The older woman took her arm and led her toward the stairs she’d just climbed. “Now that he’s awake, he doesna want ye to care for him, to see him…” She paused and frowned at the door. “The way he is now.”
“But…” She’d been caring for him since he was brought home, just as she’d been helping Mhairi for months with the clan’s ill and injured. Calum knew that. The only difference between him and others in the clan she’d tended was that he meant more to her.
Did he know that?
She’d always been shy around men. More so since she’d been kidnapped last year. But since she’d escaped and come to Brodie with her friend Muireall, who married Calum’s friend Euan, she’d learned to trust Calum. He was her one male friend, and she wanted to find out where the feelings they did have might lead.
Mhairi pursed her lips. “Ye are no’ married, and he has intimate needs unfit for a lass no’ his wife or a healer or servant.”
“I’m well aware.” Ella canted her head, wondering if the healer had forgotten who’d helped her take care of his needs before now. Or if Calum was too confused by the blow to his head to recall that she’d been stolen from Munro and married to a Ross against her will. Men had few secrets from her. “I dinna care about that. I care about him.”
“I ken ye do, lass. Ye have no’ left his side since he was carried in and put to bed. ’Tis glad I am to ken ye return his affection enough to wish to do this. But now he’s awake anduncomfortable with ye tending him…” She shrugged. “Though ye have helped me, ye have no’ yet agreed to become my apprentice. I must do as he asked and find a serving wench to keep watch over him.”
“Nay!” The idea of another lass having such close contact with him made her uneasy. Another lass would not care about him—or for him—as she did. “Wait, ye said I return his affection. What do ye ken that I dinna?” Earlier, Muireall said much the same, but it wasn’t that he’d asked for her hand, or even made any grand gestures that made it clear to all that they were a couple. Still, there was something between them she couldn’t yet define.
“’Tis no’ my place to say, lass. Better a conversation best held betwixt the two of ye, aye?”
Ella swallowed her objections. Mhairi was right. Calum’s friendship, his kindness, and the many ways he indulged her wishes were things she’d come to depend on. She didn’t want to lose the closeness she’d never enjoyed with any other man, not even with Dermott Munro, the clansman she thought she loved and expected to marry before the Ross raiders kidnapped her, Tira and Muireall. After she returned home, he publicly refused to honor their betrothal, saying she was ruined by being kidnapped and forced to marry Thomas Ross. She was better off without Dermott. But what if Mhairi was wrong about whether Calum harbored any tender feelings for her, and he developed them for his caretaker? “Must it be a lass?”
“A lad then,” Mhairi offered. “What else would ye have me do, Ella? A lad can stay with him and fetch me—or ye—if the need is urgent. I canna spend all my time with Calum. Others need my skills. Yers, too. And even if ye agree to become my apprentice, I think Calum will still prefer another see to him.”
“Aye, I ken it.” Ella crossed her arms and leaned against the wall at her back, thinking. For months, she’d put off Mhairi’soffer of apprenticeship and the stability such a commitment would mean for her future. She had found friends here, but she’d never been certain how she fit into Brodie, or how she wanted to. Or evenifshe wanted to. So much had happened to her in a short time. What would it take for her to feel confident of a decision to spend the rest of her life here, in Brodie? Would it be better than going back home to Munro, or living somewhere else, or even after what happened to her, in Ross?
She owed the healer an answer, but not now. Calum came first. She wanted to be the one to care for him, but how could she when he didn’t want her there? Thinking of growing up in Munro gave her the kernel of an idea. “What if he doesna ken ’tis I?”
“What do ye mean, lass? He kens ye well.”
“I can change my voice, my gait, my touch, as I did when I was a lass playing with the other bairns at ‘warriors and maids’.” She cleared her throat and deepened her voice’s pitch. “Do ye think he’d ken this voice?” She raised it to a high, clear, child’s tone. “Or this?” She raised her open hands in a shrug while she waited for the healer’s judgment.
Mhairi smiled. “The lower pitch will serve ye better, especially if ye speak softly. Dinna be as gentle with him as ye have in the past.” She regarded Ella’s hands, then took one of them and stroked it from palm to fingertips, making Ella’s fingers curl. “’Twould help if yer hands were rougher.”
Excitement set her pulse to racing. Could this work? “’Tis easily done. Today, Annie has set the maids to making soap. If I help them, the lye will do what’s needful, and quickly.” The Brodie lady would welcome another pair of hands to help with the onerous chore.
“Go on with ye, then. Ah, wait a wee. What shall I call ye?”
That was easy. “Janet. Call me Janet. ’Tis a common enough name for a lass.”
“Soap,” the healer muttered. She closed her eyes and sniffed. “Does he ken yer scent?”
“I…perhaps. I kenned my husband’s and hated it.”
“Of course ye did. He was forced on ye. Ye had every reason to hate him.” She rested her chin on her hand for a moment. “We must find something that will give ye—giveJanet—a scent all her own. An herb or spice rubbed into yer clothes might serve. Something pleasant or something strong?”
“I dinna want Calum to be drawn to Janet’s scent.”
The healer grinned as Ella pushed off from the wall with her elbows. “I’ll make certain of that.”
Hours later,Ella carefully wiped her sore hands on her apron before she left the soap making area the laundress set up in the bailey. She’d deliberately splashed lye on them to roughen them. In that, she’d probably done too much. Between the lye and the wooden paddles used to stir the boiling soap, a few blisters were forming that would likely pain her for days, along with rough and irritated patches that might make convincing calluses onJanet’shands. But the pain would be worth it if Calum allowed Janet to tend him.
Thank the saints they made soap outside. She couldn’t imagine how irritating it would be inside the keep, both to the women making the soap and to others if the smells filled the halls. At least out here, thanks to the laundress’ careful planning, the wind blew the stench out of the bailey and away from the keep.
As it was, her eyes stung, worse even than when Mhairi made the tinctures and poultices she used. The fumes wafted up from the huge pot she’d tended, forcing her to keep blinking to try toclear her vision. She could sympathize with Calum’s pain. Tears streaked her face, much the same as the other women around her. She turned her face into the breeze, letting it cool her burning eyes.
The healer joined her as she stood waiting for some relief.
“Let me see yer hands, lass,” she ordered.
Ella blinked aside a few more tears and held out her hands for the healer’s inspection.
