Page 33 of Hold Fast

“You know each other?” Cat asked, and Una nodded.

“My mother was a MacDonald, m’lady,” Joan explained. “But my father was a Cameron. Una and I grew up together. She was my very best friend.”

“How did you end up here, though, Joan?” Una felt as if her head was spinning.

Joan reached for Una’s hand. “When my ma left, Da sent me here to live with her people. Did he nae tell you?”

“Nay,” Una said, feeling the tears collecting again at the corners of her eyes. “I had nae idea where you’d gone. And he wouldnae tell me anything. He only said you were dead to him the way your mother was. We all assumed you went with her.”

Joan’s mother had famously run away with a traveling musician, and for years, Una had sought Joan among every caravan that passed by her cottage. It wasn’t as if Joan could have written a letter. And even if she had, Una couldn’t have read it. The lack of closure had been a wound that had never quite healed.

Joan looked sad. “He couldnae stand the sight of me after she left. Said I was the spitting image of her and that he wouldnae sit by and watch me grow up to be just like her. He brought me to the MacDonald keep, and somehow I became Lady Catriona’s maid.”

“How I have missed you,” Una said, and Joan stepped closer, as if to hug her again.

Una stepped back. “I am soaked to the skin with blood, Joan. I already stained your gown. It wouldnae do to ruin it entirely.”

Cat clapped her hands. “That, Una, is precisely why we’ve come. We have prepared you a bath in my chamber and have a new, dry gown waiting.”

Una’s aching body felt weak at the thought of a proper bath. Not washing her face in the icy burn or hastily bathing from a basin, but soaking in water as hot as she could stand it. How long had it been?

But Connor groaned and tossed on the bed, and Una shook her head. A bath was a luxury she couldn’t afford, not while her charge lay so ill.

Fiona clucked her tongue and rested a hand on Una’s arm. “I am nae stranger to sitting beside a MacDonald man recovering from injury. You willnae be gone long and will be just down the hall. I promise to shout if the slightest thing changes.”

Una hesitated.

“Go,” Fiona insisted with a wave of her hand. “We cannae have you taking ill from catching a cold.”

As if dreaming, Una followed Joan and Catriona down the hall to Cat’s chamber, a cheery room with bright tapestries and weavings and a crackling fire in the hearth. A tub of steaming water sat in front of the fire. Joan’s nimble fingers unlaced Una’s dress while Cat pulled the hem of both gown and shift upwards until Una was forced to lift her arms overhead and duck. The dress flew off, and Una winced as it landed on the stone floor with a wet slap.

Una felt as if she was covered in six layers of dirt and grime and blood. Her cheeks colored with shame. But when she looked at Joan, she saw her friend smiling.

“Come, Una,” Joan said softly, offering her hand and helping Una to step over the rim of the tub.

She sank down, moaning as the hot water covered her aching shoulders.

“May I wash your hair, Una?” Cat asked. “’Tis the least I can do.”

Una nodded. Cat tied up her sleeves and unbraided Una’s hair, combing through the tangles with her fingers before working through them with a wooden comb.

“Duck your head, Una,” she commanded, and Una obeyed, relishing the feel of the hot water closing over her head.

She stayed underwater for a few moments, feeling warm for the first time since she’d woken in the cave next to— Una burst to the surface and shook her head. She wiped the water away from her eyes and leaned back so that Cat could reach her more easily. Cat passed a ball of soap between her hands until she had a lather and scrubbed at Una’s scalp.

The smell of the soap took her back in time, to her childhood, to nesting against her mother’s neck.

“Lavender?” Una whispered.

“Aye,” Cat replied. “’Twas my mother’s favorite, and so I use it as well. Makes me feel close to her.”

They were quiet for a time, as Cat washed her hair and Una scrubbed her body until she was clean.

“I am sorry,” Una said. She meant it. She had lost her mother too, but she had at least known her. She couldn’t imagine never having known her, only having soap and scent to meet her.

Cat sighed. “I never knew her. I miss the idea of her, but I miss my father so much more. All I have of my mother are stories and her keepsakes that she kept in her trunk. But my father was flesh and blood. He died when I was thirteen,” Cat said in a distant voice, her hands pausing from their gentle scrubbing. “’Twas a difficult time. Father’s death took all of us by surprise. Though, I suppose it was hardest on Ewan.”

“What do you mean?” Una asked.