Chapter 11
The morning should have felt calmer than it did.
Sunlight spilled pale and cool across the inner courtyard, laying soft gold over stone that had likely seen more winters than she could imagine.
The castle had a way of holding sound differently than a cottage.
Nothing vanished here. Footsteps echoed.
Doors shut with weight. Even distant voices traveled along the walls and reached her ears, changed, as if the place itself had listened first.
Iona stood beside Erin near one of the herb beds set against the southern wall, her hands occupied with sorting dried stems from fresh cuttings, though her mind had wandered too often for the work to go quickly.
She kept thinking of Jamie.
Not with full fear, not as she might have in the village, but with the restless unease of a mother who had spent too many years measuring danger by the breath.
Caitlin had come to the chamber that morning with such open hope in her face when she asked whether Jamie might dine with her that Iona had found herself agreeing before caution could harden into refusal.
She had not missed the word the older woman chose.
Grandchild.
The tenderness in it had struck her with uncomfortable force.
Now, standing in the courtyard garden while the scent of crushed mint and rosemary rose beneath her fingers, Iona told herself that Jamie was safe.
Safer than safe, perhaps. Caitlin seemed ready to spoil the child within an inch of reason, and Frederick was under the same roof besides.
No harm would come with so many walls and watchful eyes around them.
Still, habit was harder to quiet than fear itself.
Her gaze flicked toward the keep windows more often than she liked.
Erin noticed, of course. Erin noticed everything.
“Ye will wear a groove in yer neck if ye keep looking up like that,” the older woman murmured, not glancing away from the bundle of lavender in her lap.
“I am only making sure everything is well,” Iona said.
Erin snorted softly. “Aye. And I am a goose.”
Iona bent to pick up another basket, choosing not to answer.
A few paces behind them, Lennox Cochrane followed at what was likely meant to be a respectful distance.
He had not inserted himself into their task, nor had he spoken more than necessary, but he was there all the same, strolling just slowly enough to appear casual and just attentively enough to make that impossible.
Iona eyed him over her shoulder.
“He has been behind us since we left the chamber,” she said under her breath.
“Aye,” Erin replied.
“Does he think I mean to steal yer rosemary and scale the walls with it?”
This time Erin did look up, amusement brightening her lined face. “Nay, lass. He thinks ye might run.”
Warmth touched Iona’s cheeks at once, which only irritated her further.
“I have nowhere to run to,” she muttered.
“That isnae the same as saying ye wouldnae try.”
Iona pressed her lips together because that, unfortunately, was true.
If fear rose high enough, if something threatened Jamie, she would run again. She knew it. Erin knew it. Frederick likely knew it as well, though she resented the fact that he understood her in pieces before she had given him permission to do so.
Her hands slowed over the herbs.
“Perhaps it is Frederick’s doing,” she said after a moment. “Sending his man to trail after me as though I were some thief with quick feet.”
Erin’s mouth twitched. “Or perhaps it is exactly what it appears to be.”
Iona cast her a sideways look. “And what is that?”
“The laird trying to keep ye safe.”
The answer was too direct and happened so suddenly that Iona felt a blush rise in her cheeks before she could prevent it.
It annoyed her that Erin saw that too.
“I do nae require constant watching,” Iona said briskly, rearranging the bundles before her with more force than necessary.
“He is overbearing. He gives orders as though the whole world should bend to him. He appears from shadows without warning. He says ridiculous things with a straight face. He is far too certain of himself, and he keeps looking at me as though he knows exactly what I am about to do before I do it.”
Erin was quiet for just long enough that Iona knew something unpleasantly wise was about to follow.
“When ye complain about the man,” Erin said at last, “ye do it in a voice that sounds suspiciously like admiration.”
Iona stared at her. “That is absurd.”
“Is it?”
“Aye.”
Erin returned to stripping leaves from a stem with infuriating calm. “Then perhaps next time ye should try insulting him without blushing.”
Iona let out a breath through her nose and looked away before the blush in her face deepened further. Lennox, blessedly, remained far enough behind not to hear. Or if he did hear, he was wise enough to pretend otherwise.
“I didnae trust him at first,” Erin said after a while.
That shifted something in Iona at once. She turned back. “Nay?”
Erin shook her head. “A laird with broad shoulders and a commanding voice appears out of nowhere, claiming safety and speaking of what belongs to him. I thought he might be dangerous in the way men often are dangerous when they think their intentions excuse every action.”
Iona’s fingers stilled.
“And now?” she asked quietly.
Erin lifted one shoulder. “Now I think he is dangerous in other ways.”
Iona frowned. “That tells me nothin’.”
“It should tell ye enough.” The old woman said, finally looking at her fully then, pale eyes sharp beneath her grey brows.
“He seems a good man,” Erin said. “Stubborn… And proud. And far too used to carrying every burden as though nay one else has hands. But aye, he is good.”
Iona was silent.
She did not know why those words struck her as strongly as they did. Perhaps because Erin was not easily impressed. Perhaps because some part of her had been waiting for permission to think the same.
“Why are ye telling me this?” she asked.
Erin’s fingers resumed their work. “Because ye are thinking too hard and speaking too little.”
That was not an answer, and they both knew it.
Iona waited.
Erin sighed as if indulging a child. Then she leaned closer, lowering her voice though there was no one near enough to overhear besides Lennox, and he was busy pretending interest in a crack in the far wall.
“Ye should tell him about Jamie,” Erin whispered.
The words sank into Iona with alarming weight.
For a few breaths, she said nothing at all. Her thoughts, which had moved all morning in restless circles, suddenly narrowed into one path she had been avoiding for so long that even looking at it made her ribs seem to hold fast around her lungs.
I have to tell him.
The truth was no longer merely hers. Not now that Caitlin had called Jamie heir. Not now that the child had begun to ask questions. Not now, that Frederick was under the same roof and the shape of his face lived too plainly in Jamie’s features to be ignored forever.
Still, fear rose first, hard and immediate.
What if he changed? What if kindness had limits? What if acceptance only stretched so far as a son who resembled him and not a daughter hidden in plain sight? What if he looked at Jamie differently once he knew? What if he looked at her differently?
Her stomach knotted.
Erin’s voice softened. “He has earned more truth than ye have given him.”
Iona hated how accurate that was.
Across the courtyard, beyond the low garden wall and the open stretch of stone, movement caught her eye.
The training yard.
Men were already at practice there. Blades flashed. Boots struck packed earth. Voices carried in bursts too distant to fully make out. And at the center of it, easy to find even among armed men, stood Frederick.
He had removed his shirt.
For one mortifying instant, that was the only thought in her head.
Infuriating man.
Sunlight caught over the breadth of his shoulders and along the hard lines of his back as he turned, correcting a younger warrior’s stance with one hand and a few clipped words.
Scars marked him there too, pale against bronzed skin, and something about the sight made her pulse shift into a quicker, warmer rhythm that had nothing to do with the morning chill.
He moved with the same economy he did in everything else. Nothing wasted. Nothing uncertain. Authority rested on him even half-dressed, perhaps more so for the lack of effort in it.
I should look away.
She did not.
As if he felt the weight of her attention, Frederick turned.
The distance between them was not small, yet the moment his gaze found hers the rest of the yard seemed to dim around him. He did not wave. Did not call out. He only looked at her, steady and direct, and something low in her belly tightened in answer.
A shiver slipped across her skin.
Excitement, unwelcome and immediate, moved through her before she could deny it.
Erin, curse her, made a soft sound of satisfaction beside her.
Iona straightened too quickly, nearly upsetting the basket at her feet, then caught it before it could spill and gave the older woman a warning glance that earned her absolutely no mercy.
“I have to speak with him,” she said.
Erin’s expression remained serenely unreadable. “Aye. I thought ye might.”
Lennox, who had clearly noticed the shift before either of them spoke, pushed off from the wall behind them and looked toward the yard as if he had just now remembered his duties.
Iona smoothed her hands down her skirts once, then started across the courtyard before she could think long enough to lose the nerve.
And the closer she drew to Frederick, the more impossible it became to pretend she felt nothing at all.
He noticed her before she reached him.
He straightened from where he had been correcting a man’s stance, his attention shifting fully, sharply, as though the rest of the yard had ceased to matter the moment she stepped onto the packed earth.
The warrior he had been instructing took the hint and moved away without question, leaving the space between them open and unguarded.