Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Sarah had been fine at supper and was not fine by morning.
Jane brought the news with the breakfast tray, her face doing the careful thing it did when she was delivering information she expected to cause a reaction.
“Lady Sarah took ill in the night. Fever. She’s askin’ for the elderflower from the stillroom, but Moira’s hip is bad, and she cannae manage the stairs. ”
Isobel was already getting up. “I know where the stillroom is,” she said. “I’ll go.”
“Ye daenae have to…”
“I know I don’t have to.” She yawned sleepily, stretched, then added, “Tell Sarah I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
She got dressed hurriedly and half-run, half-walked to the still room.
Lady Sarah’s chambers were warm, the curtains half drawn, and Sarah herself was propped against her pillows, looking furious about being ill, which Isobel took as a good sign.
Her color was high, and her eyes were bright with fever, and she had the expression of a woman who had things to do and was deeply resentful of her own body’s timing.
“Ye didnae have to come,” Sarah said. “Ye’ve too many things to do before the wedding ceremony to concern yerself with me.”
“There may be much to do over the next few days,” Isobel allowed, “but I will always make time to check on you, Lady Sarah. After all, quite soon, we shall be sisters.” Isobel set down the things she had brought and looked at her properly.
Skin too warm, breathing a little fast, the flush concentrated high on her cheeks. “How long have you had the fever?”
“Since about midnight. It’s nae serious.”
“I’ll decide that.” She poured water from the pitcher and began making up the elderflower infusion, her hands moving from memory. “Have you eaten anything?”
“I’m nae hungry.”
“That wasn’t the question.”
Sarah looked at her for a moment, and then, despite herself, the corner of her mouth moved. “Nay,” she said. “I havenae eaten.”
“I’ll send Jane for broth.” Isobel pulled the chair close to the bed and sat in it.
She felt Sarah’s forehead with the back of her hand and then her pulse at the wrist. Fast, a little thin, but steady.
“This isn’t serious,” she said. “You were right. But you are going to stay in this bed today and possibly tomorrow, and you are going to drink this when it’s ready, and you are not going to argue with me about it. ”
“I wasnae goin’ to argue.”
“You were absolutely going to argue.”
Sarah laughed, which turned into a cough, and Isobel handed her the water and waited. “Alasdair always said I’d argue with a stone wall if it looked at me wrong,” Sarah said, when she had her breath back.
“I can hear him saying those words.”
“He’s occasionally right about things. I daenae tell him that. It would go to his head.” Sarah settled back against her pillows and watched Isobel move around the room. “Ye’re very competent at this.”
“My mother was often unwell. I learned early.”
“The Highland blood,” Sarah said. “Highlanders are always either very tough or completely unable to manage discomfort. Nay middle ground.” She paused.
“Me mother was the second kind. Took to her bed for a week with a mild headache. Alasdair and I used to sit outside her door and play cards in the corridor.”
“How old were you?”
“He was about nine. I was six.” She smiled at the ceiling. “He taught me to play. Explained every rule three times to make sure I understood. Made a little diagram.” A pause. “He always did that. Wrote everything down. The maids used to tease him about it.”
“Jane told me he taught some of them to read.”
“Two of them. Bessie and a girl called Fiona, who left after her marriage.” Sarah’s voice had softened.
“He just decided it was the correct thing to do and did it. Nay fuss. Didnae understand why everyone acted like it was unusual.” She turned her head to look at Isobel.
“He used to correct me grammar constantly. Drove me completely mad. I told him once that if he corrected me one more time, I would push him into the burn. He corrected me again, so I pushed him.”
Isobel looked up from the infusion. “What did he do?”
“Climbed out, corrected me grammar again, and went inside to change his clothes.” Sarah’s eyes were bright, partly from the fever, but also partly because she was evidently enjoying sharing these stories about her big brother.
“He was the most annoyingly principled child. He thought if a thing was right, it was worth doin’ regardless of whether anyone thanked ye for it.
” Something moved across her face, the brightness dimming slightly.
“Then our father died, and he stopped bein’ annoyin’ about it.
He stopped bein’ anythin’, really. He just became… Laird Dunalasdair.”
The room was quiet. The infusion was ready, and Isobel poured it carefully into the cup and brought it to her.
“Drink this while it’s warm,” she said. “All of it.”
Sarah took it without arguing, which told Isobel more about how she was feeling than anything else had. She drank it in small sips, and Isobel sat beside her. After a while, Sarah lowered the cup and looked at her sideways.
“Can I ask ye somethin’?” Sarah said.
“You can ask me anything.”
“What do ye make of him?”
Isobel looked at her hands in her lap. “That is a broad question.”
“It is.” Sarah set the cup down. “I watched him at supper two nights ago. He spent most of it watchin’ ye when ye werenae lookin’ and most of the rest of it actively not watchin’ ye, which is its own kind of watchin’.” She paused. “I havenae seen him do that before.”
“Do what?”
“Work that hard to avoid anythin’.”
“I don’t know what I make of him,” Isobel said honestly. “I think I keep deciding one thing and then he does something that doesn’t fit it.”
“That’s him,” Sarah said. “That’s exactly him.
” She closed her eyes. “He used to do that to me constantly as a child. I would decide he was unbearable and then he would do something completely unexpected, and I would have to start over.” A long pause in which her breathing slowed down.
“He’s still doin’ it. He’s just doin’ it to more people now. ”
Her eyes stayed closed. After a few minutes, her breathing deepened, and she slept.
Isobel sat a little longer, listening to the fire, and thought about a nine-year-old boy who made diagrams, corrected grammar, and climbed back out of the burn to do it again.
She considered what it might cost to bury something like that so completely and realized it must be an incredible weight to carry every single day without ever putting it down.
* * *
The knock at the door came mid-morning.
She opened it to find Euan, the son of Mrs. Alexander, one of the cooks in the kitchens, on the other side.
He was eight years old, dark-haired, with his mother’s directness already established in the set of his chin.
He was holding a wooden horse in one hand and looking at her with an assessing gaze.
“Mama told me not to come up here,” he said. “She said ye were busy getting ready for yer weddin’ to me Laird.”
Isobel snorted a dry laugh. “If she told you to stay away, why did you defy her?”
“I was worried about Lady Sarah.” The little boy’s chin dipped slightly. “Me maither said Lady Sarah was mighty ill.”
“She will recover,” Isobel hurriedly assured the child.
“That’s good.” He puffed out his cheeks and sighed. “Lady Sarah sometimes reads to me in the afternoons or takes me for walks through the gardens.”
“How nice.” She gave him a charming smile.
“Mama said ye were takin’ care of Lady Sarah.”
“I am.”
He considered this. “Are ye good at it?”
“Reasonably.”
He seemed to find this acceptable. He looked past her into the room, seemingly ascertained that there was no one within, pressing her to do anything of importance, then asked, “Since Lady Sarah is sick, will ye come outside and play with me?”
The garden paths were still wet from the rain, and Euan led her through the gate with the confidence of someone who had been navigating these paths since before he could walk properly, pointing out which stones were slippery and which were safe with the knowledgeable air of a little expert.
“That one there,” he said, pointing at a flat stone by the kitchen garden wall, “will flip right over if ye step on the edge. Archie found out the hard way.”
“Who is Archie?”
“The under-groom. He went completely sideways.” Euan demonstrated, with his whole body, what completely sideways looked like. “Laird MacRaeh had to pretend he wasnae laughin’.”
“You saw the Laird laughing?”
Euan looked at her with the withering patience of someone explaining something obvious. “He did at first, but then he hurried to help Archie.”
Isobel pressed her lips together.
They walked the garden circuit, and Euan showed her where the herb beds would be in summer, where he had buried a stone he was convinced was valuable, and where the cat had her kittens last spring.
He talked the way small children do, without gaps, one thing connecting immediately to the next, and she listened, asked the right questions, and let herself be led.
At the end of the path, where it widened before the gate leading back to the inner courtyard, he paused and turned to face her with the expression of someone about to issue a formal challenge.
“Race,” he said.
“Really?”
“From here to the gate.” He pointed.
She rolled her ankles, testing the one she’d hurt previously while running through the field with Alasdair at her heels. “I am not sure it is such a good idea…”
“Go!”
She went.
She ran with her skirts lifted and her boots on the wet stones, and he ran beside her, small legs moving twice as fast as hers.
His cherubic face was lit with the seriousness of accomplishing this task and winning the race.
She kept pace with him easily for the first half, then let him pull ahead, not so obviously that it looked intentional—just a slight lag, a boot that seemed to catch on a stone.
He hit the gate first by four clear strides and threw both arms up victoriously.
“I win,” he announced.
“You were faster,” she said, honestly, because he had been, for his size. She was breathing harder than the run warranted.
“Again?” he questioned. A broad smile stretched his cheeks, making them look plump.
“You’ve already beaten me once,” she said. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
He considered this strategy and appeared to find it sound. He looked up at her with his dark eyes and said, with the abrupt candor of the very young, “Did ye let me win, me Lady?”
She smirked at him, then laid a hand over her heart and said solemnly, “I would never.”
* * *
He had not meant to watch.
He had wandered through the east wing for no particular reason, or at least no reason he was willing to consider, and had seen them at the far end of the garden path, where he had stopped.
He told himself he was checking to see if Mrs. Alexander’s boy was causing trouble.
Isobel was crouched to Euan’s level, and the boy was showing her something in his palm. She was looking at it as though whatever he held was the most interesting thing she had encountered all week.
She doesnae have to do that.
He watched her agree to the race with a flash of something unguarded and bright, and felt it land in the center of him before he had finished registering what it was.
Daenae.
She ran. His body lurched forward as he recalled the horror of watching her fall all those days ago. He knew that her ankle had healed, and she no longer showed so much as a limp or hobble, but Alasdair still worried over her safety.
The race was over before he had the chance to intercede and Alasdair blew out a sigh of relief.
We live to fight another day…or rather race another day.
He lingered by the garden path and waited for Isobel to join him. When she looked up and spotted him, he noticed the way her eyes burned with elation. “Ye lost the race to a young lad. Not feelin’ much like yer friend the hare today, are ye?”
Her eyes continued to twinkle as she laced her arm through his and cupped her hand around his elbow. “I thought it best to conserve my strength.”
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. “For our wedding day?” The words, laced with promise, slipped out of his mouth before he could check himself and make sure that he would not offend her by loosely referring to their wedding day and hinting toward their wedding night as well.
But Isobel surprised him as always by tipping her head back and laughing boisterously. “Come along, me Laird.” She squeezed his elbow. “We must make preparations for our nuptials.”
Alasdair thought twice about teasing her a second time but then bit his lip.
There will be plenty of time for that sort of playfulness once we’re wed.
The thought was wicked…but also hopeful. The very best kind of notion.