Chapter Ten
My hand moving to my threadkit, I hurry to the half-open door, the scent of hay and livestock wafting out. Stepping around the door, bracing for anything, I peer into the dimly lit interior. My eyes scan the piled hay and horses in their stalls, seeking the person in pain.
Another cry draws my eye to the corner to my left, where in an open stall, Conrad North is crouched over a prone sheep, his kilt hiked over his knees. His shirtsleeves are rolled to his elbows, revealing muscular forearms, and he’s got one hand shoved up the sheep’s backside.
For a moment, I am struck dumb. And so, it seems, is the laird. He gapes at me, his dark brows knitted together in surprise.
Then the sheep lying on the straw before him gives another plaintive bleat, and I realize it is the animal, not the man, in distress.
“Easy, Thistle. It’s just an uninvited guest.” Mr. North withdraws his hand, encased in a leather glove, from the sheep’s interior.
His eyes remain fixed upon me, narrow with suspicion.
“Miss Pryor. You have come back so soon. Did the villagers drive you out, then? Did you knock any locals off their horses, or get caught snooping through their private effects?”
“I found Sylvie on the road,” I say, unable to tear my eyes from the grisly scene before me. “She was being taunted by some children.”
He inhales, his lips tight. In the dim light of the stable, his eyes are less amber and more obsidian, mirror dark. He turns his eyes back to the sheep, which is writhing its legs in distress, and no wonder. Mr. North has apparently been rummaging about inside it as if searching for loose coins.
“The Cotter and McLure whelps,” he growls. “They’re wee beasts, but Sylvie knows better than to take stock in the words of bullies.”
“Are you sure of that?” I look out at the girl, now rolling in the drive with Captain licking her face, her squeals of laughter piercing the air. “Her tears seemed evidence to the contrary.”
Mr. North’s ungloved hand tightens at his side. “She shouldn’t be going to town at all. Swing that door open, will you? I need more light in here.”
I push the stable’s second door wide, letting in a broad beam of light. It illuminates the pitiful creature under Mr. North’s hand. He’s probing at it again, causing the thing to struggle. With his other hand, he tries to hold the ewe still, but is clearly failing.
“What are you doing to that poor thing?” I demand.
His reply is strained with both effort and pique. “Well, I’m not torturing it or sacrificing it to my dark gods, or whatever the hell your tone implies you think I’m doing.”
“Language, sir!” I gasp.
He rolls his eyes. “The sheep’s birthing, but the lamb is breech. Come closer—I need your hands.”
“My . . .” I look down at my palms, then up at him. “Mr. North, I am not trained to—”
“I dinnae give a damn about your training, Miss Pryor,” he retorts irritably.
“I need a pair of hands, and Mr. MacDougal’s caught up in the south pastures for some time.
So yours will have to do, if you can stand to get a wee bit of dirt under your pretty nails.
Trust me, you’re not my first choice of help either. ”
Uncertainly, I step nearer. “Does she have no friends her own age?”
Mr. North seems to choke. “What, Thistle?”
“Sylvie. Surely she doesn’t always stay here, with a housekeeper and a—” I bite my tongue before the words prejudiced bastard slips out.
But he gives me a thunderous look that makes me think he knew precisely what I was going to say.
“I hardly think we require the input of a stranger in our affairs. Now, roll up your sleeves—if you can, with all that embroidery work—and kneel there by Thistle’s head.
She won’t bite.” He pauses, then adds, “Nay, that’s a lie. She may bite.”
So much for not wanting the input of a stranger in his affairs. I touch my sleeve and grimace. “Don’t you have . . . people, for this sort of thing? Aren’t you a laird?”
He gives an exasperated growl. “I believe we’ve been over the part where I explained Mr. MacDougal is occupied.
And I’d be a poor sort of laird if I could not tend my own livestock when necessary.
Now, will you help me, or will you stand by and let poor Thistle knock herself senseless while I help her deliver her lamb? ”
Bracing myself, I roll my sleeves and kneel by the sheep. She bleats pitifully, and my heart beats in sympathy. But my total inexperience with this sort of thing coupled with my lifelong unease around animals leaves me feeling ill.
“Just soothe her,” Mr. North says, taking stock of my queasy expression. “And Fates, try not to faint. ’Tis just a lambing. Though admittedly, Thistle, old girl, your bairn’s a big, stubborn thing, just like her ma. Ach! I can see a wee hoof, now, there’s a smart lass! Hold her still, Miss Pryor.”
Wincing, I cling to the ewe’s woolly neck while the laird inspects the situation unfolding at Thistle’s other end.
“Please don’t bite me,” I whisper to the creature. “You’re, er, doing very well. I assume.”
Even in school, healing had never been my preferred area of study, particularly any topic involving as many bodily fluids as childbirth.
After a few minutes, I say, “I do know a spell—”
“Nay,” Mr. North grunts. “I’ve birthed hundreds of lambs with no other help but nature’s own. You will not interfere with your tricks.”
“My—” I clench my teeth, my neck hot. “I could take away all the poor creature’s pain! You’d deny her that relief?”
“This isn’t Thistle’s first time. The old girl can hold her own. Now hush and pass me that jar of lubricant.”
I press my lips together, glaring at him as I pass him the jar. The blasted Scotsman summarily ignores me as he smears the jellylike substance inside the sheep’s birth canal. I avert my gaze, the whole sticky process leaving me even more nauseated.
“It’s all well, Thistle,” Mr. North murmurs. “Ignore the uppity city lass. She does not understand us ignorant country folk.”
“Ignorance! That’s just my point.” I jump on my chance to continue the conversation I’d come for in the first place. “A girl Sylvie’s age should at least have a governess. What of her education?”
He scowls. “I cannae see how that’s any of your business.”
“Has Sylvie been tested for magic?”
“Eh?” he splutters.
“It’s the law, you know,” I say coolly. In my lap, Thistle gives another soft bleat, and I smooth the wool between her ears while still glowering at the laird.
It’s not the poor ewe’s fault her master is such a beast. “I presume you still fall under the queen’s law?
All children are to be tested for Weaving abilities by the time they’re six. ”
“Aye.” Lowering himself to one bared knee, he gently loops a light rope about the tiny hoof emerging from the sheep’s far end.
As he works, his dark hair dangles about his face, damp with sweat.
“She was tested years ago, by a Weaver in the village. Naught came of it. Not that I find it any of your concern. You seem to meddle worse than you snoop. Might you have any more vices a man ought to beware?”
“I have ten.”
He blinks. “I beg your pardon?”
Impatiently, I explain, “In school, my third-year teacher listed all our faults for us in order that we might pray the Fates would change them into virtues. Most girls were given four or five, but I was given ten. But that is not the topic at hand, sir. About Sylvie—”
“Ten!” He makes a guttural sound in his throat, as if choking down a curse—or perhaps a laugh.
Then I’m forced to turn my attention away as Thistle bleats and strains again, and Mr. North gently pulls on the rope about the lamb’s little hoof, easing it out another few inches.
I hold fast to her neck all the while, trying to calm her panicked thrashing.
When she relaxes again, Mr. North sits back and brushes back his hair with his arm. “One day, Miss Pryor, you shall have to list all ten of your faults for me, so that I might guard myself against your wicked ways.”
I give an outraged laugh. “Yes, and afterward we might list yours. I have a few ideas where we could start.”
“Was impertinence on your list, by any chance?”
“As a matter of fact, sir, it was number four.”
Is that a hint of mirth in his dark gaze?
If so, it only lasts a moment, so brief I might have imagined it.
Feeling Thistle shudder, I bend over her and murmur soothing nonsense into her ear, forcing down the nausea in my belly as ropy, wet substances swing from her bucking hindquarters.
I thank the Fates I ended up in a Moirene school, and not an Edgithan one.
The Order of St. Edgitha of the Needle are almost invariably trained to be healers and midwives.
I do not think I would have fared well in such a field.
“Is it because she is a girl?” I ask, once the ewe is calm again.
Mr. North exhales in exasperation. “What are we talking about?”
“Your sister, and the reason you deny her a proper education. Is it because she is a girl?”
The laird’s eyes flash. His shoulders snap back, and he finally takes his gaze off the sheep to glare at me. “What do you take me for? A medieval tyrant? I care not if she be lass or lad, she’s brighter than any of those ragged wains in Blackswire!”
“And yet you forbid her from going to school!”
“She is better off at home.”
“Then at least send for a respectable governess.”
“Ach!” He turns his attention back to Thistle, easing the lamb out a bit more while muttering curses under his breath. “Spare me your sanctimonious lectures, Miss Pryor. You’re upsetting my sheep.”
Thistle’s black eyes roll as she strains again. I believe her attention is thoroughly on other matters than our conversation. “I know what it is to be deprived of proper schooling, Mr. North. If you care for your sister’s future—”
“You could be my governess!” cries Sylvie.
The laird and I both turn to see the girl clinging to the doorway, her cheeks wind chapped and her eyes bright.