Chapter 14
The next morning arrived bright and deceptively gentle, as though the world had chosen to forget that it could turn cruel without warning.
Iona Pearson stood at the chamber window with one hand braced against the stone, watching sunlight spread over the lower grounds of the keep.
The air beyond the glass looked crisp and clear.
A servant crossed the courtyard carrying folded linens.
Two guards changed posts at the gate. Somewhere farther off, she could hear the faint bark of a dog and the muted clatter of stable work already underway.
It should have felt peaceful.
Instead, she felt alert in that old familiar way, as if calm itself might be a trick.
The previous evening had left too much unsettled inside her.
Ariella’s kindness, Frederick’s steadiness, the ease with which Jamie had begun to bloom beneath the attention of people who did not look at the child as a burden or an inconvenience, all of it had pressed against places in her that had survived for years by staying hard.
Erin, already dressed and sorting through dried herbs at the small table, gave her a sidelong look.
“Ye have worn the same path across that floor three times,” the older woman said. “If ye keep at it, the stones will complain.”
Iona turned from the window. “I am nae pacing.”
“Aye,” Erin said dryly. “And I am twenty.”
A knock came before Iona could answer.
Her heartbeat gave a small, foolish jump.
When she opened the door, she found Frederick standing there in dark wool and leather, broad shoulders filling the threshold with his usual quiet certainty. Jamie stood a little behind him, already bundled for the morning, face bright with expectation.
Frederick’s gaze met hers first.
“I thought ye might wish to walk the grounds with me,” he said.
The words were simple enough, but something about them caught her off guard.
“Ye… thought… that…?” she repeated questioningly.
“Aye.”
He did not elaborate.
Jamie, less interested in caution than either of them, leaned around him at once. “There are dogs,” the child announced. “And a pond. And Lennox says one of the gardeners is missing half a thumb but still grows the best apples.”
Iona blinked. “When exactly did Lennox tell ye all that?”
“Just last night!”
Frederick did not appear remotely troubled by the fact that his man-at-arms had apparently begun providing Jamie with castle gossip at dawn.
It struck Iona then, with a faint and ridiculous force, that this was an attempt at friendship… at… good faith… at…
The realization warmed her face before she could stop it.
Could this be courtship?
Erin’s eyes narrowed with wicked accuracy from the table behind her, but thankfully, she said nothing aloud.
Iona folded her hands before her and lifted her chin. “A walk?”
“If ye have nay objection,” Frederick said.
There it was again. The difference.
He had asked.
Not ordered.
Asked.
Iona knew she should be suspicious of how much that mattered. Instead, she found herself nodding before caution could gather properly.
“I will come,” she said.
Jamie grinned as though the matter had never been in doubt.
The four of them left the chamber together, though Erin claimed almost immediately that her knees objected to forced merriment and she would prefer to inspect the herb stores later in the morning.
That left Iona, Jamie, and Frederick to continue across the courtyard while Lennox fell in behind them at a distance too practiced to be accidental.
Iona glanced over her shoulder at him. “Must he follow?”
Frederick’s gaze flicked briefly back, then returned to her. “He follows because I told him to.”
“I gathered that much.”
“He also follows because he dislikes idleness and enjoys pretending he is subtle.”
That startled a laugh from her before she could stop it.
Frederick’s mouth shifted, not quite a smile but close enough that she noticed.
The morning air carried the smell of turned earth and wet grass as they passed beyond the inner yard and down toward the lower grounds.
The keep spread wider there than she had realized.
A kitchen garden stood near one wall, neat with early growth.
Beyond it lay a stretch of orchard, then a narrow path leading toward a small pond edged in reeds and stone.
Farther still, she could see the beginning of a training field and, beyond that, low rolling pasture.
Jamie darted ahead and then back again like a small restless bird, never going so far that either adult had to call the child back.
“Do nae run near the pond,” Iona called.
“I was only looking.”
“That is how trouble begins.”
Frederick, walking beside her with his hands clasped behind his back, said quietly, “He listens better when ye do nae sound frightened.”
She turned to glare at him. “And how precisely should I sound when the child is determined to fling himself into every hazard he sees?”
“Firm.”
“I was firm.”
“Ye sounded ready to leap in after him.”
She folded her arms. “I would. Would you not?”
“Aye, I would, but I daenae let him ken it,” he said. “That is the problem.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again because Jamie had stopped by the water’s edge and crouched to examine something in the reeds.
For one brief heartbeat, she felt the old sharp fear move through her.
Frederick saw it.
Without a word, he stepped slightly ahead of her, not blocking her path but altering it, steadying the moment before it could turn.
Jamie straightened a second later, triumphant, holding up a flat stone.
“It looks like a heart.”
Iona let out the breath she had been holding.
Frederick looked at the stone gravely. “It looks like a stone.”
Jamie frowned at him. “That is because ye have nay imagination.”
“Nay, laddie, it is because I have eyes.”
Jamie considered that, then slipped the stone into a pocket as if deciding both things might be true.
They continued on toward the orchard, where the grass grew softer beneath their boots, and the branches still held the tender green of early season. A pair of hounds, broad-chested and eager, came loping across the field the moment they spotted Frederick. Jamie lit up at once.
“Can I touch them?”
“If ye stand still first,” Frederick said.
“That is the opposite of touching them.”
“It is the first requirement.”
To Iona’s surprise, Jamie obeyed.
Frederick gave a low whistle, and one of the hounds slowed immediately, coming to heel at his side. The other circled once, sniffed Jamie’s boots, and sneezed with enough force to make the child laugh.
“There,” Frederick said. “Now ye may.”
Jamie dropped to a crouch, hands sinking into thick fur with pure delight.
Iona watched the scene with a tightening in her throat, she did not understand at first. Frederick crouched as well, one hand steady at the dog’s collar while the other showed Jamie where the animal liked to be scratched.
His expression changed in that moment. Softer, though no less attentive.
He did not speak to the child as one might to an idiot or an ornament.
He explained. Demonstrated. Waited for the understanding to settle.
It was such a simple thing.
It should not have moved her so much.
But it did.
“Does this one bite?” Jamie asked.
“Only if given reason,” Frederick replied.
“Would ye bite if given reason?”
Frederick glanced toward her before answering. “Less often than I once did.”
Jamie seemed satisfied with that.
They walked again after that, slower now. The hounds followed for a time before veering off toward a handler’s call. Jamie trotted between them and then, as children did when contentment loosened caution, began speaking more freely.
“There was a fox near the cottage once,” the child said. “Erin said it had better sense than half the village.”
“She was probably right,” Iona murmured.
Jamie looked up at Frederick. “Did ye ever catch one?”
“A fox?”
“Aye.”
“When I was a boy, I tried.”
“And?”
“It escaped.”
Jamie brightened. “Then I like it.”
Frederick inclined his head. “That seems disloyal.”
Jamie shrugged. “I like things that run fast.”
Iona smiled despite herself.
The path curved then through a stand of trees where the light fell in broken patterns across the ground. For a while no one spoke. Jamie wandered only a few paces ahead, balancing along the low line of stones edging the path and pretending not to notice that both adults watched.
Iona kept her gaze forward, but her mind had begun to turn inward in that dangerous, uncertain way it did when something good lingered too long.
This is not safety, she reminded herself. This is only a morning. A walk. A castle can still become a cage if I am foolish.
And yet.
Frederick had asked her to come.
He had not pushed or cornered, nor had he spoken of obligation every second breath.
He was trying.
The thought was almost more unsettling than if he had remained exactly the same.
“Ye are very quiet,” he said beside her.
She looked up. “I could say the same of ye.”
“I am walking.”
“That is nae an explanation.”
“It was nae meant to be.”
She huffed a small laugh and shook her head.
Ahead of them, Jamie had found a fallen branch and was now dragging it through the grass like a sword.
Frederick watched the child for a moment, then said, “He is less afraid today.”
The quiet certainty in his voice made something in her chest soften.
“Aye,” she said. “He is.”
And so am I, though I do not know what to do with that. She had barely admitted it to herself.
The morning stretched around them, mild and bright, and for the first time in longer than she cared to name, Iona allowed herself to feel the shape of what could have been trust and almost peace… and she feared it all the same.
Dinner that evening felt louder than it ought to have been.