Chapter 2 #2
“Iain should be here soon,” Annie reported as Ella joined her and her sister Catherine at supper in the great hall.
“So should Muireall, Euan, and Georgie,” Ella told them as she slid onto the bench across the trestle table from them. “Kenneth, too?”
Cat shook her head. “He’s on the wall walk checking on the guards,” she said.
“We dinna want any surprises,” Annie added, her expression grim as she took a sip from the cup of ale in front of her. “There are still too many strangers passing through the area after the battle at Harlaw.”
A chill ran down Ella’s spine. “They should be Domhnall’s men, aye? We fought with them. They should be welcome.”
“They should,” Annie said. Her expression as she glanced at her sister made it clear to Ella that it might not always be the case. Annie knew something.
The realization reminded Ella that Cat and Kenneth hand-fasted before they left Rose to come here to Brodie.
Kenneth and Cameron Sutherland escorted Cat home to Rose from St. Andrews.
Their route took them near Harlaw within a day of the battle.
In trying to protect Cat, Cam was badly injured by some fighters.
He was still at Rose under Mary Rose’s care.
She also remembered hearing that some men the Rose invited inside their walls threatened Cat.
Kenneth saved her from being stolen, and probably worse, if the bastard who tried to abduct her had escaped the keep with her.
Annie clearly expected more trouble. Ella pursed her lips, acknowledging what Annie had not said, then pulled her gaze from Annie’s and nodded her thanks to a serving lass who set a cup of ale in front of her.
“Supper’s coming,” the lass told them without looking at any of them as she stepped away.
Cat grinned and shrugged. “Soon, I hope. I’m famished.”
“Are ye already carrying Kenneth’s bairn?” Annie asked, her tone dry, but with a grin lifting the corners of her lips. “Famished is how ye’d be until ye delivered.”
“Ye would ken,” Cat teased. “But nay, no’ yet.”
Annie was expecting her and Iain’s second bairn.
Ella envied them their happiness. Her own future was much less settled, despite Brodie welcoming her.
Calum seemed in no hurry to move whatever was between them beyond friendship, and she wasn’t comfortable around any of the other Brodie men, not in a way that might lead to marriage.
They eyed her in a manner she knew well—wanting her.
A few tried acting as her friend, much like Calum, but without his sincerity.
Some even admitted to wanting a lass who looked like her and who would make them seem better or more desirable to others in the clan.
She’d been subjected to enough of that in her life.
Calum’s friendship might evolve more slowly than she expected, but unlike the others, he didn’t put any kind of pressure on her.
And for that, she was grateful. But she still waited, which was one reason she had not committed to becoming Mhairi’s apprentice.
She longed for the kind of love her friends shared with their husbands, but she might never find it with Calum.
Someday, Iain might have to betroth her to a man in another clan.
And that thought gave her chills.
True to the serving lass’s word, she delivered bowls of stew before the sisters’ teasing escalated. They both dug in.
Ella took a moment to enjoy the scent. Venison stew, rich with vegetables from the summer garden.
She hoped Calum was getting some of this and Mhairi would let him sit upright enough to eat it.
It would do him a world of good. She took a bite and savored the meaty flavor, distracted for a moment when another lass brought hot bread and a pot of butter to slather on it.
She set her spoon aside and reached for some bread in time to see Iain, Euan, Muireall, and Muireall’s young half-brother Georgie approaching.
She gave Georgie a grin. He’d grown so much in the year he’d spent fostering at Brodie, both in height and in confidence.
Annie began training him as soon as he arrived, and it showed.
Lately, she’d turned him over to Euan to join the rest of the lads his age, telling Georgie she’d done all she could for him and he was ready for whatever Euan would throw at him.
So far, he looked to be handling his new status well.
He grinned back at her before sitting on Annie’s side of the table.
Ella turned her attention to the adults with him.
She should know by now not to let Iain’s expression worry her.
He often looked stern. At the moment, he looked troubled.
She looked to Muireall, hoping for reassurance that Calum was better, but her friend looked no less disturbed.
Ella’s appetite fled, but she held her peace while they settled, Iain giving Annie a kiss on her cheek as he sat beside her.
Annie must have noticed how their approach disquieted Ella. She turned to Iain and Euan. “What did ye learn?”
“He’s in a dark place,” Euan said as he and Muireall took seats beside Ella, “and I dinna mean the bandages on his eyes. He’s angry and frustrated and worried.”
Ella’s heart broke for Calum, despite his continuing insistence that she—and all the lasses, save occasionally, Janet—stay away from him.
“He’ll get better once the bandages are off and the healer tells him his vision will continue to improve,” Annie, ever optimistic, said.
Her gaze slid to the side to Georgie, telling Ella that Annie’s comment was also meant to reassure him.
Calum sometimes helped Euan with training, so Georgie would know him and be concerned about him, too.
“And if it doesna?” Ella couldn’t help asking the question. “If she canna tell him that?” Ella feared Calum would not be able to adjust to a life where he was a half-blind man.
“We’ll help him,” Iain said. “We’ll keep him so busy learning a new skill that he willna have time to feel sorry for what he’s lost.”
“Impossible. He’s already there,” Euan pointed out. “Imagining the worst.”
“Wouldna ye be?” Muireall laid a hand on his arm. “Right now, Calum canna see. So, he canna see aught that is good.”
They continued to talk while they ate, but Ella couldn’t stomach any food.
Even Euan’s confirmation that he checked on Calum again before coming downstairs, and that a lad now shared Calum’s room to tend him didn’t help.
The longer this conversation went on, the worse she felt.
She’d been told she possessed the beauty of one of the fae.
She wished she had their magic as well. She’d wave a hand and heal Calum’s eye, strip the bandages from around his head, and show him that all was well.
But such wishes were futile. His future was up to the healer, and to how well he followed her instructions.
“Feeling sorry for himself cannot help him heal,” she said after having heard enough. “What can we do to ease his fears?”
Iain shrugged. “’Twill depend on what Mhairi lets him do. And how quickly. The sooner he can be up and moving, the better he’ll feel. I ken that much.”
Ella sympathized with Calum’s frustration.
She couldn’t take sitting here listening any longer, stood, and stepped over the bench and away from the table.
“I…that is, Janet, is going to see that the lad ye said is already with him has Calum properly readied for the night. I’ll tell ye later how he is. ”
“Do ye need my help?” Euan made to rise.
Ella waved him back to his seat. “Nay. Finish yer meal. I’ll see that the lad is taking good care of Calum and bid them a restful night.”
“I’ll tell Mhairi ye are going up,” Muireall offered and stood. “Ye may need her to distract Calum, or to check on what her lad is doing herself.”
Ella nodded, realizing Muireall was right.
“Thank ye. All of ye. ’Tis hard to see someone we care for going through this, but with our help, he will get better.
” Surely her words disguised some of her feelings for Calum, even if they didn’t hide her pain over what he was going through.
The more she worried for him, the more she realized he wasn’t just someone she cared about.
He was more than that. But she feared putting a name to her feelings and making them real.
She’d been through too much herself to be so bold. Not yet.
She pretended not to see the glance Iain and Annie shared between them.
Instead, she walked away, head high, preparing herself for whatever confronting Calum might bring.
Muireall’s suggestion had been a good one.
If Calum recognized her instead of accepting that Janet had entered his chamber, the healer’s intervention might be needed.
She went first to her chamber and stuffed her pockets from the basket of onions she’d gotten earlier in the day from the cook, bit into one and chewed while she thought.
She looked forward to a time when this ruse was no longer necessary and she and her clothes no longer reeked of onion.
Her friends tolerated it for her and Calum’s sake, but no doubt they’d be glad to see the end of it, too.
Especially if that meant Calum was healed and himself again. Let that day come soon.
She twisted her hands together and winced at the pain.
The blisters had gone down, but the soreness remained in the roughened skin and tired muscles.
The lye and constant stirring with the wooden paddles had done their job.
Janet would appear—and feel—as though she worked with her hands on a regular basis.
The pain distracted her, but she needed to wait until she returned to her chamber to use more of the healer’s potion to ease it.
Decided, she went down the hall to Calum’s chamber and knocked on the door.
“Come.” That voice wasn’t Calum’s. One of the healer’s lads, as expected, was sitting with him.