Chapter 23
“Is it true?”
Frederick looked up from the ledger in his hand.
Jamie stood just inside the doorway of his study, one hand still on the frame as though prepared to run if the answer displeased her.
Her hair, now left to grow as she pleased, had been tied back poorly and was already half falling free.
There was a smear of dirt near her cuff and a brightness in her eyes that told him she had not come merely to ask a question. She had come expecting something.
“That depends,” he said, setting the ledger aside. “On what ye have heard.”
Jamie stepped farther into the room. “Lennox said ye might take me to the stables.”
Frederick gave a slow nod. “Did he?”
“Aye.”
Frederick rose from his chair. “Well, he shouldnae have ruined the surprise.”
Jamie’s face lit at once. “So, it is true?”
“It is,” he said. “If ye are prepared to listen and do precisely as ye are told.”
Jamie nodded with suspicious speed. “I can do that.”
Frederick arched a brow. “Can ye truly?”
She pressed her lips together, clearly remembering an earlier conversation in which that answer had not entirely convinced him.
“I can try very hard,” she amended.
“That is more believable.”
He crossed the room and took up his cloak. Jamie was already turned toward the door before he had fully fastened it, which told him two things at once. First, that her patience remained as underdeveloped as ever. Second, that she had been hoping for this more keenly than she had let on.
They made their way through the keep with Jamie half a step ahead, and Frederick slowing her every third pace with a hand to the back of her shoulder or a quiet word when she forgot herself and nearly broke into a run.
The lower yard opened before them bright with afternoon light, the air carrying the mixed scents of hay, leather, horseflesh, and turned earth.
The stables lay along the eastern wall, broad and well kept, their doors open to the mild day.
A groom crossed the yard carrying a pail, and two boys were sweeping the center aisle with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
Jamie slowed only when they reached the threshold. An unfiltered look of complete wonder was worn plain on her features.
The stable always had that effect on children who had not yet been given a horse of their own to love. The size of it. The warmth. The sound of shifting hooves and soft snorts from within. Frederick watched the wonder move across her face and felt, unexpectedly, something ease in him.
A man emerged from the second stall to the left, brushing straw from his sleeves as he came.
He was broad through the chest, weathered by years outdoors, with iron-grey at his temples and a scar running from the edge of his chin into the beard there.
Jamie straightened at once when she saw him approach.
“Jamie,” Frederick said. “This is Hamish Calder. He is me stablemaster.”
Hamish inclined his head. “A pleasure, lass.”
Jamie looked up at Frederick, uncertain whether that title was permitted now that things had changed.
Frederick noticed the hesitation and said, “Aye. Lass.”
Something small and bright returned to her face. She looked back at Hamish and dipped her head with a gravity that belonged to no child and yet fit her all the same.
“Good day, Master Calder.”
Hamish’s mouth twitched. “Hamish will do.”
Frederick continued, “No horse in this stable eats, trains, or sets a hoof outside these doors without Hamish knowing of it first. If he tells ye something, ye will listen as though I said it myself.”
Jamie nodded at once. “Aye.”
Hamish looked faintly pleased by that. “A sensible arrangement.”
Frederick gestured farther down the aisle. “Come.”
They passed three stalls before he stopped at the fourth on the right.
Inside stood a mare of modest size, still young but steady through the shoulder, her coat a rich chestnut broken by white spotting along her flank and neck.
Her mane had been brushed smooth, and one ear flicked back at their approach before turning forward again when she recognized Frederick’s voice.
Jamie stared.
“She is bonnie,” she whispered.
“Aye,” Frederick said. “She is.”
He rested a hand against the stall door. “Her name is Storm.”
Jamie repeated it under her breath as though testing the sound. “Storm.”
The mare shifted, lowering her head a little over the half-door, nostrils widening as she took in the new scent.
Frederick glanced at Jamie. “This is the horse I have set aside for ye.”
Jamie turned so quickly he might have laughed had the look on her face not stopped him.
Joy arrived there unguarded and absolute, so clear that it struck him before he could prepare for it.
He had seen her pleased before. Curious.
Delighted by toys and ribbons and the small freedoms of these last days.
This was different. This was deeper. It ran through her whole body, straightening her spine, widening her eyes, making her look suddenly less like a child in hiding and more like one standing at the edge of the life she ought always to have had.
“For me?” she asked dreamily, and there was so much in the words that Frederick answered more softly than he intended.
“Aye,” he said. “For ye.”
Jamie took a step nearer the stall, then stopped herself and looked not at him but at Hamish. That small instinct, to seek the proper authority in the proper place, pleased Frederick more than it should have.
“May I touch her?” she asked.
Hamish nodded. “Slowly. Let her see ye first.”
Frederick stepped back then, just enough to give the space over to the stablemaster. He wanted the lesson to begin correctly.
Hamish moved beside Jamie and spoke in the same tone he used with skittish young horses and overconfident boys.
“Hold yer hand flat,” he said. “Nay, flatter than that. A horse likes fingers well enough until they curl at the wrong moment.”
Jamie adjusted at once.
“There,” Hamish said. “Now let her smell ye.”
Bramble stretched forward and breathed warm across Jamie’s palm. The child nearly laughed, caught herself, then laughed anyway when the mare’s whiskers tickled her skin.
“She is sniffing me.”
“Aye,” Hamish said. “That means she is deciding whether ye are worth her time.”
Jamie looked scandalized. “I am.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Frederick folded his arms and leaned one shoulder against the opposite stall, letting the exchange settle into him.
Hamish showed Jamie how to stroke the mare along the neck rather than patting at her like a dog.
He corrected the angle of her wrist. Had her step to the shoulder rather than the front.
Explained how a horse watched with its ears, with its weight, with every shift of muscle, long before it decided to move.
Jamie listened.
Truly listened.
She asked questions in a near constant stream, but she did not fidget past the lesson or pretend to know what she did not.
She brushed where Hamish told her to brush.
Cleaned mud from one hoof with such concentration that her tongue pressed briefly to the corner of her mouth.
Reached for fresh straw when asked. Refilled the water bucket under Hamish’s eye and checked the latch twice afterward because he told her careless hands had no place in a stable.
Frederick had expected enthusiasm. He had not expected the quiet seriousness of it.
After some time, Jamie turned toward him, cheeks flushed and hair coming loose again from whatever ribbon had once attempted to restrain it.
“When do I ride her?”
Frederick did not smile, though the urge was there. “Nae today, lass.”
Her face fell only a little. She had learned not to protest too quickly when the answer might still be turned.
“Why nae today?”
“Because riding begins long before the saddle,” he said. “A rider who doesnae ken the horse has nay business on its back.”
Jamie glanced at Bramble, then back to him.
“So what do I do?”
He pushed away from the stall and came nearer. “Ye come here. Often. Ye help care for her. Ye listen to Hamish. Ye learn her moods, what she likes, what startles her, how she moves, how she stands when she is pleased and when she is nae.”
Jamie took that in with surprising gravity. “And then?”
“And then,” Frederick said, “the more times ye come to the stables and care for her properly, and the more good reports I receive from Hamish, the sooner I will decide ye are ready for the next lesson.”
Hamish snorted softly. “So, I am to be bribed with competence.”
“Aye,” Frederick said. “It is our favorite kind.”
Jamie’s eyes narrowed in thought. For one brief moment, he wondered whether she would decide the pace too slow and lose heart.
Then she grinned with full, bright challenge. “I will get very good reports,” she said.
“Aye,” he said. “I thought ye might.”
Frederick looked at her for a long beat and found himself thinking, with no small amount of satisfaction, that he had been exactly right.
She did not shrink from the challenge. She leaned toward it.
The same spark lived in her that lived in her mother.
The same refusal to back away merely because the road had been made steeper on purpose.
“Must we go back already?”
Jamie’s question came the moment they stepped out of the stables, one hand still clutching the edge of the little currycomb Hamish had let her use before taking it back with great ceremony.
Her cheeks were pink from exertion, her hair half-fallen from its ribbon, and there was straw clinging to one sleeve that she either had not noticed or had decided was now part of her permanently.
Frederick glanced down at her as they crossed the yard. “Do ye mean to move into Hamish’s loft before supper?”
Jamie considered it. “Would he let me?”
“Nay.”
“That seems unfair.”
“It seems inevitable.”