Page 38 of Hold Fast

But he’d stopped. Close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating from his palm but far enough away that she could have moved her hands away. A very small part of her wished that hehadtouched her. She knew that his hands were calloused from the way they had scraped against the fabric of her gown as he lifted her up and down from Calman’s back. She knew they would be warm because all of him was warm.

It had been five days since that morning in the chapel with Ewan. Five days of Connor battling through a raging fever. Five days of little sleep and sharing the watch with Fiona and Ewan’s siblings. Five days of morning prayers in the chapel. Alone, after that first day.

Last night, she’d dreamt that he was behind her, holding her close from head to toe, as he’d done in the cave. He had whispered beautiful, soft things in her ear and rubbed his large hands gently up and down her arm. The dream had been so real that when she’d woken, she’d reached behind her, expecting to feel his large body nestled there. But her hand had brushed nothing but air.

It wasn’t the dream itself that had unnerved her, but rather her disappointment that it had only been a dream. That same small part of her that wished he had taken her hands had also wished to find herself held against his warm chest. Surrounded by his strength. Safe.

The past days had been a blur of activity. In addition to tending Connor, she had been called upon to tend to other minor injuries and maladies as word spread of the new healer at the keep. None as severe as Connor, but she was kept so busy that she collapsed into immediate sleep the moment her head hit the pillow. She knew Ewan came to visit Connor, but he did so when she was sleeping or down in the kitchens, eating or preparing medicines. She hadn’t seen him since their conversation in the chapel, and she was surprised to find that she wished hewouldcome when she was there.

The keep was warm, and she untied the strings of her cloak as she climbed the wheeled staircase. When she entered the laird’s solar, she hung the cloak on a peg driven into the wall. The sun was up and shining through the window. Fiona sat stitching in the chair by Connor’s bed.

“Any changes while I was gone?”

“Nay,” Fiona said with a sigh. “He is as he has been. How was the chapel?”

“Bleak,” Una said, and Fiona snorted. “I must go see Fenella about the makings of more salve. It must cure for nine days, and I dinnae want to run out. You will send for me if anything changes?”

Fiona nodded and returned to her knitting.

Una made her way down to the kitchen, where she’d prepared medicines many times before during the week, but never with these particular ingredients.

“I’ll be happy to help you get your ingredients, dearie,” Fenella said as she drove a sharp knife into a particularly stubborn turnip. The head cook was a stout, red-faced woman. “But I willnae get you a single thing until you’ve had breakfast.”

Moment later, Una sat at the worn, wooden worktable, eating a bowl of steaming porridge with dried berries, and watching the kitchen women bustle about, stoking fires, peeking under cloths to peer at rising loaves, and scouring pots.

The table’s surface was scarred by the slices and gouges of knives and worn smooth in others, the wood eroded into a concave from years and years of kneading dough in the same, favored spot. She smiled at the thought of decades’ worth of bread being shaped and kneaded there, the hands changing over the years but the work, the bread, remaining exactly the same. In some ways, healing was like that\ too. Certainly, discoveries were made all the time, and yet she relied heavily on the medicines that Agatha had taught her, remedies that Agatha had learned from her grandmother.

Time didn’t move in the same way down in the kitchens as it did above them, and Una quickly lost track of it. She was separating wedges of onion, peeling the petals away from the bulb before dropping them into a bronze vessel when she heard heavy footfalls moving quickly down the stone stairs descending into the kitchen.

Every head in the room turned as a guard burst through the door, skidding to a halt and nearly toppling over.

“Milady!” he shouted, and all the eyes turned to Una. “You must come at once!”

“Holy God,” Fenella whispered under her breath.

Una shot to her feet and raced past him, taking the stairs two at a time as she ran around and around the wheeled staircase. She stopped briefly at the top to regain her equilibrium before tearing down the hall and throwing open the door to the laird’s solar.

Fiona stood weeping next to the bedside, her face buried in her hands, and Una felt as if she would lose her breakfast.

“Is he dead?” Una asked in a choked voice.

Fiona turned to her, tears streaking down her cheeks. A wide smile stretched across her face.

“Nay, Una! His fever has broken!”

Fiona burst into a fresh round of sobs. Una rushed to the bed, pressing her hand against Connor’s face. His skin was warm, but not the boiling misery it had been the past five days. More importantly, it was dry. He wasn’t sweating or thrashing with delirium. Una turned to Fiona as Connor groaned loudly, mumbling about something to eat.

“Nothing but barley water and broth!” Una commanded Fiona, breathlessly tripping backwards toward the door. “And only small sips at a time!”

“Where are you going?” Fiona shouted after her, but she was already gone, racing down the hall, down the stairs, and out into the frigid morning.

She had forgotten her cloak but wasn’t about to turn back now. Connor was not totally free of danger, but if his fever had broken, the worst of the dangers were past. Hope bloomed in her chest as she ran through the bailey and to the gate. Greer, who had been nosing around the courtyard, bounded after her, barking happily. Una felt a momentary pang of guilt. She had hardly seen the dog since their arrival.

“Come, Greer. We must make haste!” she panted, and the dog barked again.

She stopped at the gate where a guard told her that the laird was training with his men in the fallow field past the cottages. She ran as fast as her legs would carry her down the road, clutching fistfuls of her skirts to keep from tripping over the hem. When she reached the hill overlooking the training fields, Una shielded her eyes with her hand and tried to spot Ewan among the men. Greer panted next to her.

A man on a black horse cantered close, stopping a few feet away. Una recognized him at once as the man who had helped Ewan and his brothers to hold Connor while she tended to his wound. David, she thought his name was.