Chapter 4
Ella watched Calum walk away from her and make his careful way across the great hall.
He’d said he wanted to go to his chamber, but he wasn’t headed in the right direction to get to the stairs.
She feared he would meet with disaster—a fall or some other embarrassment—but she was filled with pride that he would attempt it.
Others helped him avoid hazards with a word or two.
Those he accepted with more grace than she thought he would be able to summon, especially after the conversation they’d just had.
She stood by a table where some lasses sat eating and talking while they worked.
Instead of taking a seat and helping them create the flower garlands that would decorate the tables for the feast, she could not take her gaze from him.
Outside, walking in the bailey, he hadn’t boasted when he said his other senses were still sharp.
His determination and adaptability continued to impress her.
Until she realized where he was headed. The hair lifted on the back of her neck.
Not toward the stairs. He was going to Mhairi!
He’d meant it when he said he could not stand to remain in the dark any longer.
He intended to beard the healer in her own den.
She prayed Mhairi did not admit the Janet ruse.
If she did, what would Calum do about it?
Accept that she’d done everything she could to take care of him, including lie to him? Or reject her for her subterfuge?
She gripped the end of the table hard enough to whiten her knuckles, torn between the urge to run after him and feeling frozen in place.
If only his eye healed well enough to let him understand that he had not lost the future he’d expected to have. That he would still be a warrior for the clan. A man in the way he understood manhood. Perhaps then, he would forgive her.
If he lost the eye, could he adapt to that? She hoped he never had to find out.
She couldn’t sit here waiting for the axe to fall. Without a word, she forced her feet to move, left the table, and followed Calum’s path across the hall. She waited silently by the door while the healer removed his coverings, and rejoiced at the vision he described. He could see.
Her mind spun with how to remove Janet from his life and become Ella once again.
She didn’t have much time. She needed to wash the onion scent from her hands and breath before he saw her.
And perhaps some more of the healer’s cream would finish softening the damage the lye did to her hands.
She started to back away from the door but her boot scraped on the flagstones.
Calum turned at the sound, this time with his eyes open. “Ella. I see ye.”
She was out of time.
She went to him, hands out to grasp his if he raised them, or to give him a hug full of joy and relief. “I’m so glad ye do,” she said when he let her capture his fingers. Then his brusque tone sank in. “Is aught amiss?”
He lifted her hands and sniffed, then turned one over and thumbed her palm before he pulled his fingers free. “Will ye remain Ella now? I smell Janet about ye.” When his brow lowered and he glanced again at her hand, she realized he knew about their deception.
Ella’s body chilled as if she’d plunged into a frigid loch. She glanced at the older woman, who shook her head, her lips pursed with regret.
She had no choice. If she dreamed of having any future with this man, she must admit what she’d done and hope he understood why she’d done it.
“Calum, I couldna bear to see ye suffering,” she began. “I helped Mhairi care for ye before ye woke up. We…I…created Janet so that ye would allow me to remain at yer side, where I needed to be. Where I thought I belonged.”
“Did ye think so? Ye lied to me.”
How could his newly revealed visage be so full of censure? How dare he condemn her for tending to him when he could not attend to himself!
“I did everything to help you heal. And to help you see again. If ye canna forgive that—”
“Ye believed I would thank ye for going against my wishes and seeing me as helpless as a bairn.” The chilly, flat tone matched the frost in his gaze.
Ella crossed her arms and wrapped her hands around them for warmth and protection.
“Like ye are behaving now?” She shook her head as he stood.
To make her look up at him? To intimidate her?
Had he forgotten she was made of stronger stuff than that?
“I never saw ye as a bairn.” She stiffened her spine, and met his gaze.
“I care too much for ye to ever treat ye as a wean.”
“If ye truly did, ye wouldna have tried to fool me. Playing such games with a blind man was a kind of torture. Losing my sight wasna enough for ye? Ye had to make me fear I was losing my senses and my mind as well with yer deception?”
Cold skittered down Ella’s spine. Had she done that?
She thought back to his first day out of the keep when they walked in the bailey.
He’d been so proud of his ability to notice and identify everything around him.
She hadn’t realized it at the time, but he’d made it clear his mind was his greatest weapon, using what his senses told him to make his way around the bailey he could not see, but he could sense.
And without meaning to, she made him doubt both his senses and what he thought about the things he noticed, the map he’d built in his mind of where he was in relation to the world around him.
If she’d weakened him as a warrior and a scout, she’d done more damage than either she or Mhairi could have imagined.
“Calum,” the healer interjected, “Ella helped me care for ye as she has done for others, as ye well ken. There is nay shame in that. She lied to protect ye, and that is the only reason. Dinna blame her, for I went along with the ruse. I helped her craft it. Blame me for not having a better answer to the question of how to keep ye safe while ye healed.”
“Ye helped her damage her hands?” Calum studied the older woman for a long moment. “And after that, I am supposed to trust her? Or ye?”
“Her hands will heal. Ye dinna think that by going to such lengths to help ye, despite yerself, she proved her loyalty to ye?”
He huffed out a breath. “Am I free to go?”
Ella’s heart twisted in her chest. He’d refused to answer. Refused to acknowledge that there was anything good in what she’d done.
Mhairi paused, frowning. “I must cover the injured eye again so ye dinna rub it and do more damage to it while ye sleep.”
“Nay.”
“Wheesht!” Mhairi’s irritation showed in that one word, telling Calum his stubbornness wasn’t appreciated.
Ella felt a small surge of satisfaction.
“I willna cover both. ’Tis time for ye to start using both yer eyes again. Ye can uncover it in the morning. We’ll do the same for the next sennight. After that, yer eye should be healed well enough that ye may sleep without protecting it. And yer vision should continue to improve.”
He sat back on the stool without another objection and let Mhairi tend him while Ella watched.
She felt frozen to the floor, unable to move, either to go to him or to leave.
When the healer finished, he stood and walked out of the herbal without another glance or word to either of them.
But she noticed he stayed to the right side of the doorway, even laying a hand on the stone as if to steady himself.
Of course, with his left eye covered, he was blind on that side.
He’d favor what he saw to his right. Being half blind, he’d said, also worried him.
Now he knew what it would be like. It had to be another frustration to add to all the others he’d suffered since Harlaw.
Ella sank onto the stool Calum vacated. “He willna forgive me.” She kept her tone matter-of-fact, but inside, her heart was in pieces.
Sharp, jagged little pieces that cut with every breath she took.
If this was going to be their future—if she made such an effort and he reacted like he’d rather die than accept her help—she’d been wrong about him.
“Am I never to find a man who accepts me—all of me—for who I am?”
The healer pressed her lips together and raised a finger. “Dinna let him belittle ye. Without ye, he might no’ have regained his sight. I couldna be there all the time. Ye kept his head still and helped him when he was desperate to move and risked his sight out of frustration.”
“I dinna think he will believe that. Ye are the healer. I am…nothing but a bonnie lass.”
“Perhaps as his eyesight clears and he regains his confidence, he will accept the part ye played in his recovery. He is still hurt and embarrassed by it all, but that will pass.”
“Will it? Will he come to me and beg my forgiveness? After this, I canna…I willna go to him.” Or any other man at all. If she couldn’t break down the walls Calum built against her, if nothing worked with him, she would give up and accept that she was cursed with bad luck in matters of the heart.
The healer nodded, closing her eyes briefly, then captured Ella’s gaze with her own. “If he doesna, there is yer answer. Ye have been strong for him, but ye must be stronger still for yerself. He will come to ye, or ye will tire of waiting and find what ye seek in another man.”
“I dinna want another,” Ella said, turning to stare out the doorway Calum had exited, the pieces of her heart a leaden weight in the bottom of her chest. “I thought I’d found what I needed in him.
I hope that I still can. And that he will come to see I did the best I could for him.
If he will let me, I will fight for him—for us.
But if I must,” she vowed, “I will find my way forward without him—or any other man at all.”