The Damaged Bride

Chapter 17

Bridgette was soon a frequent visitor to the kitchens and stables, helping wherever she could. She never asked any of the staff to do anything she could do for herself. She cleaned her own rooms, tended to her and Marcus’s mending, and when there was no work to keep her busy, she would often be seen sitting under a tree in the kitchen gardens continuing her quest to read or roaming the moors collecting heather, bogbean, pond lilies, and pipeworm.

These herbs she would bring back to the kitchen and make into liniments, salves, poultices, and teas. She even collected honey from the wild bees to sweeten her more potent concoctions and made a special mead for indigestion. The wax she obtained from the hives she used to make candles.

Moira was amazed at Bridgett’s knowledge of herb lore. The girl knew things about healing plants that she had never heard or dreamed of. Despite the girls lack of proper education, she seemed to have an intuitive knowledge of the natural world. She’d even shown Moira a salve that helped her face heal so quickly it was almost magical.

When her stock of medicinals was full and Christine put the finishing touches to her new cloak, Bridgett put on the new slippers Marcus had ordered made for her and began to trek out to the surrounding farms, tending to the sick, leaving an assortment of remedies and foodstuffs from the kitchen that would be useful to the families. She even took the remains of the fabric Marcus had purchased for her own clothes and began making garments for the children of the estate.

Never in her wildest dreams could Moira have imagined that such a generous, tenderhearted girl could have survived life with Douglass O’Flagnery. Where he was a mean spirited, spiteful man, Bridgette was the exact opposite, just like her grandmother and mother. She often wondered how the girl had endured life in that man’s house.

Unaware of his wife’s activities, Marcus continued to work frantically to prepare his farms for winter. His greatest fear was that there wouldn’t be enough grain to keep his people alive until the spring planting. The harvest had been bountiful, but there was never a guarantee that it would last through the winter or that fire and animals wouldn’t destroy it.

After a long day of seeing to repairs on the grain storage, Marcus headed back to the Lodge, his mind going over the rest of the things that needed to be done before winter settled in and all he would be able to do was wait and pray. There was fodder for the animals, meat and grain for his people, and enough seeds stored away for next year’s planting, but he couldn’t help worrying that there was something he was overlooking.

Unexpectedly he came upon Bridgette, wrapped in a long cloak leaving one of the farmhouses. She was being embraced by an elderly matron who lived there. Neither of the women had seen him, so he slowly and quietly slid out of his saddle and watched as Bridgette gave the old woman several parchment envelopes and a small bottle. Intrigued, he waited until she was on her way and then approached the dwelling.