Chapter 25
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The eastern border report was, objectively, one of the most boring documents Noah had ever read.
He had read it three times.
He had written nothing.
He turned to the next page.
The words gathered before him, seeming to carry meaning, but refused to produce any.
He read a paragraph about grain transport routes, understood it on the first pass, forgot it immediately, and had to read it again. His quill sat dry in his hand.
The candle on his desk had burned down a quarter of an inch since he had last noticed it, which meant he had been sitting here doing nothing useful for considerably longer than he had intended.
He set the report down, then picked it up again.
He was not, he reminded himself, a man who sat around thinking about women. He was a laird.
He had responsibilities, correspondence, and a dozen decisions that needed his attention.
His brain had chosen this morning to be entirely uncooperative about all of them, occupied instead with the particular, unhelpful clarity of a man who has gotten exactly what he wanted and cannot stop thinking about it.
The sound of the door.
The grey morning light.
The way she'd looked at him and said, I'm nearly there. It was not a deflection, not a softening of the truth, just an honest account of where she stood.
Most people, in his experience, told him what they thought he wanted to hear. Ava told him the truth and left him to manage his reaction to it, which was, he turned a page without reading it—a behavior entirely characteristic of her.
Also entirely maddening, and also the reason he had been staring at a grain transport report for forty minutes.
He stood and crossed to the window. He stayed there, his hands on the stone, and forced himself to look at the courtyard.
The stable hands, the supply cart at the gate, and the ordinary, functional morning of a castle that didn’t know or care that its Laird was standing at a window like a man who’d never seen one before.
She said soon. That means somethin’. She meant it. She daenae say things she daenae mean.
He returned to the desk and carefully read the eastern border report from start to finish. It took eleven minutes, during which he made three marginal notes. When he finished, he was only minimally thinking about her.
Progress.
Elliot arrived at half past nine. His expression clerarly showed he had information and had decided to share it.
“The MacDonald trade proposal needs a response by end of week,” he said, dropping into the chair across from the desk with the ease of a man who had never once knocked before entering. “I’ve drafted something, but ye’ll want to look it over.”
“Leave it.” Noah held out his hand without looking up.
Elliot placed a folder on the desk, sat back, and said nothing.
Noah read two letters and signed them. Elliot kept silent in the pointed way of someone waiting to be asked about what he’d actually come for.
“What?” Noah said.
“Nothin’.”
“Elliot.”
“I’m just sittin’ here.”
“Ye never just sit anywhere.”
Elliot considered this. “Fair. How’d ye sleep?”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Elliot repeated. “Ye look...”
“If ye say rested, I’m assignin’ ye to the northern watchtower.”
“I was going to say focused,” Elliot said, with dignity. “More focused than usual. Which is notable.”
“The MacDonald draft.”
“Right, aye. Grain terms, straightforward. They’ll likely accept. How’s Miss Harris?”
Noah looked at him directly.
“She’s fine,” he said. “As she was at breakfast. As she will presumably continue to be.”
“Good.” Elliot nodded once. “The whole castle is very pleased, for what it’s worth.”
“Ye already said that.”
“It continues to be true.” Elliot stood. “William.” The tone shifted entirely. “A scout arrived this morning.”
“What about him?”
“He’s moved.” Elliot turned back, his tone changed now, no teasing in it, just the flat efficiency they both defaulted to when things turned serious. “Still on the edge of the territory, but he’s shifted west. Toward the village.”
Noah put his quill down. “Toward Dunmore?”
“Aye. Close enough to matter. He’s been speaking to people. Traders, farmers passin’ through. Still the same story. Ye stole his birthright, ye’re keepin’ Esther prisoner, ye drove him out.” Elliot’s jaw tightened. “But there’s somethin’ new. He’s been asking questions about Miss Harris.”
Noah’s stillness changed.
“What kind of questions?”
“Who she is. Where she came from. Whether she’s...” Elliot chose his words carefully. “Whether she has any hold over ye. Whether she’s influencin’ yer decisions.”
“He’s lookin’ for a lever,” Noah said.
“Aye. That’s me read of it.”
Noah stood and crossed to the window, the same one he’d been at an hour earlier for completely different reasons, now observing the gray morning with a different kind of attention.
“He willnae find one,” he said.
“He’ll look for one regardless.” Elliot came to stand beside him. “Ava’s visible, Noah. She’s at yer table, she’s with Esther, she’s become part of the household. If William decides she’s a weakness, it’ll be trouble.”
“He’s already decided,” Noah said. “That’s what the questions mean.
” He turned from the window. “Double the scouts. I want to ken every move he makes. And I want someone discreet watchin’ the village.
If he approaches anyone connected to this castle, I want to ken before the conversation’s finished. ”
“Done.” Elliot nodded. “And Ava?”
“Daenae tell her yet.” He saw Elliot’s expression and added, “She’ll want to handle it herself. She’ll go lookin’ for trouble before we ken what trouble there is to find. I’d rather have more information first.”
“She’s nae goin’ to appreciate being kept in the dark.”
“Nay.” He said it without pleasure. “She’s nae.”
He sat back down and picked up the MacDonald draft. “Double the scouts, Elliot. Today.”
“Aye, me Laird,” Elliot said.
The reports after that went faster.
Having a concrete threat to handle had sharpened him considerably, which was either a sad comment on his focus or just the nature of the work.
He read through the financial summaries from the eastern holdings, the update from the Drummond clan regarding the shared grazing rights, and a letter from an Edinburgh solicitor about a property boundary dispute that had been simmering for two years and showed no signs of resolving itself.
He wrote seven letters.
He dictated three more to the clerk, who showed up at two o’clock.
He went over the household accounts with Mrs. Murray, approved the budget change for the schoolroom supplies, and had a fifteen-minute talk with the head of the guard about the west gate mechanism that had been sticking for a week and needed fixing before winter.
“There’s one more thing,” Mrs. Murray said, closing her ledger.
“Aye?”
“Miss Harris. She paid for three months of parchment and ink out of her own wages. I’ve corrected it, as ye approved. But I thought ye should ken.”
“Three months?” Noah said.
“From near the start. She didnae think it was her place to ask.”
He looked at his desk. “Thank ye, Mrs. Murray.”
“She’s a good lass,” the housekeeper said, which from her was equivalent to a formal commendation, and left.
Noah sat for a moment after she’d gone.
Three months. Ava had been quietly supplementing the schoolroom out of her own wages, saying nothing, because she hadn’t thought it was her place to ask.
Still treating herself as a temporary arrangement, still keeping herself at arm’s length from the life she was building inside these walls without seeming to notice she was actually building it.
He picked up the next report.
By midafternoon, he was ahead of his work for the first time in recent memory. He found himself, somewhere around the third letter of the afternoon, thinking about the way she’d looked in the gray morning light, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Her hair loose, her shawl pulled around her, the particular careful honesty of I daenae have the words yet said with her eyes steady and direct, no deflection in them.
He’d been with women who told him what he wanted to hear. He understood, now, why that had always left him with the distant sense that something was missing.
Ava Harris did not tell him what he wanted to hear.
She told him the truth and let him do whatever he pleased with it. It was, he thought, like setting aside the sixth letter and reaching for the seventh—perhaps the most attractive quality a person could have.
He wanted her again.
He’d wanted her since about an hour after she closed his door. Or maybe since she left, or perhaps the desire had just never gone away, only shifting slightly in quality from something he was controlling to something he was no longer pretending to control.
He was aware of her moving around the castle the way he was aware of the weather, not always attended to, but always there, registered in some background sense that notified him when something changed.
She’d been in the garden that afternoon with Esther.
He’d seen them through the study window. Esther was crouched over something at the base of the kitchen garden wall, with Ava beside her in the same position, both of them examining whatever it was with identical seriousness.
He didn’t know what they were looking at. He’d watched for longer than was efficient, his quill held forgotten in his hand, ink drying on the nib.
Esther had pointed at something, and Ava had tilted her head to look and said something that made Esther nod gravely. Two people contemplating a very important matter.
The November light had caught the loose strands of Ava’s hair where it had come free at her temple, and he’d watched that too, which was, he was aware, not useful.
The letter had required rewriting.
He wanted her.
The wanting had shifted from being a problem he was trying to solve to something more like a fact he had simply accepted, like weather.
She was there, in the castle, on the other side of a wall from his chambers at night, part of his household, his table, and his daily life in a way that increasingly felt like it had always been the arrangement, and the months before her arrival were the aberration.
He was aware that this was a significant shift from where he’d been four months ago.
He did not, particularly, want to go back.
He finished the seventh letter, sealed it, and set it aside.
He decided he would not seek her out tonight. He’d meant what he’d said about letting her take her time. She’d said soon, and he would trust her word and give her the space she needed to come to him on her own terms rather than his.
This was going to require some effort.
He picked up the next report.
Elliot came back at the end of the day with the scout update. William had spoken to a grain merchant in the village, asking about the castle’s staffing, who came and went, and the usual rhythms of the household.
“He’s buildin’ a picture,” Noah said.
“Aye. Nothin’ actionable yet. Just watchin’.”
“That’s worse.” He’d rather William made a move he could respond to than circled indefinitely like something waiting for the right moment. “Keep watchin’ him.”
“As ye command, me laird.” Elliot left.
Noah leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a moment.
William’s asking about her.
The thought sat in his chest like something cold, and beneath the cold was something much hotter. That was the simple, unambiguous fury of a man who had been willing to let his brother drink himself into the ground on the edge of the territory in peace, and was now reconsidering that stance.
He would get more information first.
He stood, straightened his coat, and went to supper.
She was already there when he arrived. Esther, too, was mid-conversation about something involving a pet, which apparently had been the subject of considerable discussion throughout the day.
“Uncle Noah,” Esther said, as he took his seat. “Do ye think one day you’ll let me have a pet of me own? Like a rabbit?”
“I think it’s likely,” he said. “But only if ye’ll make sure it doesnae make any messes around the castle.”
“Ava says sometimes these creatures might be lookin’ f-for somewhere safe.”
“That seems reasonable.” He reached for the bread.
Across the table, Ava was looking at her soup with the specific quality of attention a person gives something when they’re not quite looking at it. He could see the corner of her mouth.
"I was thinking, Bramble," she suddenly blurted. "But that might be too long."
"Ye could shorten it," Noah and Ava exchanged amused glances. "Bram."
Esther considered this seriously. "Or somethin' simpler. Like Button."
"Button," Ava said, with the corner of her mouth moving.
"Aye. Because rabbits have wee noses. Like buttons."
"That sounds about right," Noah said.
Esther beamed, then whispered, "Button MacGregor."
Noah paused. "Ye're giving it the clan name."
"Aye. And it'll live in my room," Esther said simply, as if this required no further conversation.
She reached for more bread, satisfied that the matter was settled.
Noah looked up and saw Ava watching him now. He held her gaze for a moment. She looked back at her bowl.
When supper ended, and Esther went upstairs, Ava lingered a moment to gather her things. He waited.
“She named it,” Ava said, not looking at him. “The rabbit she hasn’t yet got. Button.”
“Hmm… very optimistic lass.”
Ava picked up the primer she’d brought to supper and held it against her chest. She looked at him then, briefly, with that particular directness she had. “Goodnight, Noah.”
“Goodnight, Ava.”
He sat for a moment in the empty room, the fire low, as the castle settled into its quiet nighttime calm around him. He felt, with the clear confidence of a man who had stopped arguing with himself, completely certain about only one thing.
Soon.
He could wait for soon.