“Aye, I can see that,” Mr. Mactavish said. “Perhaps with rest, she’ll soon be able to tell us more.”
Not likely. But Fiona obediently swallowed the draft Dr. Higgins gave her, wincing a little at its bitter, herbal taste, and rested back on the pillows. She closed her eyes, welcoming the drowsy drift of sleep as the medicine started its work.
“As Miss Nita regains her health, I hope her memory will come back,” Dr. Higgins said. “In the meantime, we need to be careful not to test her stamina.”
“Aye, I bow to your orders, John. I’ll stop pushing the lassie to remember.”
She heard the men moving away. Without opening her eyes, she spoke in a low voice. “I do appreciate all you’re doing for me. I wouldn’t have survived on that beach if you hadn’t found me, Mr. Mactavish. And you and Dr. Higgins have looked after me splendidly since.”
All of which was true. For once, it was nice not to lie.
“Don’t fret, Miss Nita,” Dr. Higgins said. “We’ll get you well, never you fear.”
“Aye, lassie, you’re safe here,” Mr. Mactavish said, in the black velvet baritone that always made her bones melt.
She stifled a grim laugh. Safe? If only what he said was true. But she’d long ago learned the hard lesson that she wasn’t safe anywhere.
Chapter 5
“I still think you’re better off staying here at the house.” Diarmid stared in frustration at the woman sitting on the bed with her pale hands folded in her lap and a mulish expression on her delicate face. “Ye haven’t yet recovered your strength.”
His mermaid was dressed in a gown that belonged to Mags. It had been dyed black and altered to fit her. The frock was plain and practical, its high collar edged with a thin line of lace. The dress of a respectable shopkeeper’s wife or an upper servant.
The dress had never looked so good on his portly housekeeper, he was grimly aware. The clothes Miss Nita had washed up in were irreparably ruined. He supposed he should be grateful they’d found anything in the place for her to wear. The house was very much a bachelor establishment these days. In those fraught, wretched weeks after word came of his mother’s death beside her rakish lover, his father had burned all her clothes.
“Och, let Miss Nita go if she wants to, Mactavish,” Mags said. “We’ll be there to make sure she doesn’t try her strength too far.”
Mags stood beside the bed, and Peggy was fluttering around the bedroom, tidying something or other. After those disturbing moments during his guest’s first night under his roof, Diarmid had made sure he’d never been alone with her since. It was galling to admit that he couldn’t trust himself with her.
“The man traveled with me. It’s my duty to attend his funeral,” Miss Nita said stubbornly. “I’m much better. You know I am.”
Diarmid released a huff of scornful amusement. “You’d blow over in a slight breeze, lassie.”
“You’ll be there to catch me.”
During the last two days, he’d learned to respect this delicate creature’s will. After sleeping for most of her first day, she’d spent yesterday trying to walk. First to the screen, then to the sitting room attached to this chamber. Then along the corridor.
Mags had told him about the first two excursions. He knew about the last because he’d found her close to collapse, clinging to an old oak hall chair. He’d swung her up in his arms, called for a maid, and carried her back to bed.
He could still feel the frail weight of her body and smell the subtle lavender of her soap. His sleep last night had been disturbed by feverish dreams of a slender, lavender-scented woman coming to him where he lay and kissing the soul out of his body. Dream Nita had enveloped him in flaxen tresses of silky hair, hair now pulled back in a simple knot that emphasized the stark purity of her features.
“The way I was there yesterday when ye got ten feet down the hallway before your legs gave out?”
“I’m stronger today.” As if meaning to prove it, she rose to her feet.
“Be careful.” He surged forward, even as he reminded himself that touching her was dangerous.
By heaven, she deserved his protection, not his lust. She was fragile and exhausted and at his mercy. He felt like a satyr every time he looked at her and imagined stripping that too-thin body bare and rolling her under him.
The girl raised a trembling hand to keep him at bay, and his gut cramped with shame as he waited for her to call him out on his shameful yearning. But instead she only offered more pride and obstinacy. “I’m fine.”
His hands clenching at his sides, he battled the impulse to help her. He watched her bosom rise as she sucked in a shaky breath, then forced himself to look away out the window. In his turmoil, he hardly registered that the day was bonny, not at all funereal.
When he turned back to the room, the girl stood at the dressing table, tying the ribbons on an old-fashioned black bonnet. Another piece courtesy of Mags.
He met shining ice-blue eyes in the mirror, and a jolt of desire hit him so hard, he feared his knees wouldn’t hold. Right now, he was the one who needed propping up.
The girl straightened and forced a smile to those soft pink lips. “I’m ready.”