“He’s occasionally right about things. I daenae tell him that. It would go to his head.” Sarah settled back against her pillows and watched Isobel move around the room. “Ye’re very competent at this.”
“My mother was often unwell. I learned early.”
“The Highland blood,” Sarah said. “Highlanders are always either very tough or completely unable to manage discomfort. Nay middle ground.” She paused. “Me mother was the secondkind. Took to her bed for a week with a mild headache. Alasdair and I used to sit outside her door and play cards in the corridor.”
“How old were you?”
“He was about nine. I was six.” She smiled at the ceiling. “He taught me to play. Explained every rule three times to make sure I understood. Made a little diagram.” A pause. “He always did that. Wrote everything down. The maids used to tease him about it.”
“Jane told me he taught some of them to read.”
“Two of them. Bessie and a girl called Fiona, who left after her marriage.” Sarah’s voice had softened. “He just decided it was the correct thing to do and did it. Nay fuss. Didnae understand why everyone acted like it was unusual.” She turned her head to look at Isobel. “He used to correct me grammar constantly. Drove me completely mad. I told him once that if he corrected me one more time, I would push him into the burn. He corrected me again, so I pushed him.”
Isobel looked up from the infusion. “What did he do?”
“Climbed out, corrected me grammar again, and went inside to change his clothes.” Sarah’s eyes were bright, partly from the fever, but also partly because she was evidently enjoying sharing these stories about her big brother. “He was the most annoyingly principled child. He thought if a thing was right, it was worth doin’ regardless of whether anyone thanked ye for it.” Something moved across her face, the brightness dimmingslightly. “Then our father died, and he stopped bein’ annoyin’ about it. He stopped bein’ anythin’, really. He just became… Laird Dunalasdair.”
The room was quiet. The infusion was ready, and Isobel poured it carefully into the cup and brought it to her.
“Drink this while it’s warm,” she said. “All of it.”
Sarah took it without arguing, which told Isobel more about how she was feeling than anything else had. She drank it in small sips, and Isobel sat beside her. After a while, Sarah lowered the cup and looked at her sideways.
“Can I ask ye somethin’?” Sarah said.
“You can ask me anything.”
“What do ye make of him?”
Isobel looked at her hands in her lap. “That is a broad question.”
“It is.” Sarah set the cup down. “I watched him at supper two nights ago. He spent most of it watchin’ ye when ye werenae lookin’ and most of the rest of it actively not watchin’ ye, which is its own kind of watchin’.” She paused. “I havenae seen him do that before.”
“Do what?”
“Work that hard to avoid anythin’.”
“I don’t know what I make of him,” Isobel said honestly. “I think I keep deciding one thing and then he does something that doesn’t fit it.”
“That’s him,” Sarah said. “That’s exactly him.” She closed her eyes. “He used to do that to me constantly as a child. I would decide he was unbearable and then he would do something completely unexpected, and I would have to start over.” A long pause in which her breathing slowed down. “He’s still doin’ it. He’s just doin’ it to more people now.”
Her eyes stayed closed. After a few minutes, her breathing deepened, and she slept.
Isobel sat a little longer, listening to the fire, and thought about a nine-year-old boy who made diagrams, corrected grammar, and climbed back out of the burn to do it again. She considered what it might cost to bury something like that so completely and realized it must be an incredible weight to carry every single day without ever putting it down.
* * *
The knock at the door came mid-morning.
She opened it to find Euan, the son of Mrs. Alexander, one of the cooks in the kitchens, on the other side. He was eight years old, dark-haired, with his mother’s directness already established inthe set of his chin. He was holding a wooden horse in one hand and looking at her with an assessing gaze.
“Mama told me not to come up here,” he said. “She said ye were busy getting ready for yer weddin’ to me Laird.”
Isobel snorted a dry laugh. “If she told you to stay away, why did you defy her?”
“I was worried about Lady Sarah.” The little boy’s chin dipped slightly. “Me maither said Lady Sarah was mighty ill.”
“She will recover,” Isobel hurriedly assured the child.