Beloved Stranger by PATRICIA POTTER Page A

find a cottage someplace safe, someplace where no one would demand she marry.
    She did not have much time. Cedric had made that plain.
    She looked out the window. Audra was sitting next to Bear, singing one of her songs to him.
    Kimbra went outside and knelt beside her. “Would you pick some comfrey for Mr. Howard?”
    Audra nodded.
    “Do you want me to show you which it is?”
    “I know where it is.”
    “Show me.”
    Audra went to the herb garden and immediately went to the plant with the long narrow leaves, then looked up triumphantly.
    Pride surged through Kimbra. Audra had been helping her tend the gardens since she was three years of age. Still, she’d not realized how much Audra had learned. She’d always thought Audra extraordinary, but she’d also considered the fact that Audra was blood of her blood, and therefore she was wont to think Audra the most exceptional child. “That is very good,” she said.
    Audra bent down and started picking the herb. Kimbra would mash the leaves together with aloe for poultices. Both were said to have healing powers, especially in stopping infections.
    They had not stopped Will’s.
    She prayed it would stop the Scot’s.
     
 
K IMBRA napped on and off during the afternoon. She sat in a chair next to the Scot’s bed. His face and body had warmed, and she feared infection.
    He slept on and off as well, though she recognized it was a dark sleep. He mumbled words, not clear enough to understand. He thrashed about, and at times she laid her body across his to keep him from falling from the bed. She thought she heard a woman’s name—or was it a child’s?—but she wasn’t sure.
    At one time when he moved restlessly, she brushed her fingers across the stubble of his beard and let them linger there, a gesture of comfort. He seemed to still, and she held her hand there for a moment, willing her strength into him. In that moment, he became more than a Scot who represented her only chance for an easier life for herself and her daughter. He became a person whose life was intertwined with hers. Warmth radiated between them, a warmth that had nothing to do with the fire in the other room.
    She jerked her fingers away. He meant nothing to her but the funds he could bring. He could not mean more. ’Twas quite obvious he was noble. He spoke well. His manners, even without knowing who he was, were finer than she’d ever seen.
    Do not even think about it!
    The Scot’s station was obviously so far above hers that she knew she could not have even the slightest feelings for him. If he ever regained his memory, she would be less than nothing to him. She knew how nobles treated their servants, those they regarded as less than themselves. It was unlikely that he would be any less treacherous.
    He moved violently again. Then began shivering, even though his skin was still hot. She lay next to him, warming him with her own body.
    Will had suffered the same way. Fever. Tremors. Violent shaking. Thank Mary in Heaven she didn’t see the same red streaks running from the wound.
    When the shivers subsided, she left him and went into the other room. She mixed more willow bark with water, and put water over the fire for a new poultice. The room had darkened, and she lit an oil lamp. Audra was sound asleep on a sheepskin before the fire, one arm around Bear. Kimbra put a warm hide over her. Since Will’s death, Audra had slept in Kimbra’s bed, each of them a comfort to the other.
    She went outside and stretched. The air was cool this late summer evening and finally clear of the smoke that had hovered over the land for days. But she knew she would never again think of the wet, boggy valley bottom without smelling death.
    She went back in. The water was hot enough, and she made the new poultice. She changed them often, wanting to draw out the infection in his body. Holding both the poultice and cup of the foul smelling willow bark mixture, she reentered the room. The coverings were gone, and he lay