That was all that needed to be said.
Thomas reddened. “I swear I’ll not lay a finger on her. It isn’t what ye think.”
“Hmm. Well, if ye want Emma to treat… whatever that is, then ye will find her in the storeroom at the back of the chamber. Ye will find it at once, it’s the only one with the door open.”
Thomas smiled in relief as if he were afraid she wouldn’t let him in. “Thank ye, Delphine. I’ll not be long, I promise.”
“I’ll be just out here!” Delphine called as he scurried past her and headed to the storeroom. She shook her head and sighed, making her slow, painful way back to her chair.
What on earth was he playing at?
8
Emma stepped back, inspecting her work. She’d done a good job of rearranging theseldom usedherbs and medicines, some of which were far too expensive and rare for the average healer to use. But, here in the Keep, they had something of everything.
There were dried thousand-bead fruits packed into tiny jars and pressed dragon lily leaves ground to a fine powder. Emma had once used a combination of both to help a young pregnant woman expel a baby that had died inside her and refused to come away. She’d once used a paste of many ingredients, including ground fennel seeds and acrid-smelling pig-dog roots, to cure a small child of an infection that would have killed him.
If I’d had these herbs and medicines at my disposal before I came here, I would have saved more people.
She reached up, her fingers dancing along the rows of jars, vials, and packages neatly lined up and labeled on the gloomy, dusty shelves.
Someone cleared their throat from the doorway behind her, and she flinched, turning around.
Thomas stood there, leaning against the doorframe, a strange expression on his face. “I didnae mean to interrupt,” he said, his voice light and almost teasing.
The cadence of his voice, low and gruff, sent a tingle through her, which she did not like. She didn’t enjoy feeling this way around Laird MacPherson. It made it hard to be firm and objective. She would be a fool not to notice his flirting, but it nevermeantanything.
She had to remind herself of that.
“Well, ye have now, so let’s hear it. How can I help ye, Me Laird?” she said tightly, crossing her arms across her chest.
He stayed where he was, leaning against the doorframe, face shadowed. That bothered her for some reason.
Not that she wantedto see his face, of course. Nothing like that.
“Wait, how did ye get in?” she asked suddenly, frowning. “I didnae hear a knock.”
“Oh, Delphine let me in. She’s gone back to sleep by the fire.” Thomas replied lightly, then paused. “Is… is she all right? She seems ill and slow lately. I worry about her sometimes, but she always says that she’s all right.”
Emma swallowed hard. Thomas’s concern about Delphine seemedsincere enough, but she knew that Delphine was keen to have her fading health kept quiet, especially from the Laird.
“She’s fine,” Emma lied. “Just tired, I suppose. She’s getting old, ye know.”
He nodded. “She works too hard. That’s why I brought ye in. More than one apprentice would be better, but ye know how stubborn Delphine can be.”
Emma shifted from foot to foot, trying to ignore the strange, tingling feeling swirling in her gut. It wasn’t an unfamiliar thing—she’d felt it around Thomas before, much to her horror—but the situation they were in was not ideal.
It was getting stronger by the week now, too.
She was, after all, all but trapped in a small storage room, with him between her and the exit, and Delphine dozing in a chair by the fire, unlikely to wake up any time soon.
She ought to have been afraid. Emma had felt fear in less private situations than this. She’d cringed away from fat drunks with wandering hands who had stunk to high heaven and stick-thinweaselly men who had followed her outside and along on her errands, whispering awful things in her ear.
There was no fear at all now. No simmering anxiety about what Thomas might do next or whether or not he would let her go past him.
I trust him not to harm me.
The thought made the tingling in her gut increase, a sort of pressure building in her chest. She shifted again, hoping to ease the sensation.
