Chapter 2
“What are ye doing out in the garden, Cameron Sutherland?” Mary scowled at her stubborn patient, who sprawled on a garden bench, his back supported by the smooth trunk of a small rowan tree. After last night’s supper, she thought he’d be exhausted and never expected to find his bed empty this morning. For a moment, her heart had stopped, then reason returned. Surely if something awful had happened during the night, the healer would have sent for her. She would not have taken his body away and not told the one other person who would check on him first thing in the morning. Nay, this disappearance was his doing.
Annoyed, she searched the great hall and the kitchen on the assumption he’d gotten hungry and again followed through on her suggestion yesterday to take his meals with the clan in the great hall. Not finding him any of those places, she’d gone to the stables. Not there, either. As she passed the garden gate, she spotted him where she least expected him to be.
Mary didn’t usually frown so fiercely, but between her father and this man, she’d been doing that a lot lately.
“Ach, sweet Mary, my love. My angel of mercy.” Cameron sat up and leaned forward with a wince. “I tired of staring at four walls. The sunshine revives me, and the scent of roses is most pleasant, even this late in the summer.”
Mary tamped down on the thrill hearing him call her Mary-my-love had sent shooting through her belly. She knew better than to take him seriously. And she was annoyed with him, which was probably why he’d said it. Certainly not because he meant anything by it. “Ye have been ill for weeks. Yer side is barely healed.” His pallor still contrasted with his hair, dark but with all the rich brown shades of a golden eagle. He was tall, with muscles honed to perfection—until his injury robbed him of strength. Still, Cameron managed to be proud and fierce. Too bad the wound in his side had clipped his wings. “If ye tear open yer wound, ye risk the fever returning, and ye are much weaker now than ye were when ye first came to us.”
He lifted his arm on his good side and squeezed the big muscle between his shoulder and the crook of his elbow. “Aye, sadly, ye are correct. I’ve lost a stone or two. But lass, I must start to regain my strength soon, or I’ll be of little use to anyone. This garden is a pleasant place to start. Come, sit with me and enjoy the day.” He patted the seat beside him as he straightened. “Those dark clouds on the horizon won’t arrive for hours yet.”
Mary caught the hesitation in his movement and the grimace he quickly hid. His wound, despite his brave words, still pained him.
“Tell me what ye will do today, lass,” he suggested as he made room for her. “Have ye heard from yer sisters or their husbands at Brodie?”
Mary pressed her lips together and chose to relent this one time. The reason she’d come to find him could wait. “It is pleasant out here,” she commented as she sat and arranged her skirts. A few varieties of roses were past their peak, but the rest still bloomed in a riot of pinks from pale blush to nearly red. The breeze wafted mildly around them, carrying not only the scent of roses, but the scent of the man beside her, and a faint hint of the storm to come. “Aye. They are well. I had a letter from Annie just today. Catherine asks after ye.”
Cameron nodded, but he watched the clouds as she talked. The furrow between his brows slowly eased and finally disappeared as she filled him in on her sisters’ news.
Mary had spent most of the last few weeks helping the clan Rose healer save his life, so she was glad to see some of the strain leave his face. There was nothing about this man’s body she had not seen and did not know. He flirted when he felt well enough, and made their lives miserable when the fever took him, mumbling about battles and secrets that lent him an air of mystery and danger. Little of what he said during those times made sense to Mary, except to prove to her he had secrets and his duty lay elsewhere. Not at Rose. She pressed her lips together and exhaled.
He must have seen her tense, because he took her hand in his big one and sighed. “I would suffer this wound again and again, if I kenned it would end with me here, inthis moment, with ye. Now, tell me, lass. What worries ye?”
She crumpled her skirt with her free hand while telling herself Cameron was only being kind. He must feel much better today to have ventured out into the Rose keep’s walled garden. And to take her hand with such ease and continue to hold it. As many times as she’d touched him during his illness, to cool his fever or soothe his pain, he'd never reciprocated. Even when he felt well enough to tease her, he never presumed. She shouldn’t welcome the familiarity he now displayed, but she did. It made her feel like the connection she sometimes imagined between them could grow into something real.
But she also expected what she had to tell him might end it all. She hoped her news did not spoil his contentment, but she knew it would.
“I just found out Da has been writing to Earl Sutherland, keeping him apprised of yer condition. Yer progress.”
Cameron snorted. “Currying favor, most like, in exchange for my care.”
Mary should have felt insulted for her father, but Cameron was right. “That would be my father, aye. At any rate,” she continued as she pulled a folded letter out of her pocket, “this came for ye a few days ago. I was waiting for the right time to give it to ye, but ye need to have it before I go away. The seal is unbroken.”
Cameron dropped her hand, reached for the missive and ripped it open without bothering to verify it had not been tampered with.
While he read, Mary tucked away the hand he’d held. She missed the sensation of being enclosed, in at leastsome small way, in the heat of his body. Did his new familiarity mean he had a new awareness of her as more than his caretaker? She’d wondered for weeks what it would be like to be wrapped in his powerful embrace once he recovered. Now a chill skittered across her back as her hand cooled without his touch.
“Ach, Christ’s bones, Mary. My father orders me home as soon as I am able to make the trip.” He crumpled the letter in his hand. “He doesna say I have been neglecting my duty to Sutherland, but the implication is there. Now I am better, I must go.”
Mary’s heart sank, and she lifted her hand to her mouth. “Surely no’ today!”
“Nay, lass, but soon.” He smoothed out the letter again, folded it and tucked it inside his shirt, then stared toward the garden gate.
Mary turned to see what had caught his attention and shivered. The dark clouds had advanced to the edge of the sun’s disk. In moments, they would hide the sunshine and steal its warmth.
Cameron shifted to face her.
He grimaced at the movement, but she bit her tongue and let it go. If pain kept him here longer, she would have to accept his suffering, and if that made her seem cruel, so be it. To survive the trip home, he had to be strong enough to fight.
“We’ve kenned this time was coming,” he told her and pressed his lips together until the corners whitened.
Mary’s heart swelled as he looked into her eyes.
The words were not what she had wanted to hear when he finally met her gaze with eyes clear of fever andpain. Yet they implied an understanding between the two of them neither had stated.
Then his gaze lowered. He took both her hands in his.
