“What are ye doing out in the garden, Cameron Sutherland?” Mary scowled at her stubborn patient, who sprawled on a garden bench, his back supported by the smooth trunk of a small rowan tree. After last night’s supper, she thought he’d be exhausted and never expected to find his bed empty this morning. For a moment, her heart had stopped, then reason returned. Surely if something awful had happened during the night, the healer would have sent for her. She would not have taken his body away and not told the one other person who would check on him first thing in the morning. Nay, this disappearance was his doing.

Annoyed, she searched the great hall and the kitchen on the assumption he’d gotten hungry and again followed through on her suggestion yesterday to take his meals with the clan in the great hall. Not finding him any of those places, she’d gone to the stables. Not there, either. As she passed the garden gate, she spotted him where she least expected him to be.

Mary didn’t usually frown so fiercely, but between her father and this man, she’d been doing that a lot lately.

“Ach, sweet Mary, my love. My angel of mercy.” Cameron sat up and leaned forward with a wince. “I tired of staring at four walls. The sunshine revives me, and the scent of roses is most pleasant, even this late in the summer.”

Mary tamped down on the thrill hearing him call her Mary-my-love had sent shooting through her belly. She knew better than to take him seriously. And she was annoyed with him, which was probably why he’d said it. Certainly not because he meant anything by it. “Ye have been ill for weeks. Yer side is barely healed.” His pallor still contrasted with his hair, dark but with all the rich brown shades of a golden eagle. He was tall, with muscles honed to perfection—until his injury robbed him of strength. Still, Cameron managed to be proud and fierce. Too bad the wound in his side had clipped his wings. “If ye tear open yer wound, ye risk the fever returning, and ye are much weaker now than ye were when ye first came to us.”

He lifted his arm on his good side and squeezed the big muscle between his shoulder and the crook of his elbow. “Aye, sadly, ye are correct. I’ve lost a stone or two. But lass, I must start to regain my strength soon, or I’ll be of little use to anyone. This garden is a pleasant place to start. Come, sit with me and enjoy the day.” He patted the seat beside him as he straightened. “Those dark clouds on the horizon won’t arrive for hours yet.”

Mary caught the hesitation in his movement and the grimace he quickly hid. His wound, despite his brave words, still pained him.

“Tell me what ye will do today, lass,” he suggested as he made room for her. “Have ye heard from yer sisters or their husbands at Brodie?”

Mary pressed her lips together and chose to relent this one time. The reason she’d come to find him could wait. “It is pleasant out here,” she commented as she sat and arranged her skirts. A few varieties of roses were past their peak, but the rest still bloomed in a riot of pinks from pale blush to nearly red. The breeze wafted mildly around them, carrying not only the scent of roses, but the scent of the man beside her, and a faint hint of the storm to come. “Aye. They are well. I had a letter from Annie just today. Catherine asks after ye.”

Cameron nodded, but he watched the clouds as she talked. The furrow between his brows slowly eased and finally disappeared as she filled him in on her sisters’ news.

Mary had spent most of the last few weeks helping the clan Rose healer save his life, so she was glad to see some of the strain leave his face. There was nothing about this man’s body she had not seen and did not know. He flirted when he felt well enough, and made their lives miserable when the fever took him, mumbling about battles and secrets that lent him an air of mystery and danger. Little of what he said during those times made sense to Mary, except to prove to her he had secrets and his duty lay elsewhere. Not at Rose. She pressed her lips together and exhaled.

He must have seen her tense, because he took her hand in his big one and sighed. “I would suffer this wound again and again, if I kenned it would end with me here, in this moment, with ye. Now, tell me, lass. What worries ye?”

She crumpled her skirt with her free hand while telling herself Cameron was only being kind. He must feel much better today to have ventured out into the Rose keep’s walled garden. And to take her hand with such ease and continue to hold it. As many times as she’d touched him during his illness, to cool his fever or soothe his pain, he'd never reciprocated. Even when he felt well enough to tease her, he never presumed. She shouldn’t welcome the familiarity he now displayed, but she did. It made her feel like the connection she sometimes imagined between them could grow into something real.

But she also expected what she had to tell him might end it all. She hoped her news did not spoil his contentment, but she knew it would.

“I just found out Da has been writing to Earl Sutherland, keeping him apprised of yer condition. Yer progress.”

Cameron snorted. “Currying favor, most like, in exchange for my care.”

Mary should have felt insulted for her father, but Cameron was right. “That would be my father, aye. At any rate,” she continued as she pulled a folded letter out of her pocket, “this came for ye a few days ago. I was waiting for the right time to give it to ye, but ye need to have it before I go away. The seal is unbroken.”

Cameron dropped her hand, reached for the missive and ripped it open without bothering to verify it had not been tampered with.

While he read, Mary tucked away the hand he’d held. She missed the sensation of being enclosed, in at least some small way, in the heat of his body. Did his new familiarity mean he had a new awareness of her as more than his caretaker? She’d wondered for weeks what it would be like to be wrapped in his powerful embrace once he recovered. Now a chill skittered across her back as her hand cooled without his touch.

“Ach, Christ’s bones, Mary. My father orders me home as soon as I am able to make the trip.” He crumpled the letter in his hand. “He doesna say I have been neglecting my duty to Sutherland, but the implication is there. Now I am better, I must go.”

Mary’s heart sank, and she lifted her hand to her mouth. “Surely no’ today!”

“Nay, lass, but soon.” He smoothed out the letter again, folded it and tucked it inside his shirt, then stared toward the garden gate.

Mary turned to see what had caught his attention and shivered. The dark clouds had advanced to the edge of the sun’s disk. In moments, they would hide the sunshine and steal its warmth.

Cameron shifted to face her.

He grimaced at the movement, but she bit her tongue and let it go. If pain kept him here longer, she would have to accept his suffering, and if that made her seem cruel, so be it. To survive the trip home, he had to be strong enough to fight.

“We’ve kenned this time was coming,” he told her and pressed his lips together until the corners whitened.

Mary’s heart swelled as he looked into her eyes.

The words were not what she had wanted to hear when he finally met her gaze with eyes clear of fever and pain. Yet they implied an understanding between the two of them neither had stated.

Then his gaze lowered. He took both her hands in his.

She took a breath to gather her composure before she spoke. “And I have dreaded it. But I must also be thankful for it, because it means ye are almost well.” She didn’t feel thankful at all. A distant rumble of thunder reached her ears like a heavenly rebuke for her lies—the words she’d said and the feelings she hid. Now finally faced with his departure, she wanted to burst into tears, to let them pour down like the rain those dark storm clouds, stretching to the horizon, would produce, angry and defiant. Instead, for his sake, she pulled her hands free, clasped them together and schooled her voice to mildness, as if the prospect of his departure meant less to her than his improving health—as any good nursemaid would. “So his letter means ye must regain yer strength as soon as possible. Ye must begin to walk more, and when ye feel up to it, to ride. Perhaps train—lightly—with some of the men, to build up your strength. But ye must be mindful. If ye open yer wound, we’ll have to start over.”

“Aye, I will do all those things.” He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, his gaze on the ground. “And I do have news—news I canna put into a letter—that I must tell my father before many more weeks go by.”

Mary’s heart sank and she stiffened her spine against her despair. There was no question Cameron would leave. She’d always known his time at Rose would be limited.

Just as she knew she must stay.

She stood, smoothed her skirts, and faced him. “I will do what I can to help ye get ready.”

He surprised her again, standing and raising a hand to her cheek. When feeling well, he’d always been quick to flirt, but he’d never touched her so intimately before, though she’d touched him intimately—very intimately—when the fever took him and he could not assist with his care. She hoped he had been unaware of those times.

Mary leaned her head into his hand. She would not cry. Crying was for silly maidens her youngest sister Catherine’s age. She was older and wiser—or she should be.

“Leaving ye will no’ be easy, Mary Elizabeth Rose.”

His gaze bored into her, a dark amber pool he tempted her to drown within. She took a breath and straightened away from his hand. “Then ye must return—when ye can. If ye wish to, that is. Later on…” The words left her mouth in pieces, like shards of glass. They revealed too much about how she’d come to feel about this big, proud, difficult man.

* * *

Cameron had hated being sick. And all from a wee scratch by an Irish dagger. Hardly worth a mention. Until it became a fire in his blood—and not the kind of fire gazing at Mary Rose lit. He studied her, certain she was hiding her feelings as best she could. But he was a trained observer—his life had depended on his skill, and over their weeks together, he’d learned to read the nuances behind her expressions. Though his departure had been the specter on the horizon all along, the thought of him leaving distressed her. Before he went, he needed one important truth from her. “Why did ye care for me, Mary, my love?”

Her eyes widened at his question, and she pulled on her lower lip with her teeth, then dropped her gaze. “What do ye mean?”

Watching her mouth, he fought to keep from lowering his head and kissing her. Not yet.

Perhaps never.

He had to know if he meant anything to her. “Why ye and no’ just the healer, or a serving lass like Janie?”

He didn’t remember all of the last weeks, but he did recall the important things. Mary’s hands cool on his forehead, the damp cloth cold as she washed the sweat from his body, leaving him shuddering with chills but grateful for the respite from the fires burning along his bones until he feared they would char and splinter from the heat. Her voice as she read to him, as she talked to him when she believed he couldn’t hear.

He thought the Healer had taken care of his body’s more basic needs. He hoped she had. But he couldn’t deny Mary had been intimate with him in ways no maiden should. He’d like to recall more, but he’d lost much in fevered dreams.

Still, he knew more about Mary than she realized. She was beautiful, aye, but she was also strong and wise and compassionate—and trapped.

Such was their past. If he could, he’d repay her for her care with hours of passion and pleasure. Yet, he might as well dream to touch the moon. She was not the sort of lass to toss up her skirts, no matter how a man charmed her. Maybe with more time, Mary would come to think of him not as her ill Sutherland, but as a man she might enjoy being with—intimately.

Not today. Not tomorrow, either.

He was out of time. He’d avoided his duty far too long while he lay injured and ill. His father ordered him home—as soon as he could safely travel. For once, he was glad to be unable to comply.

Mary still pondered her boots, and Cameron wondered if talking about her care for him embarrassed her.

“I promised Catherine I would take care of ye,” she finally said. She lifted her gaze to his. “How could I face my baby sister if I let ye die?”

His pulse stilled, then resumed more quickly. “Die? Was I in such danger?”

She let her head drop back, her eyes closed. Then she sighed. “Aye, ye were. I can speak about it now, but ye near scared the life out of me more than once. Despite the poultices the healer put in yer wound, and all the willow bark tea we made ye drink, and the cold water we bathed ye in, I feared ye would slip away from me…from us. Ye nearly did.”

Slip away from me. Cameron heard the word Mary corrected, though she still refused to admit her feelings. He offered his hand, fighting to keep the stitch in his side from showing on his face. If he moved the wrong way, the scar pulled something fierce. “Let’s walk a wee.”

Mary gave him a worried smile and took his hand. “That still pains ye. Dinna deny it. I can see the way ye favor it.”

He couldn’t get away with anything around this woman. As easily as he read her, she read him. Yet they left so much unsaid, Mary the dutiful daughter of a controlling widowed father, and he, just as duty-bound. He nodded as they moved at a sedate pace across the garden, her hand on his arm. “Only a little.”

“’Tis why ye grimace every time ye have to use the muscles on that side.”

“We’ve already established ’tis no’ entirely healed.”

She nodded, her expression pensive. “I ken ye must leave soon, but ye mustna ride until the healer says ye may.”

Cameron glanced at her while taking the next step and the one after that. As long as she guarded her feelings, he was reluctant to declare his. Maybe once she returned from Grant, things might change between them. He would remain here at least that long.

* * *

Mary asked Janie to take Cameron’s meal to his chamber. She couldn’t face him again. Not yet. Not with what, to her, felt like a betrayal hanging between them. The fact that her father forced her to leave made little difference. In Mary’s heart, she wanted to remain behind with Cameron and knew staying with him was the right thing to do. But her head argued for the duty she owed her father and laird.

She had just finished her own meal in the great hall with some of the clan, when Janie came running back and stopped below where she sat on the raised dais.

“He’s acting tetched again, milady. I think ye need to come.”

Mary jumped to her feet and hurried after Janie across the hall, past the concerned gazes of the people there. They all knew about Cameron, though few had met him yet. “Fetch the healer,” she ordered when they reached the stairs. “Then bring cold water and cloths. I’ll go on up.”

“Aye, milady.” Janie hastened away.

Mary ran up the stairs to his chamber and found Cameron sprawled in tangled sheets, tossing his head. She rushed to his side and put a hand on his brow. “Ach, nay,” she muttered under her breath. His fever had increased again. “Cameron, ’tis Mary. It appears ye did a wee more than ye shouldha today. How do ye feel?”

He stilled. “Like hell.” He turned his face away from her. “Sorry, lass.”

“Apology accepted.” She pulled the covers aside. His shirt was already wet and clammy with his sweat. What had happened between earlier today and now? “Cameron, let me pull up yer shirt. I need to see yer wound.”

His eyes remained closed underneath a fierce crease between his brows, but his hands pawed at his waist. At least he wasn’t so far gone in fever he couldn’t understand what she said to him. Then she realized he was trying to keep a sheet over his lower half while he helped her with his shirt. It took effort, but she got it free just as the healer bustled in, followed by the serving lass.

Mary stepped aside to let the healer examine the wound. “I’ll take those,” Mary told Janie, who waited by the door with the water and cloths she’d asked for earlier. “I need ye to fetch some watered ale, too,” Mary saw the concern written in the girl’s wide-eyed expression and cocked her head.

“He’ll no’ die, will he?” Janie asked softly. “I like him. I wouldna want him to die.”

“He willna die, nay. We dinna want him to, either.” Mary gave her a reassuring smile and sent her on her way, then set what the lass had brought on the table by Cameron’s bed.

The healer stood and beckoned Mary away from her patient. “I canna understand what set him off again,” she said, speaking softly. “The wound looks to be healing well.”

“So ’tis the blood fever again?” Dread slid down Mary’s spine like cold rain. Had her thoughts about keeping him here ill-wished him into this fever? She shook her head, dismissing the notion. She wasn’t a superstitious person.

The healer frowned. “I dinna ken. What did he do today?”

“I found him in the garden early this morning. We walked a while and talked. I canna think any of that would have harmed him.” She wanted him well. She truly did, despite her thoughts this morning that she’d accept his suffering if pain kept him here longer. She wasn’t normally a cruel person, either.

“Well, we’ll resume the willow bark tea…”

“Ach, nay,” Cameron objected, rising up on an elbow with a wince, clearly having heard at least the end of their discussion. “That bitter stuff.”

“Twill save yer life, ye daft man. If ye’d stayed abed as I told ye, this might no’ have happened.”

“Ye told him to stay abed? When?”

“Just this morn. I found him in yon chair, soon after first light.” The healer gestured at the wooden seat by the window.

“Bored,” Cameron complained. “And now Mary will leave me. More bored.” He held out a hand. “I’m thirsty.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “The maid is on her way with some watered ale. Ye are no’ so sick as all that. I’ll bring ye a book to read.”

“I’ll get the tea and be right back,” the healer announced and left Mary to tend to her cranky patient, who had dropped back to his pillow and closed his eyes.

“For now, we need to cool ye.” She put the cloths into the water pitcher to let them soak, then wrung one out. “This will be cold.”

“I ken it. ’Tis no’ like ye have no’ done this to me before.”

In answer, Mary laid the cold cloth on Cameron’s chest.

“Shite! Could ye warn me?”

“Ye could open yer eyes.” She spread the cloth across his broad chest, her fingers itching to trace its muscled contours. Instead, she stepped back and reached for another cloth. “Does the light hurt them?”

“Aye.”

He’d frowned when he answered. Mary took pity on him and used the next cloth to wipe sweat from his face, then laid it across his brow and eyes.

Cameron nodded. “That feels better.”

“I dinna ken why yer fever came back,” Mary soothed, “but we will make it go away.”

“I want ye to stay, Mary. No’ to go with yer da. No one cares for me as ye do.”

“Nonsense. Why, even the serving girl doesna wish ye to die, though I canna see why she likes ye when ye complain like this. Now, stop acting like a wean. Ye’re no’ three years old. Ye’ll get better whether I have the care of ye or nay.”

“So ye have made up yer mind to go,” Cameron said softly, as though to himself.

He’d failed to respond to her teasing, making her frown. “I dinna have much choice, now do I?” Mary wrung out another cloth and stroked it along Cameron’s neck and throat. It caught in the bristles of his dark beard and they teased Mary’s fingertips with their rough texture. “We need to get the lad to shave ye again,” she told him. He nodded and tilted his head, giving her better access. Then she got a fresh cloth and wrung it out. “Brace yerself. I’m going to put this one on yer belly.”

“Ye dinna think yer da can take care of himself without ye?” Cameron challenged as she spread the cold cloth below the one on this chest. His only reaction was to tighten the muscles in his abdomen.

Mary was glad he couldn’t see her face. She enjoyed looking at Cameron’s muscles, and the trail of hair that disappeared under the covers. She knew where it led, of course, but that knowledge only made it more compelling. They were not wed. She should not even be aware of what the covers hid. She pulled her thoughts away from Cameron’s generous anatomy. “Nay, I dinna think he can. I dinna ken what that Grant woman is planning or expecting to achieve with this visit. I’m sorry, Cameron. ’Tis my duty to him and to this clan.”

The healer came back then with a cup of the willow bark tea in her hand. “Ye must drink all of this,” she reminded him.

Cameron threw an arm over his eyes.

Though she couldn’t see the upper part of his face Mary knew his expression had to be one of long suffering. He hated the taste of willow bark tea. “Let’s sit ye up,” she told him and stripped the damp cloths from his body, then tugged at the one he’d trapped between his arm and forehead. “So ye can drink it faster.”

Janie returned then, too, with another pitcher. Her eyes widened at the nearly naked man.

Mary frowned and gestured for her to set the pitcher down, not liking the lass’s reaction, so like her own, to seeing Cameron’s chest. “Then ye can have some ale,” Mary promised.

Cameron wiped his face with the cloth, then handed it back to Mary. With a grunt, he rolled to his side, swung his legs off the bed and sat up, tugging the sheet and woolen blanket along with him over his lap. Then he accepted the cup from the healer and tossed it back, wincing as he swallowed. “Ale…please.”

The serving girl poured some into a clean cup with a shaking hand and gave it to Mary. Mary passed it to Cameron.

He tossed it back, then held out the cup. “More. I can still taste that bitter tea.”

The healer nodded, so Mary let the girl refill the cup and gave it back to him. “Slower this time, aye?” Mary cajoled. He surprised her by obeying. When he finished, he handed her the cup.

“That’s enough for now,” the healer told him. “I’ll check on ye in an hour. I expect to find ye asleep.”

Cameron gave her a wry smile. “I’ll do my best.” Then he turned his gaze to Mary. “Will ye stay?”

“Aye, if only to torture ye some more.” She gestured for Janie to follow the healer out. Mary reached into the water pitcher for another wet cloth. “Lie on yer good side if ye wish and I’ll put some of these on yer back.”

Cameron nodded and did as he was told, keeping the bedclothes over his lower half. Then he rolled to his belly, rested his head on his arms, and turned his face toward her.

Mary lost herself for a moment looking at the way the muscles of his back stretched like wings, then noticed the crease between his eyebrows. “Does lying like that pull at yer scar?”

“A wee bit.”

“Stubborn man.” She shook herself and wrung out a cloth, then laid it over this head, leaving his face uncovered, but pressing a corner of the cloth over his forehead.

Cameron sighed.

Would he sigh like that when he kissed her?

She had to stop thinking that way. After warning him, she placed another cloth on the back of his neck. He rewarded her with a groan of pleasure that reached deep in her belly and made her thighs clench.

She plunged her hand into the cold water to distract herself, then pulled out another cloth. She covered his back, though it took three cloths to span his shoulders and reach down to the swell of his buttocks. She longed to trace the dip in his lower back, but dared not touch him in any way not clearly meant to help him heal.

Instead, she asked, “Would ye like me to read to ye?” She knew her voice soothed him and the stories gave his mind something to focus on besides his discomfort.

His eyes opened long enough for him to answer her. “Aye, I would.”

She removed all the damp cloths, pulled the covers up to his broad shoulders, but restrained herself from tangling her fingers in the hair curling along the strong cords of his neck. Instead, she crossed to the chair beside the fire and picked up the latest book she’d been reading to him. Eventually, his breathing slowed and the crease between his dark brows smoothed out, making him look younger, even sweeter. She set the book aside, bent over him and brushed her fingertips across his forehead. Cooler. Something had helped.

She left him to his rest. After she closed the chamber door behind her, she leaned against it. Cameron was a temptation she didn’t need in her life. She could not hope for anything to happen between them. He owed duties to his clan and would soon leave her, so why did she allow herself to have these feelings about him?

She shook her head to rid herself of the unwanted longings and went to find the healer. After this relapse, Mary feared she’d spend the entire trip not just missing Cameron, but worrying for his life. She needed the healer’s reassurance.