Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“The hen ran after the old, slow goat,” Esther said.
“Aye. And this one?”
Esther squinted at the page. “Horses live in the barn.
“Perfect.” Ava made a small mark in the margin. “Right, let’s put them together. What does this say?”
Esther’s finger brushed under the letters. Her brow furrowed. Her lips moved subtly, sounding out each part before she committed to the whole.
“‘The... big... dog.’” She looked up. “The big dog.”
“That’s it.”
“That’s a borin’ sentence.”
“The dog might disagree.”
Esther considered this seriously. “What kind of dog?”
“Ye’re the one readin’ it. Ye decide.”
“A very large brown one,” Esther said. “With... floppy ears.”
“Excellent. Write that down.”
Esther’s face immediately fell. “I have to write it?”
“Ye just read several sentences. Now ye get to write some. That’s how it works.”
Esther pulled the parchment toward her, her expression that of someone accepting a sentence they’d hoped to appeal.
She picked up the quill with both hands, set it carefully against the page, and began, with excruciating slowness, to form the letters.
Ava watched her and did not think about Noah.
The lovely woman, Esther wrote. Ava watched her focus hard to create neat letters. wore a blue silk gown.
Ava did not think about the particular quality of his voice when it went rough with sleep. She did not think about gray morning light, warm rooms, or the way he had held her hand and simply looked at her, unhurried, as if she was something worth taking time over.
“Ava,” Esther said. “I spelled ‘big’ wrong.”
Ava looked at the parchment. “Ye’ve spelled it how it sounds. That’s half of it. The other half is that English is a language designed by people with too much time and too little sense.” She took the quill gently and showed her. “B-I-G. The G is the same one ye just did.”
“That’s interestin’.”
“Profoundly. Try again.”
Esther tried again. The second attempt was considerably better. She sat back and looked at it with the evaluating expression of a craftsperson assessing their own work.
“It’s nae terrible,” she said.
“It’s genuinely good.” Ava meant it. “Ye’ve been at this for three weeks, Esther. Look at where ye started.”
Esther looked at the first page of the primer, where she had traced the letters with a shaky, uncertain hand on her very first day. Then she glanced at today’s page.
“Oh,” she said softly. After a pause, she repeated, “Oh.”
“Aye,” Ava responded. “‘Oh’ is indeed fitting.”
Caitlin was in the corridor outside the schoolroom when the lesson ended, arms full of fresh linen, seemingly having a reason to walk past this part of the castle for the third time that morning.
“She’s doin’ well?” Caitlin asked, nodding toward the door as Esther disappeared toward the kitchens in search of whatever cook had promised her if she finished her lesson.
“She’s doin’ brilliantly.”
“And ye?” Caitlin said, in a tone that had absolutely nothing to do with lessons.
Ava kept walking. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Caitlin repeated. She fell into step beside her. “Ye look tired.”
“I slept poorly.”
“Did ye?” This was said with such studied neutrality that it contained its own entire conversation. “Funny, that. The night guard mentioned the Laird’s study light was on ‘til very late.”
“The Laird often works late.”
“Aye. Though Donal also said he saw someone crossin’ the corridor toward his chambers just before midnight, and—”
“Caitlin.”
“And that the same someone was back in their own room by early mornin’, which is unusual because normally—”
“Caitlin.”
“Normally that corridor is very quiet at night, so it was notable, and…”
Ava stopped walking and turned to face her.
Caitlin stopped. Her eyes were very wide and very innocent.
“Ye’re terrible at keepin’ a secret,” Ava said.
Caitlin’s composure collapsed entirely into delight. “I kent it! I kent it from the moment I heard the story.” She pressed her lips together, visibly restraining herself. “How was it?”
“I’m nae discussin’ that with ye.”
“Was it...” Caitlin lowered her voice to a whisper that carried approximately the same distance as normal speech. “Was he the Laird everyone imagines him to be? Ye ken, fierce.”
“I am nae havin’ this embarrasin’ conversation.”
“Ava.”
“Absolutely nae.”
“Just one word. Give me one word.”
Ava looked at her. Caitlin returned the gaze with the patience of someone ready to wait forever.
“Considerate,” Ava said finally, with great dignity, and walked away.
Caitlin made a sound behind her that suggested the single word had given her enormous information.
“I’m headin’ to the kitchens now,” Ava announced.
“That’s sweet, miss, the kitchen seems rather short-staffed these days.”
Ava walked to the kitchens, and it was warm and smelled of bread and something sweet that, on investigation, turned out to be Mrs. Ross attempting a batch of cranachan with the season’s last raspberries.
“Miss Harris.” Mrs. Ross was a small woman who managed her kitchen with the careful precision of a military operation.
She had developed an immediate and seemingly permanent liking for Ava because Ava had once correctly identified the source of a stock that had gone wrong and had never wavered since. “Ye’re here for the bairn’s afternoon bannocks?”
“And to see if there’s anythin’ ye needed. Caitlin mentioned ye were short-staffed today.”
“Morag’s taken to her bed with a cold.” Mrs. Ross clicked her tongue. “I’ve got the bread and the stock, but if someone could do the vegetables for supper, it’d be splendid.”
“I’ll do them.” Ava hung up her shawl and reached for an apron.
Mrs. Ross looked at her. “Ye’re the minder, lass. Ye daenae have to do this. It’s our job.”
“I ken how to peel a turnip. Give me the knife.”
She was given a knife, a stool, and a huge pile of turnips, and she sat in the corner of the kitchen peeling them as the kitchen moved around her.
Mrs. Ross was directing traffic, two of the younger girls were kneading bread, and the scullery boy was hauling water.
It was loud, warm, and filled with the smell of everything cooking at once, and Ava felt, sitting in the middle of it, something she recognized as contentment.
She’d spent enough years in tavern kitchens to feel at home in this kind of organized chaos. The rhythm of it, chop, turn. The soft percussion of knives on boards was familiar in a way that required no thought.
Which meant her thoughts went where they wanted.
Considerate had been, she reflected, an accurate word. Also, insufficient. She turned a turnip in her hands. Also, not nearly all of it. He’d been... she searched for something more precise, present.
Entirely, deliberately present, in a way she hadn’t known to expect and hadn’t known how much she’d needed until it was simply there.
She had spent a long time around people who were elsewhere, even when they were with her. Mostly her father. The particular loneliness of being in a room with someone who looked past you instead of at you.
Noah looked at her. That was all—just looked as if she was the only thing worth paying attention to.
She peeled three more turnips before she realized she was smiling at a vegetable.
“Somethin’ funny?” Mrs. Ross said, passing with a pot.
“Just thinkin’.”
“Happy thoughts, by the look of it.”
“Confusin’ ones,” Ava said honestly.
Mrs. Ross patted her shoulder in passing. “Those are usually the same thing, lass.”
Mrs. Murray found her in the linen room shortly afterward, where Ava had gone looking for the spare primer she had promised Esther she would mend the binding on.
“Miss Harris.” The housekeeper appeared in the doorway with a ledger and the look of someone who has organized everything to perfection and finds it satisfying. “I’ve been meanin’ to speak with ye.”
Ava looked up from the shelf. “Oh?”
“About the Laird’s household budget. Specifically, the schoolroom supplies.” Mrs. Murray opened the ledger to a marked page. “Ye’ve been buyin’ parchment out of yer own wages.”
Ava opened her mouth.
“Daenae deny it. I keep the accounts.” Mrs. Murray’s tone was brisk but not unkind. “I’ve put it to the Laird, and he’s approved a proper allocation. Ye’re to submit any future costs to me directly, and they’ll be covered.”
“That’s... I daenae want to cause any extra budget.”
“It isnae extra. It’s what the schoolroom requires.
” Mrs. Murray closed the ledger with finality.
“The Laird also said to tell ye that if ye need anythin’ else for Esther’s education, ye’ve only to ask.
” She paused. “His exact words were ‘whatever she needs,’ which in twenty years of workin’ for this family is the least complicated thing he’s ever said. ”
Ava found the primer and held it. “He’s different with Esther now,” she said, without quite deciding to.
Mrs. Murray looked at her for a moment. “He’s different in general,” she said, and walked away before Ava could decide whether to respond to that.
Ava found Esther in the garden after lunch. This was new, three weeks ago, Esther hadn’t gone into the garden alone. She’d stayed close to Ava or close to the walls, never far from a door.
Now she was crouched by the low stone border of the kitchen garden, examining something in the soil with a focus that suggested it was very important.
“What is it?” Ava asked, crouching beside her.
“A beetle.” Esther pointed. “A very fat one. I’ve been watchin’ it f-for ages.”
“What has it been doin’?”
“Just, bein’ a beetle.” Esther frowned. “It’s very busy. It keeps goin’ back and f-forth over the same bit of ground.”
“It’s probably lookin’ for somethin’.”
“What?”
“I daenae ken. Food, maybe. Or somewhere safe.”
Esther watched the beetle make another pass. “I hope it finds it,” she said.
Ava looked at this child. This small, serious, increasingly brave person felt the familiar tightness behind her chest.
“Me too,” she said.
They crouched there together for a few more minutes, watching the beetle do its puzzling survey of the stone wall until it vanished into a crack, and Esther declared the show over.
“Can we do more readin’ after supper?” Esther asked, standing and brushing the dirt from her knees.
“If ye like.”
“I want to finish the page we started.”
“Aye, we can finish it.” Ava stood too. “Are ye enjoyin’ it? The readin’?”
Esther thought about this seriously, in the way she thought about everything. “Aye,” she said at last. “It’s like, like havin’ a key. To things I couldnae open before.”
Ava looked at her.
“That’s a very good way to put it.”
Esther shrugged with the modesty of someone who didn’t yet know they’d said something remarkable. “Can we have bannocks?”
“We can absolutely have bannocks.”
She saw Noah twice before supper.
The first time was in the great hall. He was walking toward the east corridor with two of his guardsmen, in what she recognized as his working stride—long, fast, with his attention fixed straight ahead.
He glanced up as she crossed the opposite end of the hall, and their eyes met across forty feet of flagstone.
It lasted less than a second.
He looked away first, or she did; she couldn’t quite tell afterward. Either way, she walked the rest of the hall with her eyes on the door ahead and her ears inexplicably warm, which was absurd, and she was aware of its absurdity, and it made no difference whatsoever.
The second time was in the corridor outside the library.
She was returning a book she’d borrowed, and he was coming from the other way, alone, without guards or a purposeful stride. He simply appeared around the corner and nearly walked into her.
“Sorry…” she started.
“Me fault…” he said simultaneously.
They both stopped, with a foot of corridor between them. The book in her arms suddenly felt like the most important thing she had ever held.
He looked at her steadily, the way he always did, and she looked back, and for a moment neither of them said anything.
“How was yer day?” he said finally.
“Fine. Good, actually.” She paused. “Esther said readin’ was like havin’ a key to things she couldnae open before. She didnae ken she’d said somethin’ lovely.”
Something in his expression shifted, that small, quiet movement she was learning.
Ava held the book very tightly.
“I should get going,” she started.
“Aye.” He stepped to the side, clearing the corridor. “I’ll see ye at supper.”
She passed close enough to smell him. Woodsmoke, leather, and something beneath both that she recognized from last night and now couldn’t forget. She kept her eyes on the far end of the corridor until she turned the corner.
Then she stood with her back to the wall for a single moment, one hand pressed to the cold stone.
Pull yerself together, Ava.
She pulled herself together. Returned the book. Went to collect Esther for their evening lesson.
After the lesson, they went for supper together.
The three of them sat at the small end of the long table. A habit that had established itself somewhere over the past weeks without anyone formally deciding on it.
Esther talked.
This was also new or somewhat new. She shared her opinions on the soup, the bread, and the ongoing question of whether the fat beetle from the garden had found what it was searching for, which she had clearly been pondering since the afternoon.
“Maybe it lives in the wall,” she said. “In a wee, a wee crack. With a family.”
“A beetle family,” Noah said seriously.
“Aye. A very busy one.”
“That would explain the back and forth.”
Esther nodded, satisfied that her uncle understood the gravity of the situation. She reached for more bread.
Ava caught Noah’s eye across the table. He looked back at her with an expression that held several things she was choosing not to analyze too closely. Then he turned to Esther and asked her what the beetle’s name was, which sparked a lively debate that lasted the rest of the meal.
Under the table, Ava’s foot was very deliberately not touching his.
She did not think about the corridor until much later.
He is on the other side of the wall, she thought. Probably reading something very dull about the eastern border and not thinking about her at all, which was entirely reasonable of him. She was doing the same thing, essentially.
She stared at the ceiling.
He said he loved ye.
He said it plainly in a corridor at midnight, and he meant every word, and ye ken he meant every word, and ye’re lyin’ here pretendin’ to think about the eastern border.
She pulled the blanket up.
Smiled at the ceiling.
Terrible trouble.
Outside the window, the Highlands lay dark and quiet.
The fire breathed its last warmth into the room.
It didn’t feel like trouble at all.