And then Rosie coughed.
It was a small sound at first, a wet little hitch, and Kate’s whole body went rigid around it. Then it came again, harder, and the baby’s face crumpled and went red. A third cough racked her small frame, and she began to wheeze, a thin whistling sound on every breath, her hands opening and closing in distress.
“Rosie?” Kate’s voice cracked clean in half. “Rosie, what is it? What’s?—”
“Her lips,” Olivia said, on her feet already, her heart hammering. “Look at her lips—they’ve gone gray! What has she been at? What does she have in her hands?”
She pried the crushed wad of leaves from the baby’s fist and did not know it was some flowering weed from the bramble bed.
Rosie wheezed and whimpered and pawed at her own mouth.
“The healer. Now. Where’s the healer? Kate?—”
But Kate had gone white and frozen, the baby clutched to her chest, and so Olivia took the wheezing child into her own arms and ran.
Brigid took one look at the baby in Olivia’s arms and became, in an instant, a creature Olivia had not looked for. Not the cold, still woman from the doorway. But a healer. Quick, and sure, and without one trace of fear.
“Give her here. On the table. What did she have?” Olivia held out the crushed leaves, and Brigid’s mouth tightened. “Aye. Lamb’s cress. She has done this afore, the wee madam. She cannae be trusted within a mile of the stuff.”
She was already working as she spoke, a pinch of something dropped into hot water, the steam cupped under the baby’s nose, her fair head bent close.
“Breathe, ye wee terror. There. There’s me bonnie lass. Breathe for Brigid, now.”
Slowly, the dreadful whistling eased. Rosie’s color came back. The wheezing gentled to hiccupping sobs and then to furious cries, the healthy outraged howls of a baby badly frightened and wanting the world to know it.
Olivia’s knees nearly gave out under her with relief.
“She is well,” Brigid said, scooping the child up and settling her with practiced ease. “She will be cross as a wet cat the rest ofthe day, but she is well. Ye did right to run.” A pause, and then without warmth: “Both of ye. The Lady and the Laird’s sister.”
Kate had crept in at the door, trembling, and Brigid handed her the baby with a gentleness she did not waste on Olivia and murmured a low word that made Kate’s shoulders come down from around her ears. Then she turned to Olivia, and the warmth vanished from her face like a snuffed candle.
“And how does the new Lady find married life?” she asked pleasantly, wiping her hands. “I trust the weddin’ night was all ye hoped. Ragnall was always…” She paused and let her green eyes drift over Olivia, slow and knowing. “… attentive. In his own way. He has a great deal of patience in him, that man, when he sets his mind to something. But ye’ll have learned that much by now.”
Olivia stood very still.
It was the way Brigid said his name. Ragnall. Not me Laird, not the Laird. Ragnall, soft and worn smooth in her mouth from long use. It was the slow knowing drift of her eyes, the small private curl at the corner of her mouth. It was a hundred small signs, and they added up all at once to one large and sickening certainty.
“Ye and he…” Olivia’s voice came out steady. She did not know how. “Ye were?—”
“For years,” Brigid said, light as anything, turning back to her herbs. “Since we were scarcely more than bairns. He ended it,uh, nearly two years ago now. But ye daenae forget a thing like that, do ye? The body has a long memory.” She smiled over her shoulder, sweet and cold. “I am sure he has told ye all of it. He’s an honest man, our Laird. He’d never let his bride go to his bed nae kennin’ whose place it was she was takin’.”
And Olivia, who had lain awake half the night, warm and wondering and undone by a man’s low and patient voice, who had let herself believe for the space of one foolish morning that what lay between them was new and only theirs, felt the bright, fragile hope she had carried out of that bed curdle to ash behind her ribs.
She thanked the healer for saving the baby’s life in a voice she did not recognize, then walked out of the room with her spine straight and her chin high, and did not let one single thing show on her face until she was well alone.
Of course. Of course, there was someone afore ye. Ye fool, Olivia. Ye great soft fool. Ye nearly forgot who ye were, and who he is, and what the two of ye are to one another. She did ye a kindness, the healer. She woke ye afore ye drowned in it.
CHAPTER 19
“Pass the salt.”
Olivia passed the salt. She did not look at him while she did it. She set it down on the board within his reach, the way a servant would, withdrew her hand before there was any chance in the world of their fingers meeting, and resumed eating.
Ragnall sat with the salt cellar in front of him and no earthly use for it. He had come down to the noon meal still warm from the morning. From the sight of her flushed and furious and swearing at him in his own bed, from the way she had told him to close his eyes while she dressed and then accused him of peeping when he had done nothing of the sort.
He had been, God help him, very near to being happy. He had come down the stairs two at a time like a lad.
And then he had walked into a frosty hall.
