Claire paid no attention to the large chamber but went directly to the bed where Ciaran lay, sprawled half on his side.
She grimaced at the sight. His skin glistened with sweat, pale and flushed all at once, and his lips moved faintly as though muttering something in his delirium. His eyes were half-open but unfocused, a low sound escaping him that was not the laird’s sharp bark of command but the helpless moan of one burning with fever.
Ciaran hadn’t even undressed. His tunic still clung to him, the fabric plastered damp to his chest, and his breacan was draped haphazardly across one shoulder as if he had only collapsed here last night, too weary to strip, or else had risen in the morning, tried to dress, and been struck down by weakness before he could manage to leave his chamber.
Claire gripped the bedpost, steadying herself against the tremor that ran through her. He was too strong, too alive to look like this—sapped of all vitality, undone by something as ordinary as a fever.
“Jesus,” Claire whispered. She dropped to the bedside, pressed the back of her hand to his temple, then his chest.Scalding. She turned sharply to Mungan, who lingered anxiously in the doorway, having moved only a few feet inside the door. “I need water. Buckets of it. Cool cloths, fresh linens—all the same things we put in the other building. And someone to bring willow bark—now.”
Mungan nodded, seemingly grateful for orders, and bolted.
Claire leaned close, brushing damp strands of hair back from Ciaran’s brow. He didn’t stir, only shifted faintly against the sheets, a low groan rumbling from his chest. She pressed a steadying hand to his shoulder, her voice low, firm.
“Ciaran?” she murmured, wanting to know how coherent or not he actually was.
She knew too much to trust a fever. Back home, she’d seen patients arrive with nothing more than a cough and a low-grade temperature, only to crash within hours when infection spread to their lungs or blood. In a hospital, there were cultures, antibiotics, oxygen tanks, all the tools of modern medicine to haul them back from the brink. Here, there was none of it. Fever in this century was not just uncomfortable, it was a predator, one that struck without warning and often without mercy.
That knowledge should have made her equally afraid for every soul under her care—and she was—but the whole truth was, the sharper terror coiled inside her was for this man alone.
She felt an instant stab of guilt for so selfish and brutal a thought. She was meant to care for them all without distinction, yet here she was, more desperate over the fate of Ciaran Kerr than of any crofter’s son or serving girl. He was infuriating, stubborn, often cold—but the thought of losing him tore at her in a way she had no business feeling. She told herself it was only because he held the keep together, all of Caeravorn as Mungan had just stated so plainly, because his loss would leave them all in chaos. But even as she whispered it, she knew that wasn’t the whole truth.
Claire spun away from the bed, wringing out the tepid cloth in the basin on a cupboard across the room and laying it across his brow. She pressed her palm gently to his chest again, hoping he wasn’t burning up as much as she imagined at first touch. But no, his skin was far too hot, his flesh damp and slick.
Her training warred with the awkward thrum in her chest. Fever management first: get the heat down. That meant stripping away anything trapping it in.
His tunic was plastered to him, the linen clinging with sweat, and the heavy plaid half-twisted around his shoulder as though he had only dropped onto the bed, too weary to undress. Claire tugged at the fabric, working the knot loose, but the weight of him—dead-limbed, fevered—made it near impossible. She managed to drag the plaid free from his waist, baring the wrinkled, damp hem of his shirt, and set her jaw.
“All right,” she muttered under her breath, “one thing at a time.” She slid her fingers to the laces at his collar, tugging them open, then tried to peel the sodden linen up over his chest. The shirt clung stubbornly. When she braced herself and pulled harder, his body shifted with her, the sheer bulk of him rolling heavily toward her arm. She grunted, catching him, her breath hot with frustration.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she hissed. “Even unconscious, you’re impossible.”
The door creaked. Claire twisted to see Mungan entering with buckets swinging from his fists.
“Good. You can help me. I can’t get this off him by myself.”
Between the two of them, it was still a struggle. Mungan lifted one broad shoulder while she tugged the fabric up, then propped him the other way so she could wrestle it from under him and from his thick arms. Bit by bit they worked the tunic free, finally yanking it over his head and leaving him bare to the cool air.
Claire straightened, breathless, the crumpled shirt in her hands. And then she looked. Really looked.
His chest was a map of survival: long, pale scars slashed across one shoulder, puckered marks at his ribs, a jagged seam low on his side. Each wound told a story of how close he had come to death, and how stubbornly he had refused to yield. Yet beneath that rough history lay a body that was, impossibly, magnificent. Even in repose, his muscles stood out in sculpted relief, ridged and hard, carved by years of labor and battle. Sweat gleamed in the curves, catching the light, holding her awed gaze.
Her pulse stumbled. She had expected scars, yes, but not so many, and not this—this stark beauty, this raw, almost brutal perfection. It was no wonder his character was as immovable as the cliffs around Caeravorn; his chest might have been carved from the same unrelenting rock.
She forgot Mungan was there. Forgot everything except the man before her. Her gaze lingered, drifting lower to where his breeches hung on lean hips.
Her cheeks burned when a low chuckle cut through her reverie.
“Shall I fetch more water, mistress,” Mungan said, a grin coming crooked, “or will ye be staring the laird’s chest into health?”
Claire’s mouth fell open. Heat shot from the pit of her belly to the tips of her ears. “I— I wasn’t—”
“Of course ye were’na,” Mungan said with maddening gravity, though the corners of his mouth twitched more. “’Tis fine medicine, I’m sure. He’ll be hale by sundown if ye keep at it.”
Claire scowled, snatching up a cloth and wringing it hard enough that water slopped over the bucket. With a brisk sternness she’d learned from her former manager, Clairethinned her lips and informed the old rascal, “I just can’t believe all the scars.”
“Aye,” Munga said, nodding, one brow lifting and then lowering. And then, as deadpan as he’d been, he added, “Aye, I ken that’s what held yer regard so dearly—the scars on the man.”
All right, so she wasn’t fooling him. Whatever.
