Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“Nay, nay, try it again. Slower this time.”
Esther’s brow furrowed in concentration, her small finger tracing the letters on the page with the careful deliberateness of someone handling something fragile.
The firelight caught the tip of her tongue where it peeked out between her teeth.
“Th-the...” A pause. A breath. “The c-cat sat.”
“Aye!” Ava’s hands came together quickly, sharp and delighted, before she caught herself and softened them. Too much enthusiasm and Esther would flinch; she’d learned that early. “That’s it. That’s the whole sentence, Esther. Ye read it.”
Esther looked up from the page. She blinked, as if she wasn’t quite sure she’d heard correctly. “I d-did?”
“Every word. Look, “Ava pointed to each one in turn. “The. Cat. Sat. Ye read all three.” She watched the realization move across the child’s face, slow at first and then all at once, like the sun breaking through clouds. “Now try the next line.”
Esther looked back at the page as her finger moved.
“The c-cat...” She stopped. Her jaw set in the way Ava had come to recognize, not giving up, reassembling. “The cat s-sat on the...” She traced the last word twice with her finger before she tried it aloud. “M-mat.”
“Perfect,” Ava said, very quietly. “Perfect, Esther. That’s two sentences.”
Esther sat back, looked at the page, and said nothing for a moment.
“I r-read it.”
“Ye did.”
“I r-read it meself.” She turned to Ava with wide eyes. “Without ye helpin’.”
“Without me helpin’ at all.” Ava felt the familiar tightness behind her chest, which appeared whenever this child surprised herself. “Ye’ve been workin’ so hard. It’s paid off.”
Esther glanced back at the book. She gently touched the page, as if to make sure it was real.
“Can I?” She stopped. Started again. “Can I do the next one?”
“Ye can do as many as ye like.”
They worked through six more lines, Esther’s pace gaining something that wasn’t quite confidence yet but was its close neighbor.
A willingness to try the next thing before the fear of the current had fully settled. When she stumbled, she stopped, took a breath, and resumed. She didn’t look to Ava for rescue the way she had in the beginning. By the time the candle had burned half an inch, Esther sat back.
“Uncle Noah’s goin’ to be s-so...” She caught herself. The open look shuttered, quick as a door closing. “Nay. D-daenae tell him.”
Ava blinked. “Why nae? He’ll be so proud of ye, Esther.”
“He’ll hear me st-stutter.” Esther’s eyes dropped to the table. Her hands, which had been relaxed a moment ago, pulled into her lap. “I d-daenae want him to hear it.”
Ava kept her voice level, with no rush. “He kens ye stutter, sweetheart. He’s always kent.”
“Aye, but,” Esther’s lip pressed thin. “It’s d-different when he hears it proper. When I’m... tryin’ to say somethin’ good and it c-comes out wrong.” She shook her head. “It sounds stupid.”
“It doesnae sound stupid. It sounds like ye.” Ava leaned forward slightly. “And yer uncle willnae care. I promise ye that.”
Esther was quiet for a moment. Then, with the careful precision of a child who has thought something through, she said, “What if he d-does?”
Ava met her eyes steadily. “Then I’ll deal with him.”
Something shifted in Esther’s expression, not quite a smile but its beginning. “Ye’d argue w-with him? About me?”
“I’ve done it before.” Ava tilted her head. “Turned out all right.”
Esther considered this with the gravity she brought to all important decisions.
“Aye,” she said at last, reluctantly, the way of someone conceding a point they’d have preferred to keep. “Aye, all right. But...” She held up one finger. “More practice first. I want to be b-better before he hears.”
“As much practice as ye need,” Ava agreed. “We’ll work on it every day.”
Esther nodded, satisfied, and closed the primer with both hands. “I’m hungry.”
“Of course ye are.” Ava stood, gathering the books. “Go wash yer hands. I’ll take these back.”
Esther slid off her chair, padded to the door, then paused with her hand on the frame and looked back.
“Ava?”
“Aye?”
“Thank ye. F-for nae making it scary.”
Ava waited until the small footsteps had faded down the corridor before she pressed one hand flat to her chest and took a breath.
She gathered the books, stacked them, and went to put them away.
She did not think about the study. She’d not been thinking about it since lunch, with the same determined focus she’d been applying to not-thinking about towers for the past four days.
She was getting rather good at it.
And then Caitlin appeared at the end of the corridor with an apologetic smile that meant she was about to say something Ava wasn’t going to enjoy.
“He’s ready for ye,” Caitlin said. “The Laird awaits ye in his study.”
Ava looked at the stack of books in her arms.
“Right,” she said. “Of course he is.”
The study door was open.
Noah was standing at the window with his back to her, hands clasped behind him, watching the dark.
He’d changed out of the clothes she saw him in at lunch. Or maybe she just hadn’t noticed before that his shirt lacked a cravat, the collar open at the throat, and his sleeves pushed up to his forearms.
She knocked on the open door anyway.
He turned. “Ye came.”
“Ye asked.” Ava stepped inside, clutching the primer she’d brought as evidence. She’d decided on the way down three corridors and two staircases that having something to hold would help. “Ye said we would speak about Esther within the week. It’s been...” She calculated. “Eight days.”
“I was givin’ ye time.”
“For what?”
He looked at her steadily. “To be ready.”
The room was warm. The fire burned brightly, with two chairs pulled up to the hearth and a low table between them, holding a tray, two cups, a small pot, and some shortbread that had not been placed there for any official reason.
She looked at it, then at him.
“Sit,” he said. “Please.”
She sat. He took the other chair, leisurely, and poured both cups without asking, like someone who had already decided how the evening would unfold and was simply carrying it out.
“How is she?” he said. “Honestly.”
“Better than ye ken.” Ava set the primer on her knees. “Much better. She’s been workin’ every day. Letters first, then sounds, then words. She can read a full sentence now. On her own, start to finish, without me helpin’.”
Something flickered across his face. Carefully controlled, yet visible.
“She can read,” he said.
“Two sentences without stoppin’.” Ava watched him process it. “She’s quick, Noah. Quicker than she thinks she is. It’s nae a matter of ability, it never was.”
“It was William,” he said flatly. Not a question.
“Aye.” She kept her voice even. “When a child’s been punished for gettin’ things wrong, they stop tryin’. Why would ye risk it? But Esther’s startin’ to trust that wrong isnae the end of the world.” She paused. “She trusts that I willnae lose patience with her.”
“And the stutter?”
Ava looked at him directly. “It’s there. It may always be. But it’s less when she’s calm, less when she feels safe.” She let that sink in. “She’s ashamed of it.”
Noah’s jaw tightened. “She shouldnae be.”
“Nay, she shouldnae. And I’ve told her so.” Ava leaned forward slightly. “She’s frightened of ye hearin’ it. Of readin’ in front of ye and havin’ it come out wrong.”
The tightening in his face shifted into something more complicated. “She thinks I’d punish her?”
“She doesnae think ye’d punish her. Nae the way William did.
” Ava chose her words with care. “She thinks she’ll disappoint ye.
That’s different, and in some ways it’s harder to fix.
” She held his gaze. “She wants to be good enough for ye. She’s been wantin’ that since she arrived, I’d wager.
And she cannae quite believe she already is. ”
The silence had a different quality to it, not uncomfortable, just full. Noah looked at the fire.
“I havenae been...” He stopped. His thumb moved against his cup. “I daenae always ken how to show her.”
“I ken,” Ava said gently, not to cut him off but to spare him the rest. “She kens too. She just needs to hear it sometimes, nae only see it.” A beat. “She’s asked for more practice before she reads in front of ye. I told her she could have as much as she needed.”
“Good.” He nodded once. “That was right.”
“I’ll let ye ken when she’s ready.” Ava reached for her cup.
The firelight moved across the room, making everything feel closer than it was. The chairs, the low table, and the distance between them that had seemed manageable in the doorway were harder to measure from here.
“She’s a remarkable wee lass. Ye should be proud of her.”
“I am.” The words came out with a directness that left no room for qualification. “Every day.”
Ava looked up and found him already watching her, and the thing she’d been so carefully avoiding for eight days happened anyway. That internal lurch, that sharp and inconvenient awareness of the specific quality of his attention and how it settled on her like something with real weight.
She looked back at her cup.
“Is that all ye wanted me for?” she asked. “For the report?”
A pause. “Is that what ye think this is? A report?”
“That’s what ye said.” She kept her eyes on her cup. “We were to discuss Esther’s progress in yer study.”
“Aye.” Another pause, with a quality she couldn’t quite categorize. “And ye’ve been avoidin’ it for eight days.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Caitlin says ye took three wrong turns on the way here tonight.”
Ava looked up sharply. “Caitlin talks too much.”
“She does,” Noah agreed, with the absolute equanimity of a man who found this entirely convenient. “Is that yer only objection?”
“I’m nae objectin’ to anythin’. I’m here, am I nae?
” She set the cup down with slightly more force than intended.
“I came. I gave ye the report. Esther is doin’ well, she’s readin’, she’s speakin’, she needs more time before ye hear her stutter, and she’ll tell ye herself when she’s ready. That’s the sum of it.”
“Ava.”
The way he said her name—low, deliberate, as if he had made up his mind—made the back of her neck prickle.
“The stutter,” she said quickly. “It’s gettin’ better as she gains confidence. Tonight, she expressed herself freely. She told me I daenae make her lessons scary.” Her voice caught slightly on the last word. She cleared her throat. “Which is the nicest thing anyone’s said to me in quite some time.”
A pause. “I can think of some competition for that.”
She looked up before she could stop herself.
He was watching her steadily, something in it careful and deliberate, and underneath that something she was choosing not to name because naming it would require a response, and she had absolutely no idea what that would be.
She put the cup down. Picked it up again. “Ye have a very particular way of bein’ quiet that feels an awful lot like talkin’.”
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. The close neighbor of one. “That’s remarkably observant.”
“I’m remarkably observant.” She looked at him directly then, because looking away had stopped working anyway. “What is it ye actually want to say, Noah? Because we can go around like this for another hour, or ye can just say it.”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“She’s goin’ to be all right,” he said finally. “Esther.”
Ava blinked.
That was not what she’d been bracing for. “Aye. I said that.”
“Aye, ye did.” His eyes hadn’t moved from her face.
The fire crackled. Somewhere deep in the castle, a door closed, muffled and distant.
Ava stood.
“I should check on her before she sleeps.” She picked up the primer and held it to her chest. “Thank ye for the tea.”
Noah rose as well, crossed to the door ahead of her, and held it open. She had to pass close enough to do so. Close enough that she caught his scent—woodsmoke, leather, and something underneath both that she couldn’t quite identify.
“Ava.”
She stopped just past the threshold. Didn’t turn around.
“Thank ye,” he said quietly. “For what ye’re doin’ for her.”
She nodded once. Then she walked down the corridor without looking back, the primer pressed flat against her sternum as if it might muffle something.
It didn’t particularly work.