LITMIR.BIZ

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him how to let the coughs happen and how to breathe to calm them. Rather than escalating into an uncontrollable wave that would see Colm collapsed on the pallet, with blue lips and bruised eyes, this time the coughs subsided and soon Anna was back to counting. He met Suisan’s gaze over Anna’s head and saw her tentative and yet hopeful expression.

      But Davidh dared not hope too much this soon. Other treatments and medicaments had seemed effective in the past, only to stop helping his son. Would these as well? At this desperate point, as long as Colm did not worsen, Davidh would be happy. After a short time, Anna lifted the blanket off Colm and placed it with care to the side of the now-cooled pan.

      ‘How does your chest feel now, Colm?’ Anna asked his son.

      A smile that made it hard for Davidh to breathe settled on Colm’s face and he shrugged. As the boy inhaled, they all waited to see if the coughing had truly been eased by the vapours of whatever those leaves were.

      ‘Better,’ Colm said, drawing in a deeper breath than he would have dared just an hour ago. ‘It doesna hurt now.’

      All three of those observing the boy let out a sigh of relief, even the one who had brought about such a change.

      ‘I must speak to your father and Suisan about what to do and when to use these,’ she said, sweeping a gesture over the small collection of ingredients there on the table. ‘Will you sit here quietly while I do?’ At the boy’s doubtful glance, she added, ‘I want you to listen so you will know about it, too. Can you do that, Colm?’

      The expression on his son’s face was the same as the one Mara would have when concentrating on something important. In the set of Colm’s chin and the tilt of his head, he saw his wife’s face. God, he missed her so. He could not lose their son, too.

      ‘And I will return in a few days to bring more of the leaves and tinctures and see what else might help you.’

      ‘A few days?’ Davidh realised he’d not been paying heed to her specific instructions. ‘You will not come on the morrow?’

      ‘Nay,’ Anna said, stepping back, but not before running her fingers through Colm’s hair in an affectionate way. ‘’Twill take a few days for these to do their work. If they are successful at keeping that cough under control, then I will adjust them as we need to.’ She patted his shoulder and walked to where Davidh stood near the door. ‘As I have said, I have many things to get organised and ready up at the cottage.’ He would have objected, but she shook her head.

      ‘If he worsens...?’

      ‘Send for me and I will come,’ she said, meeting his gaze now. ‘I think he will not.’

      Suisan moved the supplies to a shelf near the hearth and began preparing for her noon meal. Colm missed little now, watching with an interest that Davidh had not seen in many months. Anna retrieved her basket and put what she would take with her back in it, before taking her leave—first from Colm, then Suisan and then himself. Davidh followed her outside, trying to find the words he wanted to say to her. She stopped after a few paces and turned to face him.

      ‘I did not wish to say this in front of them, but I cannot know if this will make him better. He may never re—’

      His hand covered her mouth before he could stop himself. Her lips were soft against his fingers and he felt her gasp before he heard it.

      ‘Your pardon, Anna,’ he said. ‘Watching him just then, well, I do not wish to hear words of caution. I have been living with his eventual death for so long, I had not realised the weight of it until just now. Now, when he has more colour in his face and is breathing more smoothly than he has in months and months.’ He dropped his hands to his side then and shrugged. ‘Allow a father a measure of hope before tearing it apart.’

      Whatever she was going to say, she did not. Instead he saw the tears filling her eyes before she turned away from him. He’d not meant to drive her to tears, for he’d simply spoken his fears aloud for the first time to someone other than his dead wife or the dark of night.

      ‘I will come two days hence then,’ she said.

      He stood there on the path and watched her until she disappeared from view on the road through the village and towards the north. He went back inside and spoke to Suisan and Colm for a short while before returning to his duties at the castle. For the first time in such a long while, the sound of Colm’s coughs did not follow his steps away.

      * * *

      Anna used all of the control she could pull together not to fall to her knees and sob over this man and his son. Truth be told, she worried that the lad was too far gone to bring him back from the brink of death. But how could she say that to the man who stood there with both hope and desolation in his gaze? He knew. He knew how dire the situation was. And somehow his own survival depended on that of his son’s.

      Nay, he was not ill or stricken by the same lung weakness that assailed the boy, but she thought that his son’s death would tear him apart in other ways. Anna stopped now, at the edge of the village, and turned to look back. He’d been watching her, she could feel his gaze burning into her with each step. Now, though, she did not see him there.

      She quickened her pace, wanting and needing to put some distance between herself and the village. But the boy and the man were in the centre of her thoughts all the way back to her cottage. And for the rest of the day as she weeded and pruned the unruly and overgrown plants in her mother’s plot above the falls.

      * * *

      Davidh and his son remained her concern over the next two days as she prepared concoctions and unguents and even as she and Iain ate and talked. Methods of treating the boy’s lung affliction filled her thoughts. She had kept notes on her mother’s recipes and cures in a precious book and she consulted it as she prepared her basket for her journey back into town. Though Iain wanted to accompany her, she bade him to wait there, in the safety of the shadows.

      The revelation of his existence and his connection to this clan would come, but Anna wanted it to happen to her own plan. Once it did, she would lose control over the one thing in her life that was her own to claim and she did not relish that moment at all.

       Chapter Five

      ‘Mistress Mackenzie!’

      Colm’s excited call greeted her on her approach to the blacksmith’s cottage. He sat outside the door, waving and speaking to anyone who passed by him that morn. A collection of others stood nearby, waiting or watching, she could not tell.

      ‘Good day to you, Colm,’ she called out to the boy.

      Sitting in the unexpected morning sun revealed that there had been some improvement in his condition. His colouring, though not as pale and pasty as he had been, was a scant bit nearer to health than sickness now. A good sign that. Anna reached the boy and he reached out and tugged on her skirts.

      ‘Mistress Mackenzie, I sat up all day except for when I was asleep. Like you told me to.’

      Suisan came to the opened doorway then, wiping her hands on the apron tucked at her waist.

      ‘Good morn to ye, Mistress Mackenzie,’ she said, nodding at the boy who was struggling to remain on the stool there. ‘He has been hoping ye would give yer permission for him to leave the cottage.’

      Anna walked over and slid her hand across the boy’s hair and forehead. No fever. ‘Well, let me see how he is doing and we can talk about extending his prison walls.’

      ‘I have taken every one of your remedies,’ Colm said. ‘Even the brown one that smells putrid.’ He gagged loudly, showing his distaste for it.

      ‘Is that true, Mistress Cameron?’ Anna asked in a serious tone. ‘Has he followed my instructions?’ The lad’s enthusiastic words and manner spoke of his improvement, with or without Suisan’s confirmation.

      ‘’Tis

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