He nodded. With her along, they would surely find a cure for this monster.
“’Tis warmin’ to my bones,” he supplied, liking her reactions to compliments on her cooking.
“Besides tasting so good, the cinnamon has hundreds of uses in cooking and in medicine.”
“Sadly, ‘tis extremely difficult to get,” Richard told them. “Tis costly because it comes from so far away. We use it sparingly.”
Elias listened and took everything in. He also didn’t leave a drop of porridge in the bowl.
“I will bring in the wood,” Elias said, standing up from his stool. “I willna take long and then I will begin workin’ in the orchard.”
Richard smiled and agreed. Excusing himself, Elias left the table and went back to work bringing in the wood. He carried several of the split logs inside and set them beside the hearth in the sitting room, then carried more in for the kitchen fires. Richard had gone back to his work and Simon had left to use the small outhouse behind house.
“You are very helpful to have around.” Lily’s sweet voice fell on his ears as he was getting ready to leave.
He stopped, bending at the door in the kitchen and turned to her. He didn’t know why but he laughed a little. It felt good. How long had it been? Why did he feel so happy here when the only lass who had ever stopped his heart was forbidden? When a damned plague could be headed their way.
He let himself feel the humor in it all.
“I’m happy ye think so, my lady.”
He fell in awe of her beauty when she dipped her chin and looked at him from beneath long, dark lashes. “I am not a lady, sir.”
“And I have never been knighted.”
She looked up to find him grinning like a damned fool. She matched it and they both ended up laughing. They weren’t sure what they found so humorous. Perhaps it was desperation to cling to hope and to life. He would hold on to it with one hand and her with the other.
“Are you going to pick lemons now?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron and then removing it.
Elias watched her, nodding. She did nothing to make herself look beautiful. Her hair was not curled and pinned like the ladies he’d seen in some courts. Her cheeks were dusted with a healthy glow, her lips were a natural deep pink, and her eyes were painted with hues of kindness, compassion, and a fierce love for her husband and the people she lived with.
“May I come along?”
“Aye, but I thought ye were to help Simon peel.”
“They have to be picked first, do not they not?”
She came closer and his belly ached because he had to turn away and not take her face in his hands and kiss her.
“Ye are welcome to come with me.” He held out his arm before him, offering her a path to take.
“Tell me about your life, Elias MacPherson,” she asked him on the way to the orchard. “Tell me about your kin.”
He smiled at her use of the Scots’ word. “My father and his two brothers built the MacPherson stronghold in Invergarry where we live. He and my uncles were separated when my father was two. They all grew up alone, without a family, so when they finally found one another, they wouldna be separated again. My cousins and I all grew up together. ‘Twas good even when we fought,” he said, smiling at memories of getting into trouble with his cousins. “I miss them.” He wondered if he would ever see them again. “When I returned from the war, I became a shepherd of my father’s livestock.” They spoke a little bit more about his family and his fighting under the Scot’s king, who was now imprisoned.
“I have three half-sisters,” Lily told him in a quiet voice. The whites of her eyes grew red with unshed tears, making her blue eyes more startling. The tip of her nose also grew red. “I have not seen them or my father in nine years.”
“Have ye never tried to find them?” he asked, wishing he could help.
She shook her head. “Not when I was with Bertram, and when I came here, I stopped needing anything else.”
He vowed to himself then and there that he would find her half-sisters and her father and bring them to her.
They came to the sunlit orchard and Elias smiled knowing how much all this meant to Richard…and to Lily.
“There are only three trees,” he remarked, stepping under one of them. They were heavily-laden with big, yellow fruit.
“After one of Richard’s remedies cured a merchant from Genoa of a terrible skin disease, “Lily told him, “Richard was given a sapling of a lemon tree as payment. He grew the sapling for a few weeks and then cut it into eight more saplings. Only three lived. He has tried to grow more,” she said and reached up to brush her fingertips over the leaves, “but alas, they die.”