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"She had broth yesterday. Maria made her drink all of it even though she said she wasnae hungry."

"Good." Claire sat back in the carved chair, folding her hands neatly in her lap. "Ye're goin' to be fine," she added, directing this last remark squarely at Sheona, as if she'd been following the conversation the whole time. "Brodie's been outside that door every hour since they brought ye up. He'll deny it, of course. But ye should ken it anyway."

Sheona had no answer for that. The fever pulled her sideways, heavy and relentless, and the warmth of the fire and the sound of Claire's steady voice blurred together into something almost safe.

A deep shadow fell across the open doorway.

Sheona’s gaze flickered past the golden-haired woman toward the threshold. Brodie stood just outside the chamber, his towering frame framing the stone archway. He was no longer wearing his rain-soaked plaid; he wore a dark tunic of heavy wool, his dark hair damp and combed back from his broad forehead.

His face was a wall of unreadable stone, his jaw set in that familiar, unyielding line. Yet his dark eyes burned as they swept over the bed, catching Sheona’s fevered, glassy glance for a fraction of a second before looking away.

“Claire,” Brodie called out quietly, his gravelly voice remarkably soft, devoid of the harsh edge he so often used with Sheona.

The beautiful young woman looked up immediately. She rose from the chair with an innate, fluid grace, her heavy crimson skirts rustling against the stone floor. She looked down at Angus once more, giving his small shoulder a final, comforting pat, and then turned toward the doorway.

As she reached the threshold, she offered Brodie a small, affectionate smile—a look of deep, familiar warmth that Brodie answered with a subtle, respectful tilt of his head. Together, the two of them stepped back into the corridor, their quiet voices swallowed by the thick stone walls as the heavy oak door clicked softly shut behind them.

Sheona was left alone in the quiet room with the weeping boy.

Angus sniffled again, his grip on her fingers tightening. "That was Aunt Claire," he murmured, as if offering a great comfort. "She came in from the storm last night. She sat with ye all mornin' so I could eat me porridge."

Sheona stared up at the timbered ceiling, her chest heaving with shallow, agonizing breaths. She was here in this keep, bound to a man who viewed her as nothing more than a dangerous, unwanted obligation—a bitter burden thrust upon him by war, debt, and blood-soaked history.

Duty, he had called it. Always duty.

A cruel, treacherous thought flickered through the fevered fog of her brain, burning far hotter than the sickness in her veins.

Perhaps that is the kind of woman he would willingly kiss.

The memory of Brodie’s study tore through her—the searing heat of his mouth against hers, the broad, calloused hand cupping her jaw, the terrifying, breathless surrender of that single, forbidden moment. He had called it an error. A lapse in restraint that would never happen again. Because kissing Sheona was a mistake born of anger and chaos.

Maids like this golden stranger—women of warmth and effortless beauty—were the ones a laird would choose without the weight of contracts, dead fathers, and shattered clans forcing his hand. They were the ones a man would touch out of desire, not by iron duty alone.

A fresh shiver wracked Sheona’s frame. The heat in her blood flared violently, a deep, sickening ache blooming behind her ribs that made breathing impossible. She closed her eyes tight, trying to push the image of the stranger’s gentle smile and Brodie’s softened gaze from her mind, but the pain lingered.

All Sheona knew was the suffocating burn in her chest and the terrifying truth she could no longer deny: the thought of Brodie looking at another woman with even a hint of gentleness hurt far more than the fever consuming her body.

Angus squeezed her fingers again, his little head resting against the side of the mattress.

Sheona tried to speak, to tell the boy she was fine, but her throat locked tight. The golden sunlight fading from the window stretched into long, dark shadows, and the suffocating tide of the fever surged upward once more, dragging her down into the merciful blackness of sleep.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The echo of horse hooves faded through the outer cobbled courtyard as Claire and her escort rode out through the iron portcullis, safely continuing their journey toward Glenlyon now that the mountain storm had passed.

Brodie stood at the head of the stone stairwell, watching the heavy oak gates swing shut. The moment the iron latch dropped, he turned on his heel, his heavy boots carrying him down the long, quiet corridor toward the west wing. Toward his chambers.

Her chambers now.

He stopped five paces from the entrance, his broad shoulders squared, his mouth set in a hard, grim line. His left hand rose and came to rest flat against the thick, dark oak of the closed door. The wood was cold beneath his palm, yet every nerve ending in his body thrummed with restless, agonizing heat.

He had told her—staring straight into her pale, desperate face in his study—that her safety was his duty. Nothing more. An iron obligation born of contracts, bloodlines, and the grim survival of his clan.

Duty.

He cursed silently under his breath, his knuckles going white against the oak. Duty had never explained the terrifying, gut-wrenching panic that had ripped through his chest when her knees had given out in his study. Duty had never explained why his heart had hammered like a trapped beast as he gathered her mud-soaked, fever-wracked body into his arms, carrying her up those stairs himself while her head rolled limply against his bare neck.

And duty certainly did not explain why he had spent the last three nights sitting in a hard wooden chair beside her bed, watching the shallow rise and fall of her chest, refusing to leave her side even as his commanders pressed him for updates on the border patrols.