Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
"The shoulder or the head?" Fergus asked from the doorway.
Iseabail did not look up from a shepherd stretched out on the table before her. The room was low-ceilinged and sweltering, with the air thick enough to taste. It smelled of dried yarrow, pungent woodsmoke, and the sharp, medicinal bite of camphor.
"The shoulder," the healer replied, her hands moving with a quick, practiced certainty that reminded Fergus of a weaver at a loom. "He thought he could lift a roof-beam alone." A pause, her dark eyes flickering toward her patient. "Ye can see the result of that foolishness."
The shepherd, a broad, barrel-chested man in his perhaps forties who looked notably less intimidating laying down than he did standing up, stared at the soot-stained ceiling.
He wore the expression of someone suffering both the pain of a dislocated joint and the sharp, embarrassing humiliation of having been proven wrong in front of his Laird.
"Will he keep it?" Fergus asked, stepping further into the shadows of the hut.
Bundles of dried plants hung from every beam like shriveled ghosts. Clay pots lined the shelves in an order that appeared random but was almost certainly dictated by a logic Fergus didn't yet ken.
"The shoulder? Aye," Iseabail said, her voice dry. "The habit of lifting beams alone? Less certain." She pressed two fingers to the joint with a sudden, firm pressure.
The shepherd made a sound, a sharp hiss of air, that he immediately tried to convert into a grunt of manly indifference.
"Hold still, Dougal," Iseabail commanded, her tone that of a mother dealing with a wayward boy. "I've told ye twice. If ye fight the pull, the muscle willnae set."
Fergus watched the exchange in silence. He had been Laird for more than a year, yet he had not stood in this chamber before.
He had meant to. A laird should know his healer as well as he knew his master-at-arms, but the fences, the rot in the granaries, and the endless, circular boundary disputes had filled his days.
He had planned to make an introduction to Iseabail tomorrow, then the next day, and then another. But now, it was Margaret who made the introduction for him.
‘Lilly will need herbs for the teethin', Fergus. Chamomile, if the healer has it. Clove if she doesnae. Go now.'
Iseabail secured the shepherd's arm against his chest with a length of rough linen. She gave him two instructions in a firm tone, as if expecting them to be ignored and intending to be proven right later. Then, she turned to look at Fergus.
She was somewhere past forty, lean as a winter wolf, with gray-streaked hair pulled back without ceremony. She looked at him exactly as she had looked at the shepherd's shoulder, as a thing to be assessed, understood, and dealt with accordingly.
"Laird MacKenzie," she said, wiping her hands on her apron. "Ye'll be here for the bairn."
"Chamomile," Fergus said, trying to sound like a man who often discussed infant remedies. "For the teethin'. Clove if ye daenae have it."
"I have both." She moved to the shelves without hurrying. "It was yer wife who thought of it?"
"Aye."
"She's right. The chamomile should be put in warm water, a clean cloth soaked in it, and pressed to the gum.
The clove oil should be applied sparingly, a touch only, on the finger.
" She measured the herbs into a small square of cloth, her movements unhurried.
"Too much of the clove and the bairn willnae thank ye.
It numbs the tongue as well as the ache. "
"Understood."
Iseabail glanced at him sideways, her eyes sharp in the firelight. "Has she been eatin'?"
"She had oats at midday. Some of them," he added, remembering the mess on Margaret's sleeve.
"And at night?"
"She's been settled. She slept through."
Something in Iseabail's expression shifted. Not quite approval, but a recalibration of her judgment. "Better than last week, then. Mrs. O'Halloran said the keep was fair ringin' with the noise."
"Last week I didnae have…" He stopped, the words catching in his throat.
"A wife," Iseabail finished for him.
She tied the herb parcel with a length of twine and held it out. When Fergus reached for it, she did not immediately release the string. Her eyes locked onto his, forcing him to look at her directly. "The bairn isnae the only one who responds to presence, me laird. Or the lack of it."
He didn't move. He felt the weight of her gaze like physical pressure.
"Dougal there," she continued, nodding at the shepherd, who was sitting up with the careful movements of a man reassembling his shattered dignity, "took three days to come to me with that shoulder.
Three days of it gettin' worse because he thought waitin' would cost him less than admittin' he needed help.
" She finally released the parcel. "Pain passes quicker when fear does, me Laird.
That's true of shoulders and a fair number of other things. "
Fergus gripped the herbs. "Thank ye," he said, his voice a low scrape. "For the medicine."
"Come back if she doesnae improve."
The afternoon light hit him as he stepped out of the healer's hut. It was warm and direct, smelling of gorse and drying peat. He paused in the courtyard for a moment, the small parcel in his hand and Iseabail's words weighing on him like stones.
‘Pain passes quicker when fear does.'
He turned toward the inner courtyard, and the sound hit him before he reached the archway.
It was the sound of children, high, bright, and chaotic. Beneath it ran a lower thread of laughter. He recognized it instantly, though he had heard it only a handful of times. It was the sound of the kitchen, the sound of the carriage, the sound that was quickly becoming the heartbeat of his keep.
He rounded the corner and stopped.
The courtyard was bathed in gold. A dozen clan children occupied the space in a state of organized chaos. Some were seated in a ring on the grass; others were standing, chasing each other around the ancient well. In the middle of it, on the low stone bench, sat Margaret.
She had Lilly tucked against her chest with one arm.
The bairn was wide-eyed, batting at the air, seemingly unbothered by the shrieks of the older children.
In her free hand, Margaret held a length of dyed wool, showing a weaving pattern to the three little girls gathered at her knees.
She was talking as she worked, her voice too quiet for Fergus to hear, and then one of the boys said something that made her throw her head back and laugh.
It was a full, honest laugh. It was the laugh of a woman who had no audience in mind because she was not performing. She was simply there.
Fergus stood at the edge of the shadows. He had bled for this land, worked until his muscles ached, and sat through countless councils in halls that reeked of damp plaid and old men's bitterness. He had done everything he believed a laird should do.
Yet it had not, until this moment, felt like his.
He watched his wife laugh with his people in his courtyard and felt something shift in his chest. A strange, tectonic movement he had no name for and no intention of examining.
She looked up.
She found him immediately, as though she had known exactly where he was standing the moment he arrived. Her expression changed. Not dramatically, but the laughter settled into something more measured. More dangerous.
She held his gaze for a moment before turning to Maisie, who was sitting nearby. Margaret said something, and Maisie nodded, taking Lilly into her arms as Margaret stood.
She crossed the courtyard toward him with that quiet, unhurried purpose he was beginning to recognize.
She didn't perform steadiness; she simply possessed it.
She stopped a foot away from him, the sun at her back, casting her face in a soft, glowing shadow.
She looked up at him with an expression that was almost.. . amused.
"I thought I'd begin with something simple," she said, her voice light. "I've been kind enough to ye, I think."
He watched her, waiting for the hook.
"Me next request." She folded her hands in front of her. "I want ye to connect with Lilly."
Fergus frowned, his irritation flaring as a defense. "I provide for her, Margaret. She has food, a nurse, a room with the mornin' light because ye demanded it."
"That isnae what I mean, and ye ken it."
"Then say what ye mean."
"I mean," she said, her voice dripping with a patience that made him want to growl, "that she needs more than a roof and a meal. She needs to ken the man she lives with. She needs to be held by him, spoken to by him. She needs to feel that she is wanted here." A pause. "By ye."
Fergus looked across the yard at Lilly. She was in Maisie's arms now, batting at the maid's cap with focused intensity. "She seems well enough."
"She is well enough. She could be better." Margaret's eyes did not move from his. "What a fortunate laird ye are, that I am here to show ye the difference."
She stepped aside and gestured toward Maisie with the air of a general who had already won the maneuver. "Ye'll hold her. Stay with her while I see to the children. Talk to her."
There was a long, painful pause.
"Talk?" Fergus said, the word sounding ridiculous even to his own ears. "To the bairn?"
"Aye."
He stared at her. She waited. The wait was the worst part; it gave him nothing to push against. There was only the steady, clear expectation of her.
Maisie appeared at his elbow, the bairn already extended toward him.
Fergus took the child. His arms went around her with the careful caution of a man handling a delicate glass ornament.
He was too big, too aware of how rough his hands felt and the fact that they were made for steel, not silk.
Lilly looked up at him with dark, thoughtful eyes.
She was a creature who had not yet learned to hide her judgments politely.
"Talk to her," Margaret said again, already turning back toward the children.
"About what?" he asked, the words slipping out before he could stop them.
She glanced back over her shoulder, her lips curving into that near-smile that was more unsettling than a full one.
"Anythin', Fergus. The granary wall. The price of grain in the village. She willnae judge ye for yer lack of poetry." A beat. "Or sing, if the words fail ye."
She walked away.
Fergus stood in the middle of the courtyard with Lilly in his arms. Twelve children were fifteen feet away, several of whom were now watching the Great Laird MacKenzie with open, unfiltered curiosity.
He looked down at Lilly. She looked up at him. Her tiny fist clutched a fold of his plaid and held it tightly.
He exhaled, a long, slow breath through his nose.
"Right," he said, his voice a low rumble meant only for the top of her head. "The granary wall, then."
Lilly blinked.
This is ridiculous.
"South-facin'," he continued, feeling thoroughly absurd but pushing on anyway.
"The lean isnae structural, mind ye. The footin' is sound granite.
It just needs repointin' on the lower course with a bit of fresh lime.
" He shifted his weight, adjusting his hold the way he had seen Margaret do.
"Which I'd have done last month if the east boundary hadnae needed markers.
The MacLeods are pushin' their luck again. "
Lilly made a soft, indeterminate sound.
"Aye," Fergus said, his voice softening. "Exactly me thought."
Across the courtyard, Margaret was crouched beside a small girl, patiently looping wool back through the child's fingers. She did not look at him. But Fergus was certain, entirely, infuriatingly certain, that she was aware of every word he said to the infant about masonry.
"She's goin' to be insufferable about this," he told Lilly quietly.
Lilly grabbed his finger and didn't let go.
I kent ye would understand.
Fergus stood there in the afternoon light, and for the first time, he did not move away. He did not hand the child back. Somewhere underneath the irritation and the awkwardness, he felt a slow, unwilling warmth.
He held the child and, for a moment, forgot to be a laird.