Beckwith took it all in, standing by the hearth, his arms folded, looking very pale and drawn.
“But…but what about the laird?” Mared asked, her heart pounding with fear.
“Ye’ll tend him,” Beckwith snapped. “I’ve the house and everyone else to think of.”
He had his own skin to think of, but Mared could certainly understand his fear. She felt it rather keenly herself. “That’s quite all right, Mr. Beckwith. I’ll tend him.”
“I’ll return on the morrow,” Dr. Thomson said. “If he’s no’ improved, we’ll leach him.” He picked up his bag and walked to the door. “He’s no’ to have any food or liquid. It will feed the fever. Let his body expel it naturally.”
He walked out of the room, Beckwith on his heels. Mared bowed her head, tried to get her thoughts together, and finally turned around, to face the others.
They were all standing near the window, as far away from her as they could possibly be in the confines of the room. Only Alan was standing a little apart from them. “Maybe Jamie was right,” he said low. “Maybe this is the work of yer curse.”
“W-what?”
“Maybe this is yer curse, Miss Lockhart.”
“Alan!” she said sternly. “That is nothing more than an old wives’ tale!”
“’Tis true,” Alan said. “I’ve had it from MacFarland in Aberfoyle.”
Rodina and Una exchanged a wide-eyed look at that. Iain MacFarland was an old and revered man, widely regarded as the historian of the lochs.
“Then surely he told ye the curse threatens whomever I am betrothed to, and by any account, I am most certainly no’ betrothed to any of ye.”
“Aye, but ’tis commonly known the laird thought to marry ye, he did.”
Mrs. Mackerell sucked in a sharp breath.
Mared sighed wearily and pinched the bridge of her nose to stave off a headache that was suddenly upon her. “Such fear and superstition is too ridiculous to even warrant a response,” she said quietly. “I am no’ betrothed to the laird. He doesna have any particular esteem for me. And any talk of a blasted curse is fantasy,” she said and dropped her hand, giving Alan a heated look. “Fantasy!” she exclaimed loudly. “And now is no’ the time to engage in bloody fantasy!”
She quit the room and hurried to Payton’s chamber, and carefully opened the door. He was lying on his side, his back to her. She started to back out, to let him rest, but he suddenly moaned, and Mared forgot Alan and the others.
She went to his bedside and sat gingerly on the edge.
He rolled over onto his back and his eyes fluttered open for a moment. “What’s that smell?” he asked hoarsely. “A sweet smell, it is.”
“The lilac of my soap,” she said and thought to bring some oils to his room to mask the smell of his illness.
“Ah,” he muttered, his eyes sliding shut again. “I thought it was flowers for my grave.”
“No. Of course no’,” she murmured, alarmed he’d say such a thing, and laid her palm to his forehead, wincing at the heat in him.
“If it comes to that, Mared, I should like lilacs on my grave, aye? They will remind me of ye.”
She caught her breath in her throat; Payton opened his eyes again and squinted painfully at her. “Ye should go from here,” he said. “Save yerself.”
“Go? No. It would take more than the likes of ye to harm me, Douglas.”
He managed a weak smile, and his eyes fluttered shut again. “Ach, I could never harm ye, Mared—I could never harm the one I love,” he murmured, and his head drifted to the right, away from her.
He had slipped into unconsciousness.
Seventeen
P ayton did not know that they leached him—the illness ravaging his body kept him in a dreamlike state, alternating between moments of lucidity and delusion.
After the physician had gone, Mared brought some fragrant oils to Payton’s room and burned them, hoping they would mask the smell. She also brought the soap she and Natalie had made at Talla Dileas. They had used lilac to cover the smell of ashes and lye. He apparently found the scent soothing, so she washed her hands in it before she mopped his brow. She opened the windows to bring fresh air into the room. When he shivered with fever, she laid blankets atop him. When the fever would break, as it did from time to time, she would wash his face with a cloth soaked in the ice cold water of the loch she had lugged to his room.
When the hearth went cold, Mared discovered most of the servants had left, save Moreen the scullery maid, who had no place to go. And Beckwith, who was fiercely loyal, but terrified of entering Payton’s room. Mared convinced him to at least bring wood or peat—whatever she might burn—and lay it outside Payton’s door so that she might build a fire.
And she gave Moreen two pence to go and fetch Donalda, whose healing powers were rumored to be superior to that of modern medicine.