Alice patted Sophia on the shoulder and stepped back. “Lucky for you, I suppose, or you’d have had nothing to bargain with. Still, see if you can’t get him to teach you while you’re here. I’d dearly love never to scratch a flea bite again.”
“I can’t imagine Sir Cathal teaching anyone magic,” said Sophia, remembering the blunt speech from last night and the frank-to-the-point-of-rudeness way he’d eyed her. She felt herself flush again, wondered what he’d thought when he made his…inspection…and shook her head quickly. “Or anything else.”
“He didn’t try anything untoward, did he?” Alice asked, reading Sophia’s face carefully. “I thought you’d have told me if he had, but—”
“No. And I would have. And it wouldn’t matter. He seemed to have little time for, um,untoward, though. He didn’t seem to have much time in general.”
Knowing that, Sophia half expected Cathal to put off their meeting and his explanation. Even had he been more eager to tell her the history of Fergus’s condition than he obviously was, Sophia assumed that other matters would come first. She’d hardly finished her bread and ale an hour later, though, when he appeared—not the page she’d expected, but Cathal himself, walking up to her side so quietly that she didn’t look up from her reading until he cleared his throat.
She flinched. She also squeaked. She was halfway off the bench, eating knife protectively in one hand, when she recognized him.
Cathal’s gaze never wavered. He looked at her as if jumpy women were common facets of his day, as mayhap they were. “You’ll come to no harm here,” he said evenly, once Sophia’d had a chance to catch her breath.
“Of course,” she said. She smiled politely all the way up into that chiseled face. “Can I be of assistance, my lord?”
“You wanted the chance to examine Fergus and receive a history of his state. I’ll give you the second first. Walk with me.”
“Of course.” She closed her book and picked it up, tucking it under her arm. The weight of it was reassuring. “Where are we going?”
“Where I need to go. There are…” He waved an impatient hand. “Tasks. Always. I might as well explain on the way. It’s no secret.”
“And the examination? I’ll need my supplies—”
He turned and barked a name, which sounded a bit likeMartin, only with more rising and falling around the vowels. A dark-haired boy nearby looked up and answered in Gaelic.
“Go to—” Cathal began, switching to English and glancing at Sophia.
“The stables,” she said, slipping between languages with a few seconds’ thought. “The bay mare at the far end. My instruments will be in the pack on the left. They’re glass, for the most part.”
“Aye, so take good care. Bring them to Fergus’s room,” said Cathal, with a stern look at Possibly-Martin.
“And if you’ve a surgeon or a physician, I’ll need to take blood.”
“None here over the winter.” Cathal flicked his hand again, dismissing the page. “Don’t fret yourself. I can open a vein without killing the man it belongs to, if I must.”
Already he was walking. Sophia hurried toward his side, crossing the rushes and heading through the door nearest the high table. Now, a little before midmorning, the cooking smells coming from under the door weren’t as strong as the smell of burning wood. “How long has he been, er, the way he is?” she asked.
“Two months.” His accent wasn’t nearly so strong as that of other Scotsmen she’d met, even the others who spoke English, but the first word still came outtwa. “Best start at the beginning. You ken the war?”
“More or less. The details…” She lifted her free hand and let it fall.
“No need of them. We were fighting the English… Aye, some ways from here,” he added at her surprised look. She’d not heard that the war had reached such a remote part of the Highlands, nor had Loch Arach the look of a village that had recently seen combat. “I was at the war then, and my sister managing all of this.”
“Your sister?”
“One of them, aye.” He glanced down at her and flashed a grim half-smile, one that admitted no questions. “She’s taken my place now, and I hers. So then. We were a ways from here on a fair desolate patch of ground, and there was a troop of the English. Not a normal part of the army, I should think. I’ll give Longshanks that much. Whatever sort of devil he may be, I’ve heard nothing like that of him.”
“Like what?”
“Ah.”
She didn’t immediately get an answer, because their journey through the kitchens had stopped in front of a man with red hair, a large beard, and an air of officious bad temper—probably a butler or a steward. He glanced from her to Cathal, blinked, and then asked a question in Gaelic. Cathal replied with what sounded like several of his own, and the conversation lasted an incomprehensible few minutes.
Sophia took a look around. Castle kitchens had never really been a part of her life. She couldn’t quite fit the modest domain of her mother and sisters, nor even the kitchens in the grander parts of town, into the same word as this sprawling, busy maze. On one side of the room, men in bloody tunics were cutting up what looked like half a pig, while a woman almost as covered with flour kneaded bread some distance away, scolding more pages as she did so. Everyone was moving. Sophia tucked her elbows closer to her sides and took a step closer to Cathal, trying to get out of the way.
Naturally, that was when he finished talking and turned toward her. For an awkward moment, her nose practically hit his chest. There was a great deal of chest, she noticed again, and it still all looked to be solid muscle. Hurriedly, she stepped back. “My apologies.”
“Think nothing of it. This way. And take a cloak.” He pulled one from a peg beside the kitchen door and tossed it to her. “You chill easily.”
