Chapter 1
Mya came slowly up from the depths of unconsciousness.
Her first awareness was of quiet. Her ears rang with echoes of thunder she didn’t remember. She let her senses roam outward, trying to determine her position without opening her eyes. There was something soft beneath her. A bed, maybe. The warmth of a heavy blanket covered her.
She took a deep breath, smelling clean linen, and the faint scent of cooking drifting into the room from somewhere else. For a moment, she simply lay still, basking in the peace of it. That didn’t last long.
There was something whispering at the back of her mind.
A worry that she couldn’t quite put a name to.
When she tried to reach for it, the warning slid further from her reach.
The last vestiges of a dream, maybe, lingering at the edges of her thoughts before the daylight melted it away completely.
It was not enough to aid her, in any case.
Mya shook off the concern and opened her eyes to discover her surroundings.
The room wasn’t what she had expected. Though what, exactly, she had thought it would be, she couldn’t have explained. Smaller, maybe. Some part of her had thought it would be… Not this. She couldn’t pinpoint more than that.
It was spacious, papered in cream and sky blue, and paneled in wood that gleamed the color of honey in the light spilling through the windows.
A chest of drawers in the same wood sat against one wall, topped with a tall oval mirror.
Next to the bed was a cabinet with a washbasin and pitcher sitting atop it.
A pair of pastel pink chairs faced each other in front of the high arched windows, a little table between them.
Through the glass, Mya could see a sloping yard set here and there with trees, and behind it purple hills rising up toward a blue and cloudless sky.
Mya didn’t recognize it.
How had she arrived there? She tried to think back, to trace memories that might have led to the bed she was lying in, but there was nothing. Just blankness. Emptiness. It was as though all the time before that moment when she first returned to awareness had never existed at all.
She knew her name, and the names of the things around her, but she could not remember where she’d learned them. Or when. It was a disconcerting realization.
“Oh. My.”
The voice from the door startled her, and Mya levered herself upright on one elbow, turning to see who spoke. Or, at least, she attempted to. The motion sent a jolt of pain through her shoulder that had her collapsing back to the mattress with a gasp, panting for breath.
“You ought not to move, dear,” the voice that had spoken before said, low and worried, just as its owner bustled into Mya’s view.
She was tall, clad in a gown patterned with sprays of pale green leaves and belted at her waist. As she reached Mya, she laid a hand on her forehead, tutting at whatever she discovered there.
“You are meant to be resting,” she said as she turned to the basin sitting beside the bed and wrung water from the cloth sitting in it.
“Young Lord McGregor found you in our back field, badly injured. It was quite uncertain for a time whether you would wake at all. Lottie was quite firm in her belief that you would, but even Doctor MacAslan had his doubts in the first days of your stay with us.”
She was, Mya thought, rather pretty, perhaps a few years older than Mya herself, her pale hair touched with red. She laid the damp cloth over Mya’s forehead, and stroked her hair gently back from her face so it would not catch.
“I need to take a look at your shoulder,” she went on while Mya was still trying to process everything she had just learned. “If it will not trouble you for me to do so?”
Mutely, still not sure what to say, Mya shook her head. The woman folded back the blanket that covered her, revealing the nightgown she wore, which was partially unbuttoned to allow access to her shoulder.
“It has not begun to bleed again, I think,” the woman said, when she had tugged the nightgown gently out of the way to check the bandage. “The doctor did wish me to tell you, though, if you woke while he was gone, to take care in using that arm. You have healing yet to do.”
It occurred to her, abruptly, that the woman had spoken of days.
“How long have I been here?” she asked, the voice leaving her throat rough with disuse. She timidly tried to clear it.
“Three days,” the woman answered. “We thought it best to keep you with us while you were unconscious, as we had no way of knowing who your family might be, and you were comfortably set up here.”
Mya wasn't sure how to say that she had no way of knowing who her family might be either. The woman was looking at her expectantly, as though she awaited some sort of answer to the unspoken question.
“I...” Mya took a breath and let it out again. “I don't remember.”
“You do not remember what, dear?”
“The accident. How I was injured. Or… my family.” She bit her lip, glancing away from the serious blue eyes studying her. “I don't remember anything before waking up here.”
There was a long moment of silence.
Mya was sure if she looked up she'd find the woman staring back at her.
She had already watched over her for three days.
They surely wouldn't be interested in keeping her around much longer when she couldn't pay rent or offer any useful skills. She wondered if there was protocol for that sort of thing. Would the lady, the doctor and whoever else, tell her where she might find lodging if she couldn’t afford it? When she couldn’t remember who she was or where she was from?
Did she even have something to pay for her care?
“Nothing?” the woman asked finally.
Mya shook her head. “Not a thing,” she admitted. “I tried. Everything is just blank. This empty space where memories should be.”
“We will speak with the doctor about it.” The woman reached out and turned the cloth on Mya's forehead over so the cool side rested against her skin.
“And you need not worry about being thrown out, if you fear that. Lottie and I would not put someone out onto the streets with nowhere to go and no memory of her kin.”
“You've given enough of your time already,” Mya said. “I shouldn't take up more of it.”
“Nonsense.” When she finally looked up, the woman smiled at her.
“We wouldn't hear of you wandering about Inverness with no memory and no money to your name. All that, and the clothes you were wearing when you were found are rightly ruined. You’ve nothing suitable to wear in public, so you shall just have to stay.”
Mya opened her mouth to speak, and shut it again when she was stopped before she could start.
“You will not even think of arguing. I've made up my mind, and there's nothing to be done for it. You will remain here with us until we can find someone who knows where you are meant to be, or else until you have the means to strike out on your own. I will not hear otherwise.”
The words were sharp, but Mya could see the smile hiding beneath them, and secretly she was grateful. If she wasn't allowed to argue, she would simply have to stay, and the knowledge that she wouldn't be turned out into the streets of an unfamiliar city was more of a relief than she cared to admit.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are so kind—I don’ t know how to repay you for such generosity.”
Her benefactor lifted one shoulder in a shrug and let it fall again. “You need not, dear. We do what we believe is right, and what is right is aiding a stranger in need.”
She stood, then, and picked up a cup from the cabinet top, which she offered to Mya, helping her sit up against the pillows so she could hold the cup in her good hand and drink.
“Now then,” the woman said when she had finished drinking and given the cup back. “I imagine that you must be hungry.”
Mya hadn't been; she'd hardly had time to think of her stomach with everything else that was going on, but once the words were spoken she realized that she was, in fact, quite hungry.
If she had been in bed unconscious for three days, it had been at least that long since she had eaten, and the hollow ache in her stomach made itself painfully apparent.
“Yes,” she said, voice a little smoother after the glass of water. “I could stand to eat.”
“Lottie should just be sitting down to breakfast. We shall go and join her.”
She slipped an arm under Mya's good shoulder again, helping her sit up. Mya swung her feet around to settle against the sleek wood of the floor, and slowly stood upright, using her good arm to catch herself against the mattress when her knees nearly buckled beneath her.
“Slowly,” the woman said. “Doctor MacAslan said that you would need to go carefully when you first got out of bed. You've been unconscious for quite some time.”
Slowly. Mya stood a little more carefully, the supporting arm still strong around her waist, and found herself steady on her feet.
“I'm not wearing anything suitable for breakfast,” she said, looking between her nightgown and the clothing the woman in front of her wore, but her hostess simply shook her head.
“That is hardly of import when you have been so ill.
We will find some clothing for you this afternoon, if need be, though in truth I think you will have to rest again.
I believe you are close enough to Lottie's size to borrow a few of her things, if necessary, while we have something made up for you.”
“I do not have money to—”
The woman waved away the rest of the words. “Lottie and I are blessed with more than enough to get by. If you wish to repay us when you have found work, or your family, we will discuss it, but until then do not even think of the money. As I said, we do what is right.”
She slipped her arm through Mya’s then, guiding her out into the hall. Mya blinked back the prickling sting of grateful tears, turning toward the windows that lined the passageway.
They looked out on the same neatly trimmed green lawn as the window in the bedroom where she’d woken.
At the top of its slope, a stag stood calmly grazing, his hide ivory white in the sun.
As though he sensed her eyes on him, he slowly lifted his head, turning his gaze to her.
Mya’s footsteps faltered, nearly a stumble before the woman beside her caught her weight.
“Are you well?” she asked, worry obvious in her voice.
Mya dragged her gaze from the stag to find her hostess regarding her with concern.
“Fine. Thank you,” she answered.
When she turned to look back out the windows, the stag was gone.