Chapter 14 #2
“Am I interrupting ye? I can come back later.” He gestured toward the doorway, as though asking if he should leave. He thought they would probably like to give him a resounding aye and see the back of him, but instead, Aftyn shook her head.
“Nay, Jamie. Join us. Braden was telling me about the new horses that just arrived from Crieff.”
“Indeed?” He’d bet his left arm they hadn’t been discussing those horses. He could read Aftyn, and she wasn’t telling the truth. Had they noticed two missing Lathan mounts? Or had they not been missed with new mounts replacing them this morning?
“Aye,” Braden agreed, then cleared his throat and gestured at the stalls on either side of the one where they were standing. “Look at these beauties. They will do much to improve our stock.”
“They should,” Jamie replied. He kept his expression noncommittal, curious to see how far they would take this tale.
“I understand Niall is one of yer best horsemen,” Braden added. “I’d enjoy seeing him ride.”
That took the conversation in an uncomfortable new direction. Niall was gone, but Braden couldn’t know that yet.
A serving lass stuck her head in the doorway. “Aftyn, I found ye! Can ye come? Janet sliced her thumb in the kitchen, and I went first up to yer herbal. Someone told me they’d seen ye coming out here.”
Aftyn headed toward the door. She paused and turned back to Braden for a moment. “I’ll be back soon. This willna take long.” Then she followed the lass.
Jamie might never get another chance to be alone with Braden. He wanted to do something for the lad before he left. He opened the stall door and entered, Braden on his heels. “These look to have Spanish lines.”
Braden settled on a nearby bale of hay. “I see that.”
“Do ye ken who yer Da got them from?” As he spoke, he moved around the horse, running a hand over its withers and along its back, a path that took him in arm’s length of Braden.
Jamie reached out and quickly laid a healing sleep on the lad, caught him as he slumped and leaned him back against the wall behind him.
Aftyn had saved him from his last breathing problem more than a year ago, but she worried constantly that he would have another episode.
Jamie ran a hand from Braden’s chest up his throat to his face, extending his talent and probing for anything that seemed out of place.
Jamie had seen something similar to the slight swelling in his airway in a young lass at the Aerie.
Every time the weather got cold and dry, her body reacted and she choked, unable to breathe.
Mint leaves in steam had helped her, but Jamie found the problem and fixed it.
Braden’s condition was minor compared to hers, but he was older, and Aileanna had mentioned that some children in the village where she grew up who had this affliction grew out of it.
Braden might be well on the way to achieving that, but Jamie eased the swelling and did everything he could to ensure Braden—and his sister—no longer had to be concerned.
Braden’s breathing affliction had kept him from being as strong as he should be. Now he’d have a chance to grow into the leader and develop the strength and skills of a warrior that a laird needed to have.
Satisfied he’d done all he could, he woke Braden, stepped away and continued around the horse he’d been inspecting.
When he glanced around, Braden was awake, but bleary. Jamie kept talking, giving him time to recover. Braden would assume he’d dozed off for a second in the middle of whatever Jamie was saying.
“Ah, aye, of course,” he said when Jamie paused.
Jamie hid a grin behind the horse’s mane. “Very good, then. Let’s look at the other two,” he told Braden, and quit the stall. They had time to admire them before Aftyn returned.
“Janet shouldna be allowed near a blade,” she groused as she walked up the center aisle to them. “I have to wrap a finger of hers at least once a sennight. One day, she’ll chop one off, and then what will she do?”
“Ye will sew it back on,” Braden told her, smiling.
Aftyn rolled her eyes and crossed her arms.
Jamie knew she thought it impossible, but he wondered. With his talent, could he do it? He’d treated frightful battle injuries but never tried to reattach a completely severed limb.
“What weighty matters did ye two discuss while I was gone?”
“Horses,” Braden said, Jamie echoing the same word at almost the same time.
“So, lasses, then.” She grinned. “Ye dinna need to lie. I’ve heard the lads when they didna ken a lass was near.”
Braden gave Jamie a look that said whatever is she going on about, and shrugged. Jamie returned the shrug and turned back to Aftyn, just as Neve ran into the stable.
“Ach, there ye are. Aftyn, I looked everywhere for ye. I have bad news.” She put a hand on Aftyn’s shoulder. “Robena died in her sleep, sometime during the night.”
Jamie collapsed onto a nearby bale of hay. He’d failed her. He thought he’d given her more time, but he hadn’t.
Aftyn burst into tears, and clung to Neve and Braden, who told her, “I ken ye tried to help her. It was no’ to be, lass. Ye did yer best.”
“She fought for so long,” Aftyn cried, then her watery gaze found Jamie. “She was better.”
He pushed to his feet and went to her, taking her hand and bracing against the pain in her heart, so much like the pain already in his own chest. “Sometimes that happens,” he told her, wishing he had better words to console her. “Someone seems better before they pass on. ’Tis a gift, I think.”
“A cruel one,” Neve replied, frowning, “to give someone hope, then snatch it away.”
Was that what he’d done? Given Colin—and Aftyn—and even Agatha hope, only to have Robena snatched away?
He blamed himself for not being able to help her.
He thought he’d have more time. Being delayed at the abbey by the fire was no excuse.
Being too hot-headed and close-minded to accept his mother’s teachings, aye.
Perhaps if he’d learned as she wished him to, Robena would still be alive. Now he’d never know.
Later that morning, Braden found Aftyn in her herbal, sitting before a mound of greenery, staring at nothing. She couldn’t think. Couldn’t focus. Robena’s sudden death held her in shock.
Braden touched her shoulder, then held up a finger, glanced around, making no secret of checking to see if they were alone, then closed the door.
Aftyn frowned and pivoted away from the table where she had intended to chop herbs for a poultice, but had done nothing.
“What’s amiss?” Braden never sneaked around. This behavior was very unusual.
“I just came from the strangest conversation with Da about the abbot.”
“The abbot? What is he doing here?”
“He isnae here. He sent a missive that has Da scheming.”
“What missive?”
“Thanking the laird for Keith help, o’course. And relating interesting observations about our visiting healer.”
Aftyn’s heart froze in her chest. “What kind of observations?”
Someone knocked on the herbal’s door. “Aftyn?” The voice belonged to one of the downstairs serving lasses. “Yer da is asking for ye. I think ye’d best hurry to him. He seems fashed.”
Aftyn exchanged a look with her brother.
“Aftyn? Are ye in there?”
“Ye could head back to the abbey to check on the injured,” Braden said in a low voice.
“I’d be seen. Da will be furious if I ignore his summons. Nay, I may as well get this over with.”
“Do ye want me to come with ye?”
Aye, she did, but she didn’t want their father to take out on Braden whatever had upset him. “Nay. Whatever this is, ’tis best ye keep clear of it. If I need yer help after I talk to Da, I’ll find ye.”
“Or send someone to find me. I’ll do whatever I can, ye ken that.”
“I do.” Aftyn gave him a quick hug. “Ye are the best brother a lass could ask for.”
“Ye saved my life, so there canna be a better sister.”
“’Tis the best thing I’ve ever done. Now, let me go. Ye wait a wee before ye leave here. No sense having someone tell Da ye were in here, warning me of trouble.”
“I’ll do as ye ask.”
Aftyn went to the door and opened it. The serving girl had gone, so Aftyn hurried to the stairs and down them to the laird’s solar where she could always find her father.
“Da? Ye sent for me?”
Even at this early hour, the laird sat at his table, reading something. Aftyn feared it was the abbot’s letter, the thing Braden thought had brought about his summons.
He lifted the missive but didn’t bother to meet her gaze. “The abbot has some interesting things to say about our visitor. And some of the most interesting, he claims to have learned from ye.”
Under the seal of confession! Aftyn’s blood turned to ice. So much for the ‘honor’ of the abbot hearing her confession. Not if he shared what she’d said with her father.
“I dinna understand,” she said, fighting not to stammer, keeping her back straight and her head erect. She dared not flinch. He would take that as an admission of some sort of guilt.
“He says the Lathan healer has unheard of skill and the ability to heal grievous wounds unnaturally quickly.” He put down the missive and lifted his gaze to hers. “What do ye ken about this?”
Aftyn fought not to react. She hadn’t challenged Jamie after seeing Niall walking normally in his chamber. For Niall to be able to move about freely this soon, Jamie had done something miraculous. She just didn’t know how.
“Only what I observed,” she replied, keeping her expression indifferent.
“Mostly after the fire. While Neve and I cared for the less injured, the Lathan healer cared for the one hurt the worst. I canna say whether anything he does is more or less than any other healer can do. He brought many of his own medicines. They may simply be better than ours.”
That seemed to satisfy her father, and Aftyn let herself take a breath.
She thought she’d diverted him and laid Jamie’s success to the potions he’d brought with him, which could very well be true, both for Niall and for the burned priest. She could have made too much of what she thought she saw at the market.
She’d needed someone to talk to and thought a confession would be safe.
Sacrosanct. Thank God she hadn’t seen Niall walking around his chamber before she confessed.
She racked her memory for exactly what she’d told the abbot.
Then her father pounced.
“Why then do ye think the abbot believes these things?”
“I dinna ken. Perhaps others at the abbey said something.”
“He says he learned them from his own observation—and from ye. Do ye accuse the abbot of lying?”
“Nay, Da. Never. But perhaps he misunderstood…”
“He seems possessed of an astute mind. And he says he canna determine whether the healer is a devil’s spawn or a God-given gift.”
Aftyn didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. But her knees were quaking with the urge to find Jamie and warn him to leave.
“Verra well, go on with ye. I can see ye’ll shed nay more light on this. I’ll have to discuss this with the healer himself.”
“Ach, Da, would ye accuse him after all the good he’s done for us and for the abbey?”
“Accuse? Nay. But I will ken what secrets he keeps. Perhaps then he can be convinced to remain here.”
Aftyn blanched. Just as she’d feared when she heard what the abbot told him, her father saw Jamie as too valuable to lose. If he could not entice him to stay, he’d use other means. She didn’t know what those would be, but her father was ruthless when he wanted something. And he wanted Jamie Lathan.
So did she, but not at the risk of making him her father’s prisoner.