“How is Sarah?”
“Better. The fever broke properly this morning. She ate breakfast, which she tried to do standing up until Jane made her sit down. She’ll be on her feet by tomorrow, whether anyone permits it or not.”
Something crossed his face that was not quite a smile and not quite relief but was interestingly enough both of those things. “Aye,” he said. “She will.”
Her eyes dropped to his mouth before she could stop them. She looked away and shifted her stance. Suddenly, the cold was no longer the thing she noticed most.
When she glanced back, his eyes were on her mouth.
“The yarrow is for the last of it. And whatever this is.” She held up the dark bundle. “The woman in the village said it was for a lingering in the chest. She seemed very certain about it.”
“Morag,” he said. “She’s been treatin’ half the glen since before I was born. If she gave it to ye, it works.”
“Good. I’ll take it up to Sarah.” She moved to pass him on the path, and he shifted slightly, not enough to block her, just enough that she stopped. She looked at him.
“Stay,” he said quietly.
She hesitated.
“Unless ye wish to leave,” he said.
She looked at him briefly. The wind blew through the garden, swaying the bare rowan branches overhead, while he stood in it with his sleeves rolled up and his eyes fixed on hers. She thought, not for the first time, that he was an incredibly difficult man to make a sensible decision in front of.
She set the bundle down on the garden bench.
“My hands are freezing,” she said.
He crossed the gap between them and took her hands in both of his before she finished the sentence. She immediately felt the warmth of his palms around her fingers, and she sensed her pulse in every spot where his skin touched hers.
“Yer hands are cold,” he said.
“I just said that.”
“I’m confirmin’ it.” He turned her hands over and looked at them. His thumbs moved over her knuckles in a slow pass that she was fairly certain was not strictly necessary for the purpose of warming them.
“That is quite the tender caress, Me Laird,” she whispered. “What ever happened to the warrior clansmen who ruled his land with an iron fist?”
His eyes came up to hers. “I have me moments.”
“Do you?”
“Occasionally.” His thumbs made another slow pass. “When I choose to.”
“And what made you choose to, today?”
He looked at her for a long moment. The wind moved through the garden, and she waited, and she could see him deciding something, turning it over, and when he answered, he looked at their joined hands rather than her face.
“Ye went to the glen,” he said. “Alone. At first light. For Sarah.”
“Yes.”
His hands tightened slightly around hers. “Ye didnae have to do that.”
“I know I didn’t have to.” She looked up at him. “She needed the yarrow. I knew where to get it. It was not complicated.”
“It is complicated,” he said. “She’s nae yer family.”
“She’s going to be,” Isobel said.