Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“The MacDonald report is on yer desk.”
“I’ve read it.”
“The grain tallies from the northern stores?”
“Done.”
“The letters to the MacPherson clan about the autumn harvest agreement?”
“Done.”
“All of them? There were fourteen!”
“I’m aware of how many there were. I wrote them.”
Elliot paused in the doorway and looked at the stacked correspondence, the closed ledgers, the map rolled and tied at the corner of the desk, and then at Noah, who was standing by the window staring into space with his hands clasped behind his back.
“It’s half past nine,” Elliot said.
“Christ, Elliot, I’m aware.”
“Ye’ve finished yer entire week’s work in one evenin’.”
“Do ye want to keep being annoyin’?”
“Noah.” Elliot entered the room and sank into the chair across from the desk with the ease of a man who had endured twenty years of Noah’s moods and was unbothered by any of them. “When’s the last time ye ate somethin’?”
“Breakfast.”
“When’s the last time ye slept more than four hours?”
He paused.
“That’s what I thought.” Elliot leaned back. “What’s got ye wound up?”
Noah said nothing.
“Is it William?”
“William isnae movin’.”
“The MacDonalds?”
“That shouldnae be a problem.”
“The council?”
“Settled and calmed. For now.”
Elliot drummed his fingers on the armrest. “Then it’s the lass.”
Noah said nothing, which was its own answer.
“It’s always the lass these days. Ye cannae sit still, ye finish yer work in three hours, ye stand at windows in the dark—”
“I think she matters a lot to me, even more than she should.”
Elliot was too stunned to speak for a moment.
“Say that again,” Elliot said carefully.
Noah turned from the window.
He knew he looked like a man who had just heard himself say something aloud for the first time and was trying to determine if it was true.
“I think she matters to me,” Noah tried again, slowly. “I daenae ken when it happened. I daenae have a single moment I can point to. It was just, everythin’. All of it buildin’ up without me noticin’ until tonight I sat down to work and couldnae think about anythin’ else.”
“Anythin’ else?” Elliot asked.
“But her,” Noah said plainly. “The way she argues. The way she is with Esther. The way she looks at me like she’s decided I’m worth her time and then keeps bein’ surprised by it.” He moved to the desk, hands flat on the surface.
“Aye,” Elliot said. “I ken.”
“Ye ken.”
“The whole castle kens. I’ve kent since the forest road, but ye didnae want to listen.” Elliot leaned back. “What are ye goin’ to do about it?”
“Noah.” Elliot leaned forward. “Ye’ve spent ten years fixin’ yer father’s messes and yer brother’s messes and every problem this clan has ever put in front of ye. Every decision ye’ve made has been for someone else.” He paused. “When’s the last time ye wanted somethin’ for yerself?”
“That’s nae the point.”
“That’s exactly the point.” Elliot stood. “She looks at ye the same way, for what it’s worth. Has since the start. She’s just considerably more stubborn about it.”
He headed for the door. At the threshold, he paused. “It willnae pass, Noah. Ye ken that already. Ye’re just hopin’ I’ll agree with ye so ye daenae have to do anythin’ about it.” He shrugged. “I willnae agree with ye.”
He left, and Noah heard him whistling all the way down the corridor until the sound faded to nothing.
He sat with the quiet for a moment.
The truth was, he couldn't forget. Not the tower, not the library, not the way she'd kissed him back with no hesitation and then spent the following days treating him with the careful, polite distance of someone trying to convince herself it hadn't happened.
He had been the one to reach for her. Both times.
And both times she had met him there, fully, and then retreated before either of them could name what it meant.
He understood it. He didn't like it, but he understood it.
She was afraid of wanting something she didn't believe she was allowed to have. He'd seen it in her since the beginning — the way she made herself smaller than she was, the way she gave and gave and asked for nothing, the way she looked faintly startled every time he treated her as if she mattered.
Someone had taught her that. He had his suspicions about who.
He stood, moved to the window, and looked out at the dark.
He had kissed her. He had meant it. And she had meant it too — he was certain of that much. What remained was getting her to stop running from it long enough to say so.
He left the study.
The corridor outside his chambers was dark, with torches burning low, and the castle deep in its nighttime quiet. He’d almost reached his door when Esther’s opened.
Ava stepped outside with a candle, her hair loose and her shawl slipping off one shoulder. She carefully closed the door with the precise pressure she had learned over weeks, then turned and saw him.
“Noah,” she said, startled, slightly breathless.
“Ava.” He kept walking toward her. “How is she?”
“Asleep. She went down easy.” She watched him come. “Ye’re looking at me like that again.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.” She gestured at his face. “Ye ken what I mean.”
He stopped close.
Close enough that she took one step back before the wall stopped her. The candle between them threw warm light across her cheekbones.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“That’s never a sentence that ends well.”
“Ava.”
“What?” Her chin came up. “What is it?”
“I cannae keep doin’ this.” He said it steadily. “The want. The pretendin’. Meals and corridors and acting like nothing is going on.” He stopped. “I’m done with it.”
“Done with what exactly?”
“Pretendin’ I daenae feel what I feel.”
She was very still. “Noah.”
“Let me finish.” He held her gaze. “I cannae be in the same room as ye and think about anythin’ else. I cannae sit across from ye at dinner and act like it’s nothin’. I look at ye and I,” He stopped.
Something moved through his jaw. “I daenae have a clean name for it yet. But it isnae nothin’, Ava, and I’m done pretendin’ it is.”
The silence that followed had a different quality from every other silence they’d shared.
Ava stared at him. He watched her process it, the way her expression moved through surprise and something that might have been longing before she got it under control.
“It’s desire,” she said quietly. “That’s all it is. It’ll pass away.”
“If it were only that, I’d have managed it.” His voice came out low and entirely certain. “I ken the difference, Ava. Daenae tell me what I feel.”
“Ye’re a laird,” she said as if that settled it.
“Everyone kens I’m a laird.”
“And I’m...” She looked at him with an expression that mixed exasperation with something rawer underneath. “I’m nobody, Noah. I’m a lass who swept tavern floors and still daenae ken which fork to use at yer table. Whatever ye think ye feel, it’ll pass, believe me.”
“It’ll pass?” he said. “Is that what ye were goin’ to say?”
Her jaw tightened.
“It’s more than a few weeks now,” he said. “It hasnae passed. If anythin’, it’s gotten considerably worse.”
“That’s nae reassurin’.”
“It wasnae meant to be reassurin’. It was meant to be honest.” He held her gaze.
“Ye think ye’re nae fit for this life. But ye’ve been livin’ it for weeks, Ava.
Ye stood in me courtyard and took apart a woman twice yer age in front of everyone, for a child ye’d known a week.
” He paused. “What part of that isnae fit?”
“That’s...” She pressed her lips together. “That’s different.”
“How?”
“Because that’s just bein’ meself.”
“Aye,” he said quietly. “That’s what I mean.”
She stared at him.
“Ye cannae just say things like that just because ye are the Laird,” she said, and her voice had gone slightly rough at the edges.
“I’ve been thinkin’ it for long. It seems fair that ye hear it once.”
“Noah.” She put her free hand flat against the wall, steadying herself.
“I grew up with nothin’. I ran from me father’s house with the clothes on me back.
I’ve never been to a proper dinner, never learned the things a lady’s supposed to ken, never.
” She stopped. “I daenae belong in yer world. And the longer I pretend I might, the harder it’ll be when I have to leave it. ”
“Who said ye have to leave it?”
“Nae one needed to. When the time comes, it’ll be the practical thing to do.”
“Fear drives ye,” he said, gently. “And I understand it. But it isnae true.”
For the life of her, Ava could not think of what to answer back.
“Tell me ye daenae feel anythin’,” he said. “Look at me and say it clearly, and I’ll go.”
She looked at him. The candle guttered in a draught and steadied. Esther’s door stayed closed.
“I cannae think when ye’re this close,” she said at last. Not an answer. Both of them knew it was.
“Then stop thinkin’.”
“That’s terrible advice.”
“Ava.” He lifted one hand and tucked the loose strand of hair from her face. The same gesture, the same place, and he felt her go still at it the way she always did, every time. “I’m nae askin’ ye to decide everythin’ tonight. I’m only askin’ ye to stop runnin’ from it.”
“I’m nae runnin’,” she said, with some spirit. “I’m against a wall.”
“Aye.” The corner of his mouth moved. “Ye are.”
“If this goes wrong, I willnae forgive ye or meself.”
“It willnae.”
“Ye cannae promise that.”
“Nay,” he agreed. “But I can promise that whatever comes, it willnae be because I didnae mean what I said.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Searching, taking his measure the way she’d done since the first night in the cottage. He let her look.
“I daenae have the words yet,” she said finally, quietly. “For what I feel. I cannae say it back, nae tonight. I need time.”
“Ye daenae have to.” He meant it completely. “I’m nae askin’ for it in return. I’m only askin’ ye to stop pretendin’ it isnae there.”
“This is still a terrible idea,” she said.
“Probably.”
“And ye’ve terrible timin’.”
“I’ve been told.”
The corner of her mouth moved. He kissed her before it could become a proper smile, and felt her hands come up to his shirt immediately, which was its own kind of answer to every question he’d asked.
He kissed her slowly and thoroughly, and she kissed him back with no ambivalence left in it at all.
“We’re in the corridor,” she said against his mouth.
“Aye.” He pushed his door open behind her. “Come inside.”
She looked at his chambers, then at him. Then she straightened up, the way she did when she had made a decision and was finished deliberating.
“If ye make me regret this,” she said. “I will make yer life extraordinarily difficult.”
“I daenae doubt it,” he said.
She stepped through the door.
He followed, closed it behind them, and the corridor lay empty and still, the candle burning quietly in the wall sconce, with the castle maintaining its silence. Inside, the fire had burned down to deep embers, casting an amber, warm, and dim light in the room.
Ava stood in the middle of it with her arms loosely at her sides, looking at the hearth instead of at him. Taking a breath, he realized, in the way she always did before doing something she considered worth the risk.
He crossed to the fire and added a log. Straightened up. When he turned around, she was looking at him. Clear-eyed, her hair loose around her shoulders, her chin at the angle that showed the decision had been made.
“So,” she said.
“So,” he agreed.
“Ye love me.”
“Aye.”
“And ye’ve apparently felt this way for weeks without mentionin’ it.”
“I was workin’ up to it. Let’s just say I wanted ye then, really wanted ye.”
She pressed her lips together. “That’s the most Laird thing ye’ve ever said.”
“Probably.” He crossed toward her. “Any other objections?”
“A few.” She held her ground as he came close, tilting her face up to look at him. “I still think this is complicated.”
“It is.”
“And I still daenae have the words for,” She stopped. Her hand came up and pressed flat against his chest, not pushing, just resting there. “For what I feel. I want ye to ken that it’s there. Whatever it is. It’s, it’s very much there. I just cannae give it a name yet.”
“Ava.” He covered her hand with his. “I ken.”
She looked up at him, and whatever she found in his expression seemed to satisfy something, because the last of the tension left her shoulders, and she stopped holding herself so carefully away from him.
“Right,” she said softly. “All right then.”
He kissed her, and she rose onto her toes to meet him, her free hand sliding to the back of his neck.
This time, the kiss was slower, more deliberate, relaxed like two people who have stopped debating whether they should do this and are now simply doing it.
“Yer hands are cold,” he said against her mouth.
“Yer castle is draughty.”
“I’ll have the fire built higher.”
“Later,” she said, and pulled him back down.
He got his hands in her hair, and she made the sound he’d been thinking about for days. The quiet, involuntary one that meant she’d stopped thinking. She looked up at him with her hair tousled and her eyes dark.
“Last chance,” she said. Though she was already reaching for him.
“For what?”
“To be sensible.”
He sat beside her. “I’ve never been particularly sensible.”
“Nay,” she agreed, and the smile that followed was the real one, the one that reached her eyes before she’d decided to allow it. “Ye havenae.”
He kissed her again.