While Mrs. Duff sat with her, she chatted about how this wing of the house had been built on the foundation of a castle destroyed after the Battle of Stirling Bridge in the thirteenth century, and Rose learned that some of the old corridors were still in use as servants’ passageways. All meals were brought up to the floor from the kitchen this way. No detail of Mrs. Duff’s conversations went unnoticed, including the fact that his lordship’s chambers were somewhere in this wing.
With her collection of scissors, needles, thread, andcloth, Rose lay in bed at night and worked on sewing special pockets into her clothes and making a knapsack that she would pack with food and other supplies she was collecting for her eventual departure. Already by the week’s end, she had collected silver from the food trays delivered to her. A spoon missing hither and thither could be overlooked in the short term, at least until an accounting of the silverware was taken.
Overall, Rose managed to be a model hostage, seemingly too injured to be a threat. It was not a lie that her wound pained her, but she was not crippled and, with some effort, during her first few days at Stonehaven she was able to shove one of the dressers in her bathing chamber below the high window. If she set a chair atop the dresser’s surface, she could reach the window’s sill chest high, and using a supper knife, she slipped the blade in the crack to unhinge the lock without breaking the glass. The window opened onto a ledge.
That first morning couldn’t have been more glorious to her eyes as Rose looked out over the ledge down a beautiful trellis entwined with green and vines and into an empty courtyard, then beyond the peaceful setting to a reflecting pool.
Her breath had caught when she had glimpsed Julia Kerr.
Rose had not let herself think about the woman she had met her first night at Stonehaven. But every morning for the past five days, Rose had seen her by the reflecting pool.
She sat at a table that had been set up on the grass. She ate alone andlookedalone. And every morning for the past five days, Rose had watched her.
Friar Tucker had once told Rose she was possessed of a soft heart—malleable, as he had called it—easily shapedby the events of a day. She was always trying to mend broken wings on birds only to watch the creatures give up their will to fight, or survive only to be snatched from the air by a hawk. She had befriended an aged shopkeeper in Castleton because her son, Geddes, was heartless and didn’t deserve her. She had tried to mend a little boy’s heart after his mother died, only to leave him. Even if it was not her fault, she was still gone. Julia looked in need of mending.
But Rose could do nothing for it, she thought. Friar Tucker had warned her she could not fix the ails of the world, and every time she tried, he had proven her right. She had the power to change nothing. The only hope she’d had went the way of her wishing ring. Gone.
Pulling the window shut, she eased her way off the chair to the dresser, wincing as she lowered herself to the ground. She pulled the chair off the dresser without ripping her dress. It was a serviceable green plaid skirt with a yellow bodice that must have once belonged to a tall, skinny waif, evident by the amount of altering Rose had done last night to cover her bosom more fully.
But Mrs. Duff had brought her this ensemble to add to the other odd assortment of attire in her armoire. To complete the outfit with her plaited hair, Rose had thought with some amusement that morning, all she needed was a shepherd’s staff and a lamb in her arms.
She wasn’t amused now as someone knocked on her chamber door. She walked into her room just as a wizardly old man popped his head around the edge of the door, saw that she was decently attired, then entered. He carried a brown surgeon’s box made of oak and pine in one hand and one of the lists she had sent to the kitchen in the other.
“Marigolds aren’t in bloom yet,” he said, “and I tossedaway the moldy batch we had. We’ve no wild yam. Though it grows in the hills around the loch. Witch hazel we have but no’ mallow root. But the eggs and honey ...?”
“ ’Tis a rich drink to thicken the blood and hasten healing.”
“No wonder ye have caused such an uproar in the kitchen with your menus and wild concoctions.” He peered at her with interest. “You are a healer.”
Rose dusted off her hands as he approached. “I didn’t get a chance to meet you when you arrived,” he said. “The name is McBain. His lordship told me I was to see to your leg. But I thought it wise to give ye a few days to work on the matter yourself, seein’ as how ye seem to know what ye are doing.”
Rose smiled sweetly. “You can tell his lordship when he returns that you saw me and I am well.”
“I would, lass, except, when he returned late last night and asked about ye, Mrs. Duff was adamant that ye were still spendin’ most of yer time in bed recuperatin’. His lordship being the concerned sort asked if I had checked on ye. I had to tell him I had not.”
Rose did not want McBain looking at her leg. He would see that she was far better along than everyone thought. “You can tell him that his concern is unwarranted. I am recovering, but these things take time.”
McBain set the box on the table next to a modest arrangement of lilies in a large blue pottery jar. With his short stature and slightly pointy ears, he could have belonged to the fabled fairy people that lived in the forests of Scotland. “That may be so, lass, but ye can no’ be expecting me to report to his lordship that you’re in the best of health if you’re no’. What if you’re sufferin’ the rot? How would his lordship look if he had to return ye to your da, onelegged? Ye can understand his concern. And as I am a man who forms his own opinions about all matters, my lady, I would see to your health myself,” he gently replied, then directed her to the chair nearest the fire. “Please. Allow me to have a look at that leg. Those sutures have been in a week.”
His gentleness pulled at her defenses and she realized he was using the same tactic on her that she used on others. He merely asked but left the burden of whether to comply with her. She could deny him but then Roxburghe might come to her room and force her to submit to an examination, which would be undignified and humiliating. Then he might decide to search her room and find all his stolen silverware, knives and the scissors she had beneath the bed.
Rose limped to the chair and sat. “You do not plan to give me a bread-and-milk poultice, do you?”
“Nay, and neither will I give ye arsenic, blue vitriol, or white-oak-bark paste. I’m not here to hurt ye or see ye bleed more than you’ve already done so.”
She watched as he opened the box and laid out various medical devices including a screw tourniquet, probe, and a tooth extractor that looked more like a cork opener.
The fire in the hearth suddenly seemed hot at her back. “Are you a surgeon?” she asked nervously. “You have treated many patients?”
“Not many who have lived,” he said, moving aside a green jar in his box, his voice muffled as he bent over.
“Are you even a doctor?”
“By necessity,” he said, laying a towel next to the box. “Our ship’s surgeon was killed my third year at sea. Though his lordship was no’ one to tangle spars with, we saw our fair share of action. I learned the trade quickly. If a manwas brought to me ... as ye can guess taking a man’s limbs is not an easy thing even if it is meant to save what life he has left.”
“That is horrible.”
“Oh, aye.” He peered at her from beneath bushy brows that looked like aged caterpillars. “You’ve no idea the courage it takes to look down the black maw of a forty pounder. His lordship did it more times than most. Me? I remained belowdecks and prayed.”
