Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The rain moved in before dawn, settling over the glen.
By the time the keep had fully woken, the courtyard was a grey slurry of mud, the outer stone walls dark and sheened like wet slate. The sky hung low, the color of old iron from one jagged peak to the other, pressing the mist down into the heather.
Catriona heard the rhythmic drum of it against the roof before she even opened her eyes.
She lay still for a moment, listening to the water gurgle through the stone gutters, then rose and dressed in her thickest wool. Rain was not a reason to stop, and she had never in her life treated the weather as an excuse for idleness.
The herb room was a small pocket of warmth in the damp keep.
She had built the brazier up high before James's morning treatment, and the stones held the heat, trapping the layered, sharp scents of her work.
Elecampane steeped in a glass jar, its earthy aroma mingling with the dusty smell of dried lungwort.
She worked through the morning with a focused quiet, the rain a steady, shushing presence against the single high window, while Fox remained a curled weight of red fur in the corner.
She was leaning over the table, the rhythmic scritch-scrape of the mortar and pestle filling the air, when a shadow darkened the doorway.
She did not look up.
She had learned the heavy, deliberate cadence of his boots well enough to recognize him without sight. He stood there for a long minute, his presence a sudden pressure in the small room. She knew he was checking the space the way he checked a perimeter.
"Teach me."
Catriona stilled her hand and looked up.
Anthony was leaning against the door frame. His arms weren't folded in his usual defensive bar. Instead, they hung at his sides, his shoulders slightly rounded. It was a looser version of his stance, the closest the Laird of McArthur got to being uncertain.
He jerked his chin toward the worktable, his eyes fixed on the roots she was processing.
Every reasonable part of her understood that this was a mistake.
The corridor outside was empty, the keep was hunkered down against the storm, and the herb room was no larger than a confession box.
The air was already thick with heat and the scent of crushed herbs.
It did not need the added weight of a man she had pushed away in a rain-soaked courtyard two days prior.
"Sit down," she said, her voice sounding louder than she intended in the cramped space.
He sat on the low wooden stool across from her. It brought him down, his head nearly level with hers, stripping away the height he usually used as a shield. She pushed the stone mortar toward him and set a handful of gnarled valerian root on the wood.
"Grind that. Steady pressure, circular. Daenae do it too hard."
He had already gripped the pestle, his knuckles turning white.
The first heavy stroke sent shards of root skittering across the table, bouncing off her jars and catching in the dark wool of his tunic. Catriona pressed her lips together, watching a piece of valerian roll toward the edge of the table.
"Ye're attackin' it," she said, reaching out to catch the stray piece. "It's already dead, Anthony."
He looked at the mess on the table, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
"It resists."
"It doesnae resist. Ye're using the force ye'd use to cleave a man's helm."
She reached across the small table, her fingers wrapping around his hand to reposition it on the pestle. She guided his grip lower, her skin warm against his calloused palm.
"Here. Flat. Let the weight of the stone do the work, not yer shoulder."
His hand went rigid under hers.
For a heartbeat, neither of them breathed. The heat from the brazier seemed to flare, or perhaps it was just the sudden proximity. She pulled her hand back quickly, her fingers tingling.
He tried again.
This time, the root gave way with a satisfying crunch, breaking down into a coarse, grey powder. She watched him find the rhythm. Not with ease, but with the stubborn, singular focus he brought to everything.
"What does this one do?" he asked after a while.
He held up a fragment of the half-ground root between two fingers, examining it as if it were a component of a siege engine.
"Valerian. For sleep. For the kind of pain that doesnae have a clean source." She glanced at it, then back to her own work. "Keep going, ye're only half done."
He resumed the circular motion. "And the one in the blue jar."
"Elecampane. Ye already ken that one. Ye pulled it from the east wall three weeks ago and left it on me table without a note."
The grinding stopped. Anthony looked at the jar, then at the wall. "I daenae ken what ye mean."
"Aye, ye do."
The grinding resumed, faster now.
Catriona did not look at him, but from the corner of her eye, she saw the corner of his mouth twitch, a ghost of a pull that was gone before she could be certain it was a smile.
They worked in silence for several minutes. The rain moved across the roof in a heavy sheet.
"It seems," Anthony said, his voice dropping to a low, gravelly register that vibrated in the small room, "the fact ye'll be leaving soon amuses ye."
He didn't look at her. He kept his eyes on the mortar, his hands moving in slow, deliberate circles.
"Nae amusement," she said, setting her own tools down. The word felt like a lie as soon as it left her throat. "Only relief."
He looked up then, his amber eyes searching hers. "Relief."
"Staying anywhere too long means becoming part of the masonry," she said, her voice steady even as her heart began a frantic rhythm against her ribs.
"And when things break, and they always do, eventually, the healer is the first one the mob looks to blame.
I've seen the smoke from me own roof, Anthony.
I've stopped being surprised by it." She reached for a jar, her movements stiff.
"So aye. When the work is done and James is whole, I go. It's cleaner that way."
He was quiet for a moment. The mortar had gone still in his hands.
"Has it always broken?" he asked. "Every place."
She looked at him.
He was asking it the way he asked things he'd been turning over for a while, not casually, not to fill silence. She considered deflecting and decided against it.
"Every place," she said. "Some faster than others."
"And ye always saw it comin'."
"Usually." She picked up a dried stem and turned it between her fingers. "By the time folk start dreaming about the fox, I ken it's time to go."
His jaw shifted once. She watched him absorb that, the dreams Mairi had mentioned, the talk she knew had been moving through the keep like smoke through a gap. He had known she would hear it eventually.
The silence that followed had weight in it. He looked at the mortar, then at her, then at the window where the rain was still moving in grey sheets across the glass.
"Then daenae leave," he said, "before they learn otherwise."
The words were rough, snagging in his throat as if they'd been forced out before he could catch them. He seemed to realize what he'd said at the same moment she did. His jaw shifted, his gaze dropping to her mouth and staying there.
Then his hand moved.
It was a slow, agonizingly cautious movement.
His fingers reached out and brushed a stray, damp lock of hair from her cheek, his touch so light it was barely there. He tucked the strand behind her ear, his hand lingering near her temple. He didn't pull away.
Catriona sat frozen.
The distance between them had been eroding for weeks, worn down by small touches and shared silences. Now, the gap was gone. She could see the faint lines of exhaustion etched at the corners of his eyes and the way his pulse thrummed in the hollow of his throat.
He leaned forward, bringing his forehead down to rest against hers. It was a slow, heavy descent.
She let him.
She closed her eyes, the world narrowing down to the scent of him, peat smoke, rain, and the metallic tang of the whetstone.
They stayed like that for a long time.
The rain lashed the window. The brazier ticked as the coals settled.
His breath was uneven against her skin, a ragged sound that lacked his usual iron control.
Her hands were flat on the table, clutching the wood so hard her fingers ached, while the room felt as though it was tilting slowly on its axis.
His thumb moved.
It traced the line of her jaw, the pad of it barely grazing her skin, as if he were memorizing the bone beneath.
She felt the exact moment he decided to break the spell.
It started with a slight tensing of his shoulders, a drawing-back that began deep in his chest. She felt the shift in the air before he moved, the way a bird feels the turn of the tide.
He pulled back abruptly, standing from the stool with a clatter. The cold of the stone walls rushed back between them like something physical.
"This is a mistake," he said.
His voice was a harsh, strangled sound.
He wasn't looking at her like a man who had made an error. He was looking at her with a raw, bleeding hunger, the look of a man staring at the one thing he had forbidden himself from ever touching.
"Ye keep saying that," she said, her voice a mere whisper.
His jaw tightened.
He held her gaze for one beat that ran too long, and then he left. She listened to his footsteps move away down the corridor, heavy and rhythmic, until there was nothing but the rain and the brazier. Fox lifted his head from the corner, his amber eyes tracking the empty doorway.
"Daenae," she told him.
Fox put his head back down.
She sat at the table and put her hands flat on the wood and waited for the warmth along her jaw to mean something less than it did. It took longer than she would have liked.
Two hours later, the rain had not eased, but the silence of the keep was broken. Mairi appeared in the doorway of the herb room, her face pale, a supper cloth forgotten over her arm.
"There are riders in the outer courtyard," Mairi said, her voice thin.