
The wheeze faded. James's breathing evened out fraction by fraction, the way a storm eased. Not all at once, but in stages, each one a small concession until the worst of it was past.
When the last of the tension left his small frame she let out a slow breath of her own and sat back on the edge of the bed.
"Is it goin' to happen again?" James asked.
His voice was thin, worn at the edges, but it was there.
"Maybe," she said. No point softening it. "But each time I learn more about how yer lungs work and what sets them off. And each time I can manage it faster." She pressed the back of her hand briefly to his forehead. "Ye did well. Ye kept breathin' with me the whole time."
He was quiet a moment. "It hurt."
"I ken. It willnae always hurt that much."
His eyes moved past her shoulder, just briefly. She knew without turning that Anthony was still at the wall.
"Is he angry?" James asked very quietly.
"Nay, he's just worried."
"He really looks like that when he's worried."
She said nothing to that. Smoothed the blanket over him and stayed until his eyes had closed and the breathing had deepened into real sleep.
Then she sat back and felt two hours arrive on her all at once.
Movement behind her. Anthony, crossing to the small table beside the bed. He lifted the cloth from the edge of the water pot, wrung it out, set it on the table beside her.
She reached for it.
His hand was already there.
Neither of them moved. His hand over hers, the cloth between them, the fire low at their backs.
She felt the warmth of him, direct, immediate, and went completely still.
He did not pull away.
One heartbeat. Two.
She withdrew. Pressed the cloth to James's forehead, fixed her attention on the boy, on the steadying rhythm of his breathing.
Behind her she heard Anthony stand, heard the single step back that restored the proper distance.
She did not turn around.
Her hand stayed warm long after it had no reason to. She pressed it flat against her knee and kept her eyes on James. On the rise and fall of his small chest, steady now, holding.
It was easier to watch the boy breathe than to think about the man standing behind her.