“Who knows?” Higgins shrugged and finished his whisky, setting it on the table at his elbow. “Whoever the lady is, she’s in no state to go anywhere tonight. I’ve given her a sleeping draft, so hopefully she’ll wake tomorrow and tell us who she is. I’m a great believer in sleep’s healing powers.”
Diarmid made himself smile, even if the reminder of his treacherous, unfaithful mother set old anger coiling in his belly. Although of course, his mother’s ghost had hovered at his side since he’d discovered the lovely waif on the beach. “Ye are due some sleep of your own.”
“Aye. I’m for my bed.” Higgins stifled a yawn and stood. “I’ll call tomorrow and see how my patient fares.”
Once Higgins had gone, Diarmid stood at the window, finishing his whisky and staring out over the estate. He didn’t see the wide, sparkling river or the heather-covered hills rising away from the coast. Instead he saw a beautiful, vain woman always more interested in her latest lover than her family. He saw a good man worn down by loneliness and disgrace. He saw an only child deprived of a mother’s love and gradually displaced from a father’s heart, as the weight of betrayal filled up the space where paternal affection should thrive.
Aye, John Higgins was right, curse him, about Diarmid’s prejudice against lovely women. But that admission didn’t shift his conviction that the spectacular creature sleeping upstairs had no more lost her memory than he could sprout wings and swoop across the Minch to Lewis for a picnic.
***
Diarmid waited until after dinner before he went up to see his guest. Quietly he pushed the door open to find Mags dozing in an armchair beside the bed, some mending resting forgotten in her lap. A couple of candles and a roaring fire provided the only light, so the large four-poster lay in shadow.
His housekeeper started awake. “Och, Mactavish, ye surprised me.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Come to check on the puir wee bairn?”
“Aye,” he said, biting back an objection to hearing the girl in the bed described as a child. She was young, but no child. He’d guess she was a couple of years younger than his twenty-eight, and those remarkable eyes held knowledge beyond the range of any juvenile. He kept his voice to a whisper, too. “How is she?”
“Went out like a light after I gave her that potion Dr. Higgins left. She hasnae stirred since.”
Diarmid hid a smile at the acid tone. Mags and Dr. Higgins had never seen eye to eye. His housekeeper was a proponent of age-old folk remedies, while Dr. Higgins subscribed to every medical journal he could lay his hands on. Even in this isolated backwater, he kept abreast of new developments in science.
“That’s braw news. She was exhausted when I found her.”
“Aye, sleep will do her more good than anything else.”
Diarmid refrained from pointing out that Mags’s nemesis had said something similar before he left. “Did she manage to eat anything?”
“Aye, she took a wee bit of supper. Skin and bones she is, and covered in bruises, too.”
“The boat came to pieces on the rocks at Banory Head. She’s lucky to be alive. Before she went to sleep, did she say anything that might help us find her kin?”
“No. Nothing beyond a few words of please and thank you. The lassie has bonny manners. That’s no humble crofter’s daughter ye found there, Mactavish. She’s a lady.”
Aye, she was. He’d known that the minute he’d seen those expensive, sober clothes, even torn and wet through with seawater. “Ye found her some clothes?”
“Aye, a nightgown at least, although she nearly disappears inside it. Down in the kitchen, we’ve done our best with what she was wearing when ye brought her inside. We may manage to rescue her frock, but I hae ma doots.” Mags cast a pitying glance over the unmoving figure on the bed. “Puir wean. Imagine forgetting everything, including your name. She must be feared to death.”
It was clear Mags had no suspicions that the girl lied about her memory loss. Was Diarmid too mistrustful? Somehow he didn’t think so.
“You’re no’ sitting up with her all night?”
“Peggy’s taking over at midnight.”
Diarmid frowned. It was only just nine. Mags was no longer a young woman, and she’d been up at dawn to see to the day’s baking. “I’ll sit with the lassie until then. Go to bed.”
“That’s verra kind of ye, Master Diarmid.”
She rarely called him that. It took him back to his childhood, when Mags had been more a mother to him than his own. “I’ll see ye in the morning.”
“Aye, but call me if ye have any bother.” She gathered her mending and rose with a stiffness that reminded him she deserved better reward than sitting up in a chair most of the night. It wasn’t precisely proper that he and the girl remained alone in a bedchamber together, but his reputation for decency should save him from too much gossip.
Once he was alone, he didn’t immediately take Mags’s place in the chair. Instead curiosity drew him to pick up a candle and cross to the bed. He wanted a better look at the mermaid he’d rescued from the sea.
She curled up under the covers in a pose that seemed defensive, even in sleep. Her exquisite face lay in profile on the pillow. The promise of beauty he’d seen on the beach was fulfilled a hundredfold, now she was warm and dry and at rest.
Faint pink colored her skin, and lush lips parted to reveal a glimpse of small white teeth. The wild tangle of hair had been washed and brushed into order and plaited back from her high, pale forehead. Her hair was a soft blond, with just a hint of gold to brighten the silver. The thick lashes resting on her cheek were darker, as were the delicate eyebrows.
The girl was like a lost Norse goddess, as perfect and fragile as glass. He’d thought her beautiful when he found her. Now he admitted she was the loveliest woman he’d ever seen.