The cook watched the next clansman enter her kitchen with her arms folded over her breast, her face red from the heat of the fire. “Och, you’re here again, Jock Sinclair?” Ina demanded, looking over his shoulder at the scratch on his thumb. “Ye let a wee cat best ye?”
Jock gave Fia a sweet-eyed grin and held out his hand.
“It’s not so wee,” Jock said, blushing. “And it isn’t a scratch—I cut my thumb on a nail. There’s no point in taking any chances, so I came to have Mistress MacLeod see to it.”
Ina Sinclair rolled her eyes and went back to stirring the stew bubbling over the fire. “I’ve never known so many braw men to behave like bairns. A scratch, and they come running to clutter up my kitchen with their great muddy feet.”
Fia smiled apologetically. “Perhaps there’s a storeroom I could use instead of taking up your kitchen, Ina.”
Ina shook the spoon at her. “Don’t ye dare—’tis fine entertainment watching so many Sinclair men make fools o’ themselves over a lass. You stay right here—I’m enjoying myself.”
“It’s because she’s pretty, isn’t it?” Wee Alex Sinclair asked his father, and Angus Mor blushed like a lass.
“It’s because she soothed away Alasdair Og’s nightmares,” Ina corrected him. “She has a true healing touch.” Fia felt hot blood flood her face.
“A bonny face is as good as any medicine, if you ask me,” Jock said, moon-eyed. His grin faded as she opened the pot of salve and reached for his injured hand. “It won’t hurt, will it?”
“Hurt?” Andrew Pyper said, overhearing. “A dirk in the gut hurts, or a caber landing on your foot. I’ve had both, of course. I didn’t even flinch.”
“Ye fell on the dirk when you were drunk, and ye swooned like a lass when I stitched ye up,” Ina reminded him. Andrew blushed.
“I’m ready,” Jock said. He gripped the edge of the table and screwed his eyes shut as Fia applied the salve. Jock screeched and leaped up.
“Did that hurt?” she asked in surprise.
He stared at his thumb. “No—but it’s cold. I was taken unawares by that.” He sat down and let her finish applying the salve, and grinned at her as he rose to take his leave.
“What of payment?” Ina asked him.
Jock stopped. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“’Tisn’t necessary,” Fia said quickly, but Jock stood pondering the problem.
“I’ve a litter of new pups at my house. Would you like a wee dog?”
“That cat would eat it,” Angus predicted.
“Really, it isn’t necessary at all,” Fia said. “I’m very happy to help—”
But Jock pulled a brass button off his coat and pushed it across the table toward her. Soon, as the line grew shorter, Fia had a tidy pile of small payments—a wolf’s tooth on a leather thong, a brass pin, a tiny drinking cup made of horn, a bit of driftwood carved in the shape of a fish.
The line grew shorter—not in length, but in height, as several children stood waiting for their turn to see Fia. A wee girl held a puppy out to Fia without a word, her sad eyes matching the pup’s mournful expression. The dog whimpered when Fia touched its paw, and she saw the thorn lodged in the pad.
“Ah—here’s the trouble,” she told the child. “Will you hold him while I take the thorn out?”
Everyone gathered round to watch. They held their breath as Fia took a pair of bone tweezers out of her pocket and plucked out the thorn. “There. It’s all better.”
The girl smiled and hurried out with her pet.
The child ran into someone tall standing in the doorway, bounced off, and he bent and caught her before she could fall. Alasdair Og. Fia’s mouth went dry.
How long had he been there? He was watching her, his flat expression unreadable. He was dressed like the rest of his clansmen, in a saffron shirt and plaid over deerskin boots, his hair tied back in a queue—yet somehow he wasmorethan any other man in the room. Fia tried to swallow the lump in her throat, but it was stuck there.
“The puppy had a thorn—” she began. “Just here,” she lifted her hand to point to the space between her own fingers. Her hand hit the pot of salve on the table. It tumbled across the flagstone floor to his feet.
They both stared at it for a moment, and Fia felt herself blushing from hairline to hem. He bent to pick it up, held the wooden pot to his nose, and sniffed the salve. She waited silently, glued to the stool. The kitchen was suddenly empty, save for the two of them. Everyone else had gone—even Ina—as if they’d turned into smoke and vanished up the chimney.
“Feasgarmath,Alasdair Og—good afternoon,” she said politely, starting again. “I trust you’re well?”
