CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Lorna was full to the brim with humiliation. She had never been so embarrassed, and it was made even worse because Bryce was smiling. Smiling! Smiling like a smug bastard. She knew he was smiling because he had caught her talking about his kiss, and she couldn’t think of a place that was worse at that moment. She wanted to melt into the ground or fly away and never be heard from again.
That would have been far better than having to look at handsome Bryce with his dark hair tied back, and his jaw covered in stubble, and his eyes bright with victory. At her expense, of course. Not only that, but he’d warmed her heart because he discussed how he’d visited her mother and tried to help her.
Lorna’s mind wanted to punch him, or better yet, take a blade to his gut, but then her heart and her body wanted to do something entirely different. Something foolish. Like kiss him until he couldn’t breathe. Kiss him like she had boldly done in the library so that he’d never forget it. But instead, she knew that she’d never forget it. She still hadn’t forgotten the heat of their stolen kiss, and it was what made his smug smile all the worse. She could tell that he knew it.
But it was Tobias’s words which had dragged her mind from dirty, dangerous things. “Ransacked?” she said. “We’ll come with ye.”
“Nae need, lass,” Bryce said, putting an arm out to stop him. Lorna wanted to laugh. As if a perfectly sculpted, muscled arm was going to keep her from doing what she needed to do to help her clan and prove herself.
“I told ye that I would come, and so I shall.” She walked around his arm and walked stiffly forward, following Tobias down the street. Bryce, thankfully, gave up and matched her pace.
“Yer father will have me head for this.”
“Me father will have yer head for a lot of things,” she muttered, feeling courageous, and she felt even more satisfied when Bryce looked at her with a surprised smirk.
Tobias paused at the door. “It was not like this when we visited after finding Mrs. Creech’s body.” He sighed. “It does not seem that they were looking for anything in particular because practically everything is destroyed. But come and tell me yer ideas.”
He swung open the door, and Lorna could have kissed him for the fact that he didn’t bat an eye at her presence, or Kyla’s. Bryce stepped aside to let Lorna and Kyla in, and they held arms as they walked through the door, gasping at the state of the room.
It was the midwife’s croft, and so it was full of shelves and medicines and books. Everything that could be needed to assist a woman in the throes of labor. That had all been pulled to the floor. Things were everywhere. Vials of potions, boxes and jars of herbs, cloth, candles, books. Everything. Lorna stepped inside to the room she had known so often. Her mother had taken her there many times when she was ill. Mrs. Creech was always ready with a remedy.
Lorna could see her now in her mind’s eye, mixing something in her mortar and pestle on the side table while Lorna and her mother waited. But she was dead now and would never mix anything again. “Who would do this?” she asked angrily as she stood in the center of the chaos. It was more of a question to the world rather than to any particular person. It still pained her that a good woman like Mrs. Creech had experienced such pain.
“I don’t know, lass,” Tobias said, looking about. “And I have no idea what they could have wanted. But I mean to find out. Bloody Hell.” Tobias rubbed a frustrated hand down his face.
Bryce moved to her side. She felt his arm brush against hers as he looked about. She swallowed back the delight at his closeness. That he’d moved closer to her on purpose. But surely it could have been a mistake.
He said, “They were looking for something, surely. Maybe they were so frustrated that they couldnae find it, that they killed her?”
“Aye, I suppose,” Lorna said. “But I have nae idea what they would want of a midwife. What could she possibly have kenned that would merit murder?”
Conan too. Why kill a healer? None of it makes sense.
Lorna’s expression was grim, but she couldn’t help but feel excited that she was in the center of everything going on. That she was there, discussing with men about the murders that had occurred. Never in her life would she have thought she’d be in such a situation. Perhaps in Bryce’s estimation, it was a small thing, but she loved it. She savored it. She memorized every second and locked it away to look at later.
“I donnae ken, Lorna. But it is a good question. We will have tae think of it, question the villageres if they saw anything unusual.” Lorna turned to face him, shocked that he’d spoken to her in a normal fashion. He wasn’t being sarcastic or teasing. She watched his profile as he looked at the messy room. She felt a prick of longing for him, after what he’d said, but she tried to tamp it down, and she looked away.
She didn’t want to be one of those women who were drawn to a man simply because he was undeniably handsome. Painfully handsome. Gut-wrenchingly handsome.
Enough now, lass. Ye have better things tae think of. Yer mother, for example?
“I will have my men search over every inch of this place,” Tobias said firmly, putting his hands on his hips. “For God’s sake, I need to go home to bed. I will come back tomorrow. Good day Bryce, ladies,” he bowed his head at them and then took his leave.
Bryce turned back to Lorna. “If ye like, lass, I will take ye both back tae the keep.”
“Nae,” she said, wanting to prove to him more than anyone else just what she could do. On her own. “We can walk on our own. And we have tae bring flowers to Mrs. Creech’s family and tell Conan’s family about his death.”
“I have done that already,” he said grimly. “Ye will have the funerals taemorrow, aye? Both of them?”
“Aye,” Lorna said, furious that he had taken another task from her. She hated feeling useless, and that was all she had been recently. Even useless in love. Watt didn’t want her, so why should anyone else? “Good day tae ye, Bryce.”
She turned to leave, pulling Kyla along with her; Kyla tried to protest, but Lorna threw her an angry glance. Once they were out of the midwife’s croft, they headed straight for the market again. Once they reached it, Kyla stopped and said, “All right then, what are ye doing?”
* * *
Nothing. Bryce could think of nothing that someone would want to take from a midwife. He stayed with Tobias’s men for a little while, searching through the chaos and the clutter, trying to put together any sort of clue which would help him find the person responsible for such a thing. But there was nothing.
