Edith stared at him silently, suddenly suspecting he already knew the answer. If he’d talked to anyone here since their arrival he probably did, she realized, and wondered just how long the men had been here and what all they knew.
“She fainted,” Edith admitted quietly, recalling the way Victoria had paled and then collapsed. Brodie had tried to brush it away as exhaustion from the trip as he’d scooped her up and carried her above stairs to his chamber, but they all heard the shouting coming from the room some ten minutes later when Victoria had apparently woken up.
Aware that no one had commented and the three men were watching her solemnly, Edith sighed and asked, “How long ha’e ye been here?”
“Nearly a week,” Rory answered.
“A week?” she gasped with amazement.
“Only six days,” Niels corrected.
“But . . .” She glanced from man to man. “What ha’e ye been doing all that time?”
“Mostly taking turns guarding ye, hunting up game, making broth and dribbling it down yer throat while ye were unconscious in hopes ye’d recover enough to wake up,” Rory answered gently.
Edith stared at them, her mind spinning slowly. While Brodie had fled the keep with its threat of illness, these three men, who did not even know her, had been here nearly a week. During that time, not only had they taken care of her, but they’d hunted and cooked her food, dribbling the broth down her throat in the hopes of getting enough nourishment into her to help her recover.
“Why?”
The word slipped out without her conscious intent, and for a minute it just hung there helplessly in the air. Then Niels shifted her slightly so that she was looking at him and said simply, “Because ye needed our help, lass.”
Perhaps she was still exhausted and drained from her illness, or perhaps it was the deaths of her father and brothers that she had not yet had a chance to grieve, but Edith’s eyes suddenly glazed over with the sheen of tears. Just as she felt herself beginning to crumble in Niels’s arms, the bedroom door suddenly burst open. Edith turned to see another man enter the room, this one as big and brawny as Niels and holding up two dead birds by their feet.
“I got a nice pair o’ pheasants this time, Rory. If ye only use one fer broth, we can maybe get Cook to roast up the other and—” The man stopped and blinked as he noted Edith half-upright in the curve of Niels’s arm. “Oh, say, ye’re awake! Well, is that no’ fine?”
Chapter 3
Edith blinked her eyes open and peered to the window, a smile claiming her lips when she saw the sunlight peeking through the cracks in the shutters. It was morning, finally, and today she could get up and go below. Rory and Niels had promised her as much.
It had been three days since she’d woken. Much to her dismay, the men had insisted she stay in her room, allowing her only to walk to a chair and back to her bed and usually with one of them hovering nearby in case her legs gave way.
To be fair to the men, Edith had been pathetically weak on first waking. Her attempt to get up from bed on her own the first time had been proof of that. Edith hadn’t been much stronger the next day when she’d tried to rise again unaided. She’d managed three steps before falling.
Fortunately, Niels had woken up and quickly caught her before she hit the floor. That was when they’d insisted she shouldn’t get up without one of them to help her, and to tell her that she was restricted to the room until she regained some of her strength. Edith had tried to argue with them, but it was hard to argue with four determined Buchanans. Honestly, they were worse than Saidh when it came to stubbornness. And the fact that, technically, they had no right to boss her about hadn’t mattered to them at all. But yesterday she’d been determined, and the only way they’d managed to convince her to stay in her room was to promise she could leave it today without their trying to stop her.
Edith sat up in bed and glanced around. She was alone in her bed, which made a nice change. After two nights with Effie sharing her bed, Edith had insisted they move her to Brodie’s old room next door yesterday. It wasn’t that she minded sharing her bed so much as the woman’s silent stillness and pallor made her feel like she was sharing it with a breathing corpse. It had begun to give her the creeps, and she’d found herself watching her to be sure she was still breathing.
Once the older woman was moved, Edith had become eager to clean up the chaos her room had fallen into. She’d assigned the men their own rooms, suggesting Rory take Hamish’s room, which was next to Brodie’s old room, so he could watch over Effie more easily. She’d then suggested Niels take Roderick’s old room, which was next to that. Which left the two guest rooms across the hall from Roderick’s and Hamish’s rooms for Alick and Geordie.
That was when Geordie and Alick had packed up their bags and headed out for MacDonnell. Apparently they had been waiting until she was well on the way to recovery before taking news of her well-being to Saidh. It seemed they saw her ordering them about and cleaning up as a sign that she was definitely on the mend and not likely to relapse on them. The two men had left, intending to report to their sister on what had occurred at Drummond, and then would return to help them sort out who was behind the murders of her father and two older brothers.
Edith frowned at the thought. They’d talked about that a lot since her waking, but frankly no one seemed to have an idea of how to go about that task. Poisoning was a tricky business. They suspected someone was adding poison to the wine, which was more than possible. With her stomach still a bit delicate after her tummy ailment the week before, Edith had been avoiding wine. But anyone could have slipped poison in the wine cask, or the pitchers of wine on their way out to the table. The same was true of the stew she’d eaten while nursing Moibeal. Edith didn’t even recall who had brought her stew that night, but even if she had, they didn’t have to be the person who’d dropped poison in it.
Frankly, Edith had no idea how they could figure out who had poisoned her family members. The men hadn’t really suggested anything useful either and she knew Niels had suggested Geordie and Alick ask Saidh and Greer if they had any ideas.
Edith pushed the linen and furs aside and slid her feet to the floor only to pause as her gaze landed on Niels, Ronson and Laddie on the floor to the side of the door. The trio was all wrapped up in Niels’s tartan. Apparently Laddie had cuddled up in front of where Niels lay on his side, and Ronson had then cuddled up to the dog. The trio had then somehow wound up with Niels’s tartan blanketing them all. The sight made her smile.
Niels had been rather grumpy for most of the three days since she’d woken, giving her stern looks and insisting she not do this and not do that. But when Rory had finally allowed Ronson to bring Laddie up to visit the day before, Edith had seen an entirely different side of Niels. Oh, he’d still been grumpy and growly to a degree, but he’d been incredibly kind and patient with Ronson, and Edith had really appreciated it. The boy obviously hadn’t had a lot of male influence in his life and appeared to look up to Niels quite a bit. Laddie also appeared taken with the man, obeying his orders promptly and behaving with better manners than Edith had ever seen.
Their visit had been a breath of fresh air in the sickroom. Ronson had chattered happily away, telling her everything that had happened since she’d fallen ill, which amounted to not much of anything, but was still entertaining when the boy told it. She’d also enjoyed having Laddie snuggling up to her on the bed, even when the dog had licked her face like crazy. There was just something about dogs that soothed the soul, and Edith’s soul had needed soothing after the events of the past weeks.
She peered at the trio spooning on the floor and shook her head faintly, not sure how Ronson and Laddie had ended up staying in her room all night. She did know that Niels had insisted that she needed guarding still and was determined to sleep on the floor by the door. But the last she recalled, Ronson and Laddie had been curled up on the foot of her bed, sound asleep while she and Niels had talked quietly, she in the bed, he in the chair next to her bed. She must have fallen asleep, however, because she didn’t recall the man, boy and dog moving to the floor.
Wishing she had some artistic talent so that she might paint this scene and never forget it, Edith eased out of bed, freezing when Laddie immediately lifted his head. She gave him the gesture to stay, and he did, but the dog didn’t lower his head and simply watched alertly as she moved to the chest at the foot of her bed to retrieve a gown. Edith picked the first one her hand touched and quickly tugged it on over her shift. It would have been nice to be able to change her shift, but she wouldn’t risk it with Niels and Ronson there. She was anxious enough just standing there in her shift even though Niels had already seen her in it.
Once dressed, Edith quickly ran a brush through her hair, washed her face and hands at the basin on the table and then moved silently toward the door, putting out her hand again to order Laddie to stay. Unfortunately, there was only so much a dog could take and the moment she reached for the door handle, he stood up and started forward, dragging the tartan with him. Ronson immediately stirred, but Edith hardly noticed, her eyes were widening on Niels as a good portion of the tartan was pulled away from him before it fell off Laddie and dropped to cover Niels’s face. It also left the man bare from about midchest down.