“How do ye know?” He peered down at where she pointed and noted the markings below the pictures, but, to him, they were meaningless.
“It says right here. Can’t you read it?”
Dougan filled the silence by tearing off a chunk of cheese and popping it into his mouth, chewing furiously.
“Did no one teach you?” she asked astutely.
He ignored her, finishing off the crust of bread whilst staring down at the pictures, wanting very much to know what they were about. “Will ye—read them to me, Fairy?”
“Of course I will.” She leaned forward on her knees, the table too tall for her to sit on the rickety chair and see over the top. “But tomorrow when we meet here, I’ll teach you how to read them for yourself.”
Feeling full and satisfied for the first time in as long as he could remember, Dougan began to point to pictures, and she would tell him the caption beneath while he savored the cheese in little crumbles.
By the time they got to the chapter on bayonets, Farah’s head had sunk to his shoulder as they huddled around their book and candle. He used one finger to point tirelessly at picture after picture, and the other found its way into one of her ringlets, idly pulling it straight and letting it bounce back into place.
“I was thinking,” he said some time later as she paused for a drowsy yawn. “Since ye doona have any family to love anymore, ye could love me…” Instead of meeting her gaze, he studied the way the pristine white of her petticoat bandage made his hand look that much grubbier. “That is, if ye wanted.”
Farah buried her face in his neck and sighed, her lashes brushing against his tender skin with every blink. “Of course I’ll love you, Dougan Mackenzie,” she said easily. “Who else is going to?”
“Nobody,” he said earnestly.
“Will you try to love me, too?” she asked in a small voice.
He considered it. “I’ll try, Fairy, but I havena done it before.”
“I’ll teach you that, as well,” she promised. “Right after I teach you to read. Love is quite like reading, I expect. Once you know how, you can’t ever imagine not doing it.”
Dougan only nodded because his throat was burning. He put his arm around his very own fairy, reveling in the fact that he finally had something good that no one could take away from him.
* * *
Dougan learned much about himself in those two blissful years with his fairy. Namely that when he loved, he did it nothing short of absolutely. Obsessively, even.
She told him how her father had been exposed to cholera while visiting a friend at a soldier’s hospital and had brought it home. Farah Leigh’s older sister, Faye Marie, had been the first to die, and her parents had followed in short succession.
He told her that his mother had been a maid in a Mackenzie laird’s household. She’d borne one of the laird’s many bastards and he’d lived with her for about four years until she’d died violently by the hand of another lover.
One of the things Dougan had realized from an early age, which set him apart from other people, was that he remembered almost everything. He even recalled conversations he and his Fairy had a year later, and would shock and delight her by reminding her of them.
“I’d forgotten that!” she’d say.
“I never forget,” he’d boast.
The ability made him a quick study, and he’d surpassed her reading skills quickly. Though he always sat attentively while she taught him, even when he didn’t want to. Besides, she picked books that he would be interested in, ones about ships, cannons, and a barrage of historical wars from the Romans all the way through Napoleon. His particular favorite was one on the maritime history of pirates.
“Do ye think I’d make a good pirate someday?” he asked her once around a mouthful of hard cake she’d brought him as a special treat.
“Of course not,” she’d answered patiently. “Pirates are wicked thieves and murderers. Besides, they don’t allow girls on their pirate ships.” She’d turned to him with moist, frightened eyes. “Would you leave me to go pirating?”
He’d pulled her in close. “I’d never leave you, Fairy,” he vowed fiercely.
“Truly?” She’d pulled back, staring up at him with storm-cloud eyes that threatened rain. “Not even to be a pirate?”
“I promise.” He’d taken a bite of cake and smiled at her with full cheeks before turning back to the book. “I might be a highwayman, though. They’re a lot like pirates, but just on land.”
After a short consideration, Farah had nodded. “Yes, I think you would be much better suited to the life of a highwayman,” she agreed.
“Aye, Fairy, ye’ll have to resign yerself to being a highwayman’s wife.”