Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“This one’s called Bess,” Esther said. “She’s sixteen years old, and she likes carrots, b-but not apples, which the stable lad says is unusual.”
“Very unusual,” Ava agreed.
She was leaning on the stall door beside Esther, watching the mare regard them both with the placid, faintly judgmental expression common to horses that had seen too many people come and go to be impressed by any of them. “What does she think of bannocks?”
Esther considered this seriously. “I daenae ken. We could try.”
“We absolutely cannae. Mrs. Ross would ken, and she’d never forgive us.”
“We could blame the stable lad.”
“He’s twelve years old and done nothing to deserve it.”
Esther’s mouth moved in the way it did when she was trying to suppress a smile and failing.
She reached up and offered her open palm to the mare, which dropped her large head and nosed at it with a thoroughness that made Esther giggle, actually giggle. The quick, unguarded sound that still made Ava’s chest do something involuntary every time she heard it.
“She tickles,” Esther said.
“She likes ye.”
“She likes that I smell of breakfast.”
“That too.” Ava reached over and tucked a strand of Esther’s hair back from her face. “Same time tomorrow? I think she’s taken to ye.”
“Every day,” Esther said firmly. “I’ve decided.”
“Have ye?”
“Aye. I’m goin’ to learn to ride.” She paused. “Is that all right? C-can I ask Uncle Noah?”
“Ye can ask Uncle Noah anythin’.”
“He might say nay.”
“He might. That’s what askin’ is for, to find out.” Ava looked at her seriously. “But I daenae think he will.”
Esther considered this with the seriousness she brought to crucial decisions. Then she nodded once, seeming resolved.
The stables were quiet at this hour. Mid-morning, after finishing the main work, the grooms had moved on to other tasks.
Autumn light streamed through the high windows in slanted bars, catching the dust and straw. It carried the scent of horse, hay, and cold earth, and Ava leaned on the stall door in a state of contentment she had stopped questioning four days ago and had simply chosen to inhabit.
Four days of lessons, kitchens, and corridors. Of supper at the small end of a long table. Of catching Noah’s eye across the room and experiencing the now-familiar, entirely inconvenient consequence of this.
Four days of something she didn’t have a name for yet, sitting warm in her chest, getting larger the more she didn’t look at it directly.
She was happy. Strange enough that she kept noticing it.
“Ava,” Esther said.
Her voice had changed.
Ava looked at her. Esther was not watching the horse; she was staring at the stable entrance, and she had become very still in the way Ava had learned to recognize. That specific stillness of a child whose body remembered something before her mind caught up.
A man stood in the stable entrance.
She knew who he was before he spoke. Not just the resemblance to Noah—the height, the dark coloring, something in the jaw—but also the way he stood. Calm and confident, one shoulder against the doorframe, arms loosely crossed.
“Well,” William MacGregor said, looking between them. “There ye are.”
Behind Ava, Esther’s hand found the back of her coat.
“Esther.” Ava kept her voice level, her body between the child and the door. “Go find yer uncle.”
“She’s fine where she is,” William said pleasantly. “I only want to see me, daughter.” He pushed off the doorframe and stepped inside. “It’s been a while, Esther. Havenae ye grown!”
Esther’s grip on Ava’s coat tightened. She said nothing.
“She doesnae want to speak with ye,” Ava said.
William looked at her for the first time, properly, the way a man looks at something he’s assessing rather than seeing.
“And who are ye, exactly? The minder?” He smiled. It had the same quality as his posture, calculated. “I’ve heard about ye.”
“Then ye ken I’m the one responsible for her welfare.” Ava held his gaze. “And I’m askin’ ye to leave.”
“Askin’ me to leave?” He tilted his head. “I’m her father. I have every right to be here.”
“Ye surrendered that right when ye left her on this doorstep.”
Something flickered behind his eyes, there and gone.
“Is that what he told ye?” William said. “Me brother’s version of events?” He took another step into the stable, looking past Ava at Esther. “I left her here because I thought she’d be safe, sweetheart. I thought she’d have better than I could give her at the time. Surely ye understand that.”
Esther had not moved. Had not made a sound.
Ava could feel her pressed against her back, small, rigid, and silent, just like she’d been in those first weeks before lessons, beetles, and the sound of her own laughter had found their way back in.
“Esther,” Ava said quietly, without turning. “Go. Now. Straight to yer uncle’s study, run.”
A pause. The small hand released her coat. She heard quick, soft footsteps moving away through the back of the stable, toward the far door.
William watched this with mild displeasure. “That was unnecessary.”
“Ye frightened her.”
“I greeted her.”
“Ye frightened her,” Ava said again, steady. “She pressed herself against a stranger rather than go near ye. That tells ye everythin’ ye need to ken about the kind of father ye’ve been.”
The pleasantness dropped from his expression.
“Careful,” he said. “Ye’re a servant in this castle. Ye daenae get to speak to me that way.”
“I’m Esther’s minder.” Ava did not step back. “And I’ll speak to anyone any way I like when it comes to her protection.”
“Her protection.” He said it with a short sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “From her own father? Ye’ve been here a few weeks, and ye think ye ken this family better than the man who was born into it?”
He took another step closer, the flat, irritable quality of a man who had decided courtesy hadn’t worked.
“Ye’re nobody. Ye’ve nay family, nay standin’, nay name that matters.
Ye’re here because me brother decided ye were convenient, and when he’s finished with ye, ye’ll go back to whatever village produced ye, and that’ll be the end of it. ”
Ava felt the words land exactly as intended, felt them deeply, and then something steadier rose from within.
“A father doesnae abandon his daughter for two years and appear in a stable like he’s done nothin’ wrong and expect a welcome.” Her voice was quiet and entirely serious. “A father doesnae leave bruises. A father doesnae make a child flinch at footsteps.”
She took one step toward him, which surprised him.
“She was six years old when ye left her here. Six. And she spent the first three weeks in this castle too frightened to speak above a whisper.” She held his gaze.
“That’s what yer fatherhood amounted to.
A six-year-old who didnae ken how to be in a room without waitin’ to be punished for it. ”
“Ye daenae ken anythin’ about what happened,” William said, and something moved behind his eyes, a flicker that might have been genuine. Gone before she could be sure. “Ye daenae ken anythin’ about me, or me marriage, or the circumstances.”
“I ken what I see,” Ava said. “And what Esther shows me every day without meanin’ to. That’s enough.”
“Ye smug little…” He stopped. Reassembled the pleasantness, piece by piece. “Whatever ye think ye ken about this family...” he said, more quietly. “Ye’re a visitor here. Ye’d do well to remember that.”
“I’m nae a visitor,” she said. “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
The words surprised her just as much as they surprised him. She’d thought them before but had never spoken them so plainly. Not like that.
“Is that right?” Something shifted in his expression, the calculation clicking back in, the recognition that she’d given him something. “Ye think ye belong here. In me family’s castle.” A pause. “Interestin’.”
The slap came fast.
The back of his hand, sharp and contemptuous, was the kind of slap that was more about sending a message than causing harm. It snapped her head to the side and left her cheek burning, with her ears ringing.
She straightened. Kept her eyes on him.
“That is for speakin’ above yer station,” William said.
The stable went very still.
Until a voice came from the entrance.
“Get away from her.”
Noah stood in the doorway.
He wasn’t moving yet, and somehow that made it worse. Completely still with the light at his back, with the kind of stillness Ava recognized from the council room, from the courtyard, from every moment she’d watched him decide that a situation needed control before it needed action.
He looked at William with an expression she had never seen on him before. Not anger, something colder than anger—the look of a man weighing a decision he would need to handle very carefully, or something irreversible.
“Brother.” William turned with ease that was almost admirable. “We were just gettin’ to ken each other.”
“I said, get away from her!”
William stepped back, deliberately pacing himself.
“She insulted me,” he said, spreading his hands in the gesture of a reasonable man. “She insulted the Laird’s own brother. Discipline within a household kens that she needs to be punished.”
“She,” Noah said, crossing the stable toward Ava without taking his eyes off William, “is mine.”
“Is she?” William’s eyes moved between them, the calculation almost visible. “So it’s true. Ye’ve fallen for the help.” He clicked his tongue. “Father would’ve had something to say about that.”
“Ye daenae get to speak about what our father would have said. Ye lost that right a long time ago.”Noah stopped beside Ava.
She felt him glance at her cheek briefly and precisely before turning back to William. “Ye gave up Esther. Ye have no claim on her or right to be on this land.”
“She’s me blood.”
“She’s me ward. And she’s me daughter in every way that matters, which is more than ye can say.” His voice didn’t rise. Didn’t need to. “I was there when she arrived. I was there for the bruises and the nightmares and the two years she wouldnae speak above a whisper. Where were ye?”
He glared at his brother.
“Ye put yer hands on a woman under me protection. On me land.” A pause. “Leave now, William. If I find ye within a mile of either of them again, I will stop being yer brother and start being yer Laird. And ye’ll find those are very different things.”
William looked at him for a long moment.
The pleasantness came back, practiced, polished, worse than the anger.
“She’s changed ye,” he said. “I want ye to hear that. Ye can be reached through her now. A laird who can be reached is a laird who can be brought down.” He glanced at Ava one final time, not contempt, just the cold filing away of a man noting a resource for later. “I’ll go. For now.”
He walked out.
His footsteps faded across the courtyard. The stable grew quiet—just Bess shifting in her stall, the wind through the high windows, and Ava’s heartbeat, which was louder than she’d like.
Noah turned to her.
“Let me see,” he said.
“I’m fine.”
“Ava.”
She turned her face toward him. He lifted one hand and touched her jaw, tilting her face toward the light from the high window, his thumb brushing once across her cheekbone just below where the slap had landed.
His touch was careful and contained, and it was also his hands, and she was aware of both simultaneously in a way that was entirely inconvenient given the circumstances.
“It’ll bruise,” he said.
“I’ve had worse.”
“That isnae the reassurance ye think it is.” His thumb didn’t move from her cheek.
His eyes were still on the mark, not her face, with the focused attention of someone who was using the examination to keep himself from doing something else. “Are ye all right?”
“Esther,” she said. “We need to find Esther.”
He dropped his hand. “Elliot has her. She ran the whole way and spoke to him, stammerin’ and shakin’ and cryin’. Told him exactly what happened.” Something moved through his expression. “She did well.”
“She always does.” Ava let out a slow breath. “She’s braver than she kens.”
“There’s something I need to tell ye,” Noah said.
“William has been asking questions about ye for over a week. Who ye are, where ye came from, whether ye have family.” He held her gaze.
“I had scouts watchin’ him. I kent, and I didnae tell ye.
I was waitin’ until I had more information before tellin’ ye.
I cannae say how they were careless enough to let him slip by them.
But they will be answerin’ to me for their actions. ”
“A week,” she said.
“Aye.”
She looked at him.
The warmth of his hand still lingered on her face, or maybe just the memory of it, which was close enough. She kept that alongside what he’d just said and felt the two things sit uncomfortably together, which was probably the right reaction.
“Ye should have told me,” she said.
“Aye.” He didn’t deflect it. “I should have. But I didnae want ye scared.”
She held his gaze long enough for him to understand she meant it. Then she looked toward the stable door, where the light came in cold and clear.
“We deal with it from here,” she said. “But Noah.” She looked back at him. “Daenae do that again. Decide what I need to ken and when. That’s nae yer call to make.”
He looked at her steadily. “Understood.”
“Right,” she said. “Take me to Esther.”