by Karen Ranney
“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the board he still held in his hand.
He glanced at it as if he’d forgotten its presence. “Something Brendan brought me, a game they play in India. My brother seems to think I need the diversion.”
“Are you good at it?”
“I haven’t played in more than a year. Why do you ask?”
“Would you care for a wager? I’ve never been especially good at games, but I’m willing to learn. If I play against you and win, would you allow me to treat you?”
“And if you lose?”
“I’ll go away without a backward glance. Without another word to you.”
“That alone is almost worth the wager,” he said. But she couldn’t feel insulted, because one corner of his mouth turned up in an almost smile. “Have Brendan teach you,” he said, holding out the game to her. “That way it would be fair.”
“When shall we play?”
“Tonight. If you think that’s enough time for you to learn to play.”
It wasn’t, of course, but she nodded regardless. “In the meantime, perhaps you might give some thought to emerging from your cave,” she suggested. “Sunshine and fresh air would do you more good than remaining in your hermitage.”
“I didn’t stay in this room until you came.”
“Then why do you do so now?”
He only frowned at her in response. He was quite good at frowns, she decided.
Taking a deep breath, she placed her left hand on the wall for support. The descent was certain to be less nerve-racking than coming up the stairs with the heavy tray.
She glanced back once to discover him still standing there in the shadows, watching her. She wished he wouldn’t do that. Yet asking him to cease studying her so avidly would reveal that his look discomfited her. It did, but not because he was scarred. Nor was she intimidated by his anger. Instead, something about him drew her.
He was less a patient than he was simply a man. For that alone, she should surrender in this battle of wills and ask Brendan to take her back to Inverness. Or find a way alone, if he refused.
Her curiosity about Hamish MacRae overpowered her concern, and what compassion she might have felt as a healer was no match for the interest she felt as a woman.
Matthew Marshall pulled his chair closer and opened the sloping top of his secretary. He flexed his fingers, straightened his shoulders, and took a few deep breaths, all preparatory to beginning his morning work. As a minister, he always began his day with a prayer service but then returned home to his study.
Selecting a quill, he trimmed the nib to the exact point he liked. He smiled as he removed the pewter top of his inkwell. It had been a gift from a congregation in America, something to commemorate his twentieth visit there and engraved with a verse that he especially liked.
Pulling out his manuscript, he worked on the forward of the book soon to be delivered to his publishers. The work was the compilation of his newest studies of medical advances. Only then did he begin to answer his correspondence.
Withdrawing the stack of letters he’d received in the afternoon post the day before, he began to thumb through them in order to decide which to answer first. There were the usual requests for donations. Then, there were the pleas for intercession, as if he, a mortal man, had more influence with God than any other creature. Lastly, there were his two favorite types of letters, those either having to do with new advances in medicine or imploring him to visit.
He began with the requests for donations. He knew only too well how difficult it sometimes was to solicit funds, therefore his answer was as gentle and kind as he could frame them.
I regret, dear sir, that most of my funds go to clinics for the poor throughout England. I will, however, take your situation under consideration. Perhaps there is a congregation who could assist you in some manner?
He wrote the same message for each solicitation.
The implorations to God were answered with prayer, and a two-line message.
Please note that I have no greater power than you in seeking assistance from the Almighty. However, I have added my prayers to yours in the hope that He will visit his kindness and benevolence upon you in your troubles.
Finally, he wrote answers to the requests for his time. His traveling plans were normally arranged a year in advance. He reached into his right desk drawer for his itinerary, disturbed when it wasn’t exactly in the place he’d left it.
Order was a necessity. Since this desk traveled with him, he knew its contents well. He frowned down into the drawer, wondering why the information about his electrical machine was located to the left of his replies to his American congregations. None of his correspondence was in order. He often made copies of his letters, especially when it involved his travel arrangements.
Had Maddie looked for something? He sighed at the idea of leaving his wife yet again.
His time was equally divided between England, Scotland, and America. Rarely did he go to the continent, unless it was Amsterdam. He liked the tidiness of the Dutch, but chafed at the stubbornness of the Germans, and deplored French politics. The excesses of royalty had destroyed the country, making it a nation of poor, malnourished creatures. Nor were the French disposed to hearing any criticism of their methods. They would let their own citizens starve rather than take advice from a foreigner.
He sighed, wishing that his dear wife would come with him on his next trip to Scotland. Madeline would not, citing a wish to remain here with her lingering cough. She’d grown weaker in the past months, and had it been any other visit, he would have stayed behind as well.
In addition to meeting with a female healer with the unlikely soubriquet of the Angel of Inverness, there had been some promising correspondence from a young Scottish inventor. They’d been communicating for well over a year, and just last month, the man had sent him the plans on what promised to be some very interesting advancements to his favorite healing machine.
He finally unearthed his itinerary. He would begin his trip tomorrow, traveling to a series of smaller Scottish towns that he’d not visited in more than a decade, and finishing up in Inverness. Along the way perhaps he’d polish up a few oratories not yet given to large crowds. The Scots were a difficult audience; he knew that from his earlier trips.
Despite the lingering worry about leaving his wife behind, he was eager for the journey to begin.
Chapter 6
M ary and Brendan sat at the kitchen table after the noon meal. Hester was baking bread on the other side of the room, while Micah sat opposite her, mending harness. The room had become, in one day, their communal meeting place, since it was the brightest and warmest spot in Castle Gloom.
“It doesn’t look appreciably different from chess,” Mary said, watching as Brendan laid out the board she had brought down from Hamish’s room.
“It’s an older version of it, called shatranj, played in India.”
“He has a great many things around him that remind him of India, doesn’t he?”
“Hamish allowed you into his room?” Brendan asked, surprised.
“I looked inside,” Mary said, shrugging. She was trained to notice things quickly.
He glanced at her, but didn’t comment. Instead, he showed her the game pieces.
“The layout is similar to that of chess. However, elephants replace bishops, and generals take the place of queens. The board is different as well. You’ll notice that the kings and generals are transposed, facing each other.”
“On the way here you said that India changed him. What did you mean?” She propped her elbows on the table. “A man is more than his health, just as a patient is more than his disease,” she explained in his silence. It was a sentiment espoused by Matthew Marshall. Her words, however, concealed a curiosity that had nothing to do with altruism or medicine.
“There’s a reserve to Hamish that was never there before,” Brendan said, speaking softly so that Micah and Hester couldn’t hear his words. “As if he�
��s on his best behavior around me. I’d much rather he would be himself.”
“In what way?”
“Once he had a booming laugh,” Brendan said. “And a wry sense of humor. He used to smoke the most godawful pipe, simply to annoy our brothers, I think. He was the brother in the middle, the one most consistent. Hamish was always the same. Always just himself.”
Standing, he went to the cask they’d opened the night before, pouring four mugs. He handed Micah and Hester each one before returning to the table. Pushing one across to Mary, he continued. “Sometimes, I’m not even certain I know him anymore.”
“Why did you never rescue him?”
He stared at her, and for the first time since she’d met him, Brendan wasn’t affable or genial. Instead, anger blazed in his eyes.
“Do you think I didn’t try? I scoured every port in India. I wouldn’t give up, no matter what evidence I saw or what tales I’d heard. I knew he had to be alive.”
She didn’t speak, waiting for the rest of the story. The anger she’d seen burn so quickly wasn’t, she realized, directed at her.
“I never found him.”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that you didn’t try, Brendan. Please forgive me.” She reached across the table and placed her fingertips on his wrist.
He shook his head as if to negate her words. Or perhaps he’d discerned her compassion and refused it as ably as his brother.
“Seven months after the rebellion had been put down, the British authorities showed me a grave. They told me that Hamish was buried in it, that the body had been so badly burned that he was nothing more than scorched bones.”
“What happened then?”
“I became a coward,” he said, smiling humorlessly. “I couldn’t go home and tell my parents, and I didn’t want to go to Gilmuir and let Alisdair know. So I remained in India.”
“And found him alive, finally.”
“He found me,” Brendan corrected. “Evidently, he’d crawled out of the desert on his hands and knees, and was in such bad shape that they didn’t expect him to live. But he fooled them, recuperating from his ordeal. Still, I almost didn’t recognize him.”
“Don’t you think a year of being imprisoned would have changed a man?” Or did Hamish now hate humanity to such a degree that he would rather hide in an isolated castle than live among people?
Brendan glanced down at the board. “Perhaps. But he’s different. He doesn’t talk about that year.” Unexpectedly, he smiled. “You’ll have to get Hamish to tell you. I don’t doubt you will. You got him to play shatranj with you. I must warn you, however. Hamish doesn’t play with many people, but when he does, he unfailingly wins.”
“You discount any abilities I might have. I used to play chess with my husband when we were first married.”
“Did you win?”
“Sometimes,” she admitted. “Mostly, I just learned.”
“You won’t have a chance to just learn with Hamish. He’s very competitive, and very skilled.”
She smiled but didn’t comment. She suspected that Hamish MacRae’s civility would come to her rescue. A man with the character to note and to apologize for his churlish behavior despite his own internal struggles would allow her to win. At least she was hoping so. By losing at this wager, he’d be able to concede to her treatment of him while still keeping his dignity.
“Tell me the rules,” she said, concentrating on the board.
“The quickest way to learn shatranj is to understand how it’s different from chess. In addition to the elephants and the generals replacing the other pieces, there is no initial two-step move. Stalemate is always considered a win. So, too, is a bare king. Lastly, the board is not checkered.”
“Otherwise, do the pieces move in a similar direction?”
“Except for the elephant,” Brendan said. “It can only move in a diagonal jump.”
She listened intently, making mental notes and acquitting herself well enough when they played a few practice games.
The intervening hours passed slowly, as if knowing how impatient she was for the game. Finally, dinner was finished, and the kitchen put to rights. She said good night to Hester and Micah, and walked with Brendan back to the tower.
Brendan had taken a dinner tray to Hamish earlier, returning deep in thought. She’d not asked why he looked so pensive, or what the two men had discussed. Perhaps Hamish had taken her advice and spoken to Brendan after all. If so, then she’d already won a partial victory.
They both glanced upward to the soft glow of candlelight in the top of the tower. The deserted castle enveloped Hamish, offering refuge. She felt as if they were unwanted there, that Hamish and Castle Gloom suited each other very well.
“Who owns this place?” she asked.
Brendan shrugged. “From what I could discover, the McLarens. But they abandoned the castle a decade ago.”
They entered the tower, Brendan lighting the wall-mounted sconces from his candle.
“I’ll leave you, then,” he said, hesitating at the base of the steps.
“Wish me luck, or your brother will not allow me to treat him.”
“Then I wish you success. After all, you’ve had a great teacher.”
He grinned at her, and she smiled in response, wondering why she’d never seen it before. He reminded her of Elspeth. Her friend in Inverness was a few years younger, but the closest friend Mary had. Brendan was similar in temperament and nature.
As he headed up to his room, she went to the fire, building it up with one of the logs the men had cut only that morning. The new wood popped and sizzled, the sound accompanying her thoughts. She should have donned a new dress, or changed her scarf. At the very least, she should have brushed her hair.
He is a patient.
He is a man.
He has been wounded. Tortured.
You have suffered as well, Mary.
That thought drew her up short. What arrogance to think her own sense of loss the equal of his experience. But he suffered from nightmares, and she couldn’t sleep without a candle, and the two seemed not unalike. So much so that she couldn’t help but wonder if memories and restlessness kept him awake as well.
She knew most of her patients, cared for them as people, as friends. What she didn’t know about them she learned, snippets of information that helped her decide how to cure the patient and not just the disease. She used the information to personalize the treatments, give a little comfort where there was only pain or illness. If a man disliked the feel of wool against his skin, she wrapped a poultice in linen, instead. If a woman loved the scent of lavender, she often dropped a few sprigs into the water used for bathing. A child’s favorite toy was often used to help alleviate a child’s fear.
Illness brought out the worst in people, made them feel vulnerable, angry, and afraid. Often those feelings were directed at her. She had to overcome those emotions before she could be an asset to her patients, before she could begin to cure them of what made them sick.
But she’d never before had the desire she did now, to know everything there was to learn about the man she waited for, to flesh out that missing year, sketch in the details Brendan had told her. She wanted to know about those unknown months, about the time when no one had seen or heard of Hamish. What had happened to him? Where had he been?
Why was he here?
“I should make you come to my room,” he said from behind her.
She held herself tight and turned to look at him.
He’d prepared for their meeting as she had not. His shirt was different, a beige linen that looked to be soft to the touch. His trousers were immaculate, and his boots as well polished as before. His brown hair seemed to gleam with golden highlights from the fire.
“I thank you for sparing me the journey,” she said.
“You don’t like the stairs?” he asked, frowning.
“I don’t like heights,” she admitted, then clarified. “I feel a strange disorientation on the steps. But I never
suffer the same dizziness at a window. I suspect it is a flaw in my balance, but I’ve not investigated it further.”
“Yet you brought my breakfast tray. Are you that desperate for a patient, Mary Gilly?”
“Perhaps I am,” she said, smiling at his teasing.
He held out a chair for her, and she sat at the table. The shatranj game had been laid out and she’d not noticed it, being so entranced in her own thoughts.
“I trust Brendan taught you what he could?”
She nodded, feeling absurdly shy. What nonsense. How could she gain his trust if she acted as foolish as a girl? “You don’t sound as if you have much faith in Brendan’s instructions.”
He smiled again, a halfhearted attempt at humor that managed only to be distantly pleasant. As if it were an expression he used to mask what he truly felt.
“I’m just anxious to conclude our wager.”
“The sooner you win, the sooner I’m gone?”
He nodded.
She wished the firelight were not so bright, casting an almost festive orange glow over the two of them. She could see him well enough, and the one thing that stopped her from staring unabashedly at Hamish was his own hooded gaze. From time to time, she would look up from the board to find him contemplating her.
He seemed to know the pieces well by touch, his fingers spreading over his portion of the board as if to mark their position with his palm. He was a more aggressive player than Brendan, and much more adventurous than Gordon. Little time elapsed between the end of her move and his.
“Brendan said you were a widow. Did your husband die recently?” An acceptable question, but it nevertheless surprised her. But he’d done that before, evinced an interest in her that was the equal of hers in him.
Not a normal patient.
“A year ago.” In September, when the winds howled of winter to come and the rooms were chilled and the shadows lengthened, a time for burrowing into havens and gathering with family. However, other than Charles, who’d been like Gordon’s son, she’d no other relatives.
“Do you miss him?”