Chapter Fourteen #3
“Aye, that’s a rare shame,” he said. “I told Master Hamish—” He broke off as Maisie frowned. “Well, we’ll make it comfortable for ye. It’ll be good and quiet, tucked away. What do ye intend to do here, if ye dinnae mind my asking?”
“I have some understanding of medicine,” Mia said. “I can treat the sick and injured. Before I fell ill myself, I’d hoped I might train to become a doctor.”
“Were ye sick?” Rory asked.
“Rory!” Maisie nudged him again, and he shifted from one foot to the other in the manner of an admonished child.
“Och, forgive me, lass. Of course ye were ill,” he said. “I was at the wedding. I-I’m sorry for ye, but it’s a good thing ye survived, aye?”
“Not everyone here agrees with you,” Mia said.
“Ye needn’t take notice of them,” Rory replied with a smile, “and if ye intend to heal the sick, ye’d be welcome. We’ve no doctor here, though Maisie has some skill, dinnae ye Maisie, lass?”
Mia looked at her new friend. “Do you?”
“Only a little,” Maisie said. “I can tie a bandage and have helped to deliver a bairn…well, for folk that’ll let me near them.”
“Maisie could assist ye, ma’am,” Rory said. “She’s better doing that than…” Maisie again frowned at him and he shook his head. “Never mind, Maisie, love. Ye can do what ye wish.”
“I could do with some help,” Mia said. “I’ve much to do to get everything ready.
I brought some medicines with me that Dr. McIver was kind enough to let me have, but as to ointments and lotions, I’ll need to begin again, assuming the herbs I’d need grow here.
I think I saw some calendula flowers yesterday. ”
“Calendula?” Rory said. “I’ve not heard the name.”
“They’re like large gold daisies,” Mia said.
“Do ye perhaps mean Mary’s Gold?” Maisie said.
Mia nodded.
“There’s plenty in the gardens around the castle,” Maisie continued. “I think Mrs. McBride uses them in her soups. I’m sure she’d let ye take some. Do ye use them for a tea?”
“Yes, and a salve,” Mia said. “I could show you how to make it if you wanted to help?”
“Ye’d like that, wouldnae ye, Maisie?” Rory said. “Haven’t I always said that—”
“Ye say too much, Rory MacLennan,” Maisie hissed. “Is this what ye want? To tell me what to do all the time?”
Rory glanced at Mia. “No, lass, but perhaps ye could learn a thing or two from Her Ladyship. Then ye could consider—”
“Rory, please,” Maisie said. “Ye dinnae own me and ye never will.”
“Aye,” Rory said. “Ye belong to all the—”
“I belong to nobody,” Maisie said, the moisture in her eyes belying the hardness in her voice.
Rory colored and nodded to the bird. “Best get this hung,” he said. “I’ll cook yer fish for supper when we’re done. I can show ye how to gut it, if ye’d like.”
“Thank you, that would be most kind,” Mia said.
He nodded, then linked his arm through Maisie’s. “Och, Maisie love, ye know my tongue runs away with me sometimes. What say I give ye a kiss to make up for it?”
“What say I give ye a kick up the arse?” Maisie said, though there was laughter in her voice again.
“My arse is not half so fine as yers, hen,” Rory said, patting Maisie’s behind. Then he disappeared into the kitchen, whistling.
Maisie folded her arms. “A great big fool, is Rory,” she said, but Mia could hear the longing in her voice—the yearning of one who battled with herself not to love another because she believed that she could never be worthy of him.
When Rory returned, Maisie’s bright demeanor had resumed and the three of them set about cleaning the rest of the cottage, Rory fetching water from the river while Mia and Maisie washed the rest of the windows, swept the floors, and brushed away the cobwebs.
When Mia took the rug from the parlor outside to beat it, a thick cloud of dust exploded at the first stroke, and they dissolved into a coughing fit that ended up in peals of laughter, their mirth echoing across the landscape.
Mia paused, mid-laughter, and glanced about the place she’d be calling home for a short while.
She stiffened as she saw a shape moving between the trees.
Then she blinked and it disappeared. A deer, perhaps?
Rory had pointed out the different footprints in the earth, identifying each animal that had made them, and said that deer in fawn often ventured down from the hillside in the late spring and summer.
It would be something to look forward to next year…
Provided she’d not left Glenblath by then.
As the sun slipped toward the horizon, casting a soft pink haze across the sky, they retired inside to eat the fish that Rory had shown Mia how to gut and roast on a spit.
Mia sat with her new companions, eating the freshly roasted fish with her fingers, the fire casting a warm orange glow on their faces, and listening to Rory’s tales of the spirits and pagan gods who lived on the mountain—Beinn Blath.
When had she ever been so free as she was today? Not beholden to a father, or a husband, or social convention—but simply living, enjoying the fruits of a day’s work with companions whom she could laugh with, who did not recoil in horror at her appearance, but took pleasure from her company.
She blinked and cast her gaze over Rory’s features—the strong forehead, and the wide, square jaw…and the eyes that reflected the firelight and flared with longing as he looked at Maisie. It was not the base desire that a man showed toward a woman, but a deeper connection, a call of the soul.
Rory loved Maisie, though he couldn’t admit it, even to himself.
What might it be like to be loved by such a man?
To indulge in the simple pleasure of sharing a meal they’d cooked together?
And to think, the ladies of London Society—an institution that Mia’s father had tried desperately to ingratiate himself with—would call these people savages.
Far better to be a happy savage than a miserable Society wife.
And to be the wife of a Highlander…
I am the wife of a Highlander.
Mia shushed the little voice in her mind. She would soon be wife to no one.
Perhaps she and Maisie weren’t so different. No matter how they might wish for a loving partnership with another, they would never be accepted and loved, openly, for what, and who, they were.