Chapter 5
Aftyn usually loved the weekly market held in the middle of the village.
Today, her mood didn’t suit such an outing, but Neve insisted.
Now that she and Neve weren’t tied to Niall’s bedside night and day, they could indulge in a visit.
Aftyn finally agreed to go with her. After facing Agatha and her father this morning, she needed the distraction.
Farmers brought the best of their crops, tinkers and tailors came from near and far, and Aftyn always found some herb or flower she needed to add to her mother’s—now her—collection.
The growers would tell her how to use each plant, whether in food or herbal medicines, and Neve would make a plainly legible note in her journal so they wouldn’t lose the knowledge and, unlike what Aftyn’s mother had done, would someday be able to pass what they learned on to the next healer.
It didn’t take long for the basket over her arm to fill with colorful herbs, roots, and flowers she knew how to use.
It gave off sweet, spicy, and earthy scents.
She should take it back to the keep, or ask Neve to, but the excitement of the market drew her on.
Colorful ribbons rippling in the breeze stirred by the passing crowd caught her gaze and she moved toward them.
The front of the stall made her smile, and she’d done little enough of that lately.
Bright and cheerful, some ribbons shone in the weak sunlight, others made of velvet looked so soft, she wanted to stroke them.
Neve, at her side, went right to the brightest ribbon, a crimson too pure to be confused with blood. Neve’s dark hair and creamy skin would be even more beautiful with it adorning her. “Ye should get it,” Aftyn told her. “The color suits ye.”
Neve gave it a wistful glance and shook her head. “Nay, I havenae coin enough for it.”
“I’ll give ye what ye lack,” Aftyn told her, hating to see the longing in Neve’s eyes as she turned away from the display, and wanting to thank her for helping care for Niall.
“I cannae let ye do that. Ye have little enough coin of yer own.”
“Dinna despair. Let me see if the merchant is willing to deal with the clan’s healers.”
It took only a few words for the man to pull the ribbon Neve wanted from the rack and present it to her. “For a lovely lass who deserves a gift for helping her people.”
Neve simpered and took it with thanks.
Then the man turned to Aftyn. “And what color suits ye, milady? I’d nay let ye leave without a gift to complement ye as the red does yer friend.”
“I dinna need…”
“Ach,” the man said, holding up a hand to interrupt her. “’Tis never about need for a lovely lass such as yerself. And a healer deserves the thanks of all she has helped.”
“But I havena helped ye,” Aftyn reminded him, pleased to be acknowledged but confused by the sentiment coming from a stranger.
“Nay, ye havena, but my wee daughter still lives, thanks to one of yer sisters.”
“Ye have a daughter? Where is she?” Aftyn couldn’t see anyone else in his stall with him.
“At home with her ma, thanks to a healer like ye. Because she saved her life, I vowed to give a token to every healer I meet, to express how grateful I am.”
Aftyn silently blessed him. After Agatha’s accusations piled on top of her failures with Niall, finding someone so grateful to healers lifted her heart.
“Now, milady healer, which of these catch yer eye?” He waved at the fluttering ribbons.
Aftyn’s gaze followed his hand and lit on a clear-sky blue velvet that made her breath catch. “That one,” she said, reaching out to indicate it. “But I canna. ’Tis too dear. Ye must need the coin it would bring for yer wife and bairn.”
“’Tis my pleasure, milady.” He pulled the ribbon from the rack and offered it to her. “’Twill be lovely in yer hair or holding a locket around yer throat. Ye must take it.”
After hearing his reason for giving such a gift, she couldn't insult him. “I find I cannae refuse ye, sir,” she told him and allowed him to drape the ribbon across her palm. The color drew her eye, but when she touched it, she could not bear to relinquish it. The velvet felt as soft and plush as she’d imagined it would.
“I will think of yer kindness, always, when I wear it. And yer wee daughter. What is her name?”
“Emma.” His smile softened. “She is the joy of my life.” Then he held out a hand. “I can ask only one boon more, milady.”
Aftyn nearly handed the ribbon back to him, fearing he was about to demand a kiss or something more in payment.
“Simply tell yer ladies to visit my stall. MacGarrity is me name.” He laid his hand over his heart and inclined his head. “Will ye do that?”
“Of course,” she agreed, relief filling her that he’d not made an improper demand.
But he wouldn’t. His tale and his demeanor as he told it convinced her he was sincere.
She could keep the ribbon as a token of gratitude, as he’d intended.
She smiled, grateful to be acknowledged, something that happened rarely. “Do ye come to market often?”
“I’ll come more often now that I ken such lovely lasses are to be found here.”
Neve giggled.
Aftyn wished him and his family well as she rolled up her treasure. She tucked it into her basket, out of sight, then she and Neve took their leave of MacGarrity.
Neve begged off of seeing the rest of the market, claiming she was tired, and left Aftyn to wander on her own. Only after Neve disappeared into the crowd did Aftyn think to have her take the basket back to the keep. It wasn’t heavy, but it made moving through the crowd awkward.
She hadn’t gone far when a familiar shape appeared ahead of her.
She could not mistake Jamie Lathan, even though his broad back was to her.
His dark auburn hair glinted red in the sunlight.
When he wasn’t castigating her, or wrung out from tending to Niall, his deep brown eyes drew her, his high cheekbones, full, firm lips, and even white teeth made her want to gaze at him forever.
And the rest of him she’d seen in his bath.
She’d never met a man who fascinated her as much.
While the other Lathans were also tall and well formed, he moved through the crowded market so confidently, most people parted before him, making way as if for royalty.
But not all. Some, facing stalls and intent on the items on offer before them, jostled each other into his way as they moved along. Reflexively, many held up a hand, making contact with his hand or wrist.
Those fleeting contacts raised Aftyn’s hackles and made her watch him even more carefully as she followed along behind him.
As though another person’s inadvertent touch annoyed him, or angered him, his shoulders would tense as he glanced down and aside with a frown at the clumsy villager, or adjusted his stride to avoid the next person coming too close to him.
Ahead and to his side, a cluster of women and girls bargained with a different stall keeper over brightly colored ribbons.
Younger girls moved around them, laughing and plucking at the colored baubles their mothers held up for inspection.
An older woman stood to the side, leaning on a cane, her expression disapproving.
She stepped around the cluster of women, meaning, Aftyn thought, to leave them to their haggling and make her way to another stall.
Jamie tried to give her room, but the crowd of villagers at the stalls on his other side hemmed him in, and she was so bent over her cane, likely she only saw the ground at her feet, not the big man doing his best to avoid her without bumping into anyone else.
The old woman’s elbow brushed his arm. She paused and touched his hand, seemingly in apology, as she passed.
Jamie twitched so slightly that only someone watching him as closely as Aftyn would have seen it.
Then he turned his head to regard the old woman’s halting progress.
He pivoted and lifted a hand toward her, then clenched his fingers into a fist and drew it back to his side.
Aftyn sidestepped behind a pair of men to avoid being seen as Jamie’s gaze raked past her and followed the old woman. She carried on her halting progress, angled away from Aftyn’s vantage point. She could see Jamie over the shoulder of one of the men, but he failed to notice her.
Before his expression cleared and he turned back to continue through the market, his lips compressed and his gaze dropped.
Did he feel sympathy for those he could not help? Did that failure anger him? Or was there more she did not yet know, did not yet understand? Thinking back over his reaction to the old woman’s touch, she realized there was another explanation.
He’d flinched as though in pain.
It would be simplest to attribute his reactions to the unavoidable press of bodies around them.
Aftyn wasn’t fond of crowds, herself. But nothing about Jamie Lathan seemed simple, try though he might to convince her otherwise.
And she’d seen him limp out of Niall’s chamber and nearly collapse.
Yet he didn’t limp now. Surely he touched the ill and injured who came to him for help.
Surely brief contact with fairgoers would make less of a demand on him.
There must be some other explanation. Did he fear cutpurses in a crowded fair? Nay, that couldn’t be the reason for his strange behavior. Who would dare a man like Jamie Lathan?
Jamie did his best to avoid the crush in the market of villagers and folk from the keep.
He would not be here at all, but he hoped to find an herb he needed to make a stronger poultice for Niall’s wound.
He could manage without it, true, but the sooner Niall was fit to travel, the happier Jamie would be, and the herb would help in two ways.
First, because Aftyn would expect to see poultices applied to the wound, and second, they would help disguise the healing effect of Jamie’s ability.
Though at the moment, he’d happily dispense with his talent.