Chapter 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Three weeks later, Caitlin appeared in Ava’s doorway with her cap slightly crooked and an expression that could only mean one thing.
“I have news,” she announced.
Ava looked up from the list she was making, herbs for the kitchen garden, a project she’d proposed to the head cook and been granted with somewhat startled enthusiasm. “Is it urgent news or gossip news?”
“It’s both.” Caitlin came inside and sat down on the edge of the bed without being invited, which was how Ava knew it was genuinely important to her.
“Margaret from the kitchens says she overheard the Laird telling Elliot that there’s to be a handfastin’.
” Caitlin watched Ava’s face with the careful attention of someone who had been waiting to have this particular conversation for some time.
“A specific handfastin’. In the near future. Possibly with a feast.”
Ava looked back at her list. “Margaret has excellent hearin’.”
“She does. She says she wasnae even in the corridor, she was in the scullery.” A pause. “Ava.”
“Caitlin.”
“Ye’re gettin’ married.”
“I am.”
Caitlin made a sound that was somewhere between a squeal and a gasp, threw herself across the bed, and hugged Ava so tightly the sheet crumpled.
Ava threw back her head and laughed, holding her just as tightly back.
“I’m so happy for ye,” Caitlin said, muffled against Ava’s shoulder. “I kent it. I kent it from the moment I saw the way he looked at ye that first week. I said to Morag, I said, that man is done for, and Morag said I was seein’ things.”
“Ye were seein’ things.”
“I was seein’ the future.” She pulled back, eyes suspiciously bright. “Have ye told Esther yet?”
“Noah told her.” Ava smoothed the crumpled list. “She didnae say anything. She just looked at him very seriously, and then she looked at me, and then she came and sat in me lap.” She paused.
“She’s eight. She doesnae entirely understand what a handfastin’ means yet.
But she understood the part where I said I was stayin’. ”
Caitlin pressed her lips together. “That bairn.”
“Aye,” Ava said quietly. “That bairn.”
There was a small, comfortable silence.
“Right,” Caitlin said, straightening up and pulling from somewhere in her apron a small folded piece of paper. “I’ve been thinkin’ about the dress. I ken ye havenae asked me to, but I’ve been thinkin’ about it anyway.”
Ava took the paper with the resigned affection of someone who has long since accepted that Caitlin’s help was going to arrive whether requested or not.
She unfolded it. There was a surprisingly detailed drawing, considering Caitlin’s usual approach to tasks, of a dress with a fitted bodice and what looked like a plaid sash.
“The MacGregor tartan,” Caitlin said, pointing. “Over the shoulder. It’s traditional for a handfastin’. And the blue of the dress would suit yer colouring.”
Ava looked at the drawing for a moment. At the sash. At the implication of it—the clan colors worn deliberately, a statement of belonging made visible.
She had spent most of her life feeling like she belonged nowhere.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
Caitlin beamed. “I’ll speak to the seamstress.”
The kitchen lesson had been Esther’s idea, or close enough to it.
Ava had mentioned the week before that she was thinking of starting a small herb garden—something practical, something that grows, and something to do with her hands early in the mornings before the household fully woke.
Esther had appeared at her elbow the next day with a look that meant she had decided she was involved.
They went to the kitchen on a Thursday morning, when the head cook, Mrs. Ross, was in the village and the kitchen belonged to the scullery maids and anyone else who wanted it.
Ava had gathered the herbs from the castle’s existing stores. Some dried, some fresh from the cold frames, and laid them out along the big worktable in the way she liked things, in order.
Esther climbed onto a stool and surveyed the arrangement with the serious, methodical attention she brought to anything she found genuinely interesting.
“There are a lot,” she said.
“There are.” Ava picked up a small bunch of dried thyme and held it out. “What does that smell like?”
Esther leaned forward and sniffed. Thought about it. “Like the soup Uncle Noah likes.”
“Exactly. That’s thyme. It’s good in soups and stews, anything that cooks for a long time, because the longer it cooks, the more flavour it gives.” She set it down and picked up the next. “This one?”
Esther sniffed again. Her nose wrinkled. “That one is strong.”
“Very strong. That’s rosemary. Ye use less of it than ye think ye should, and it’s very good with lamb.” Ava pinched a small piece off and rubbed it between her fingers, releasing the oil. “Smell that.”
“Oh.” Esther’s eyes went slightly wide. “That’s better.”
“The oils are in the leaves. When ye crush them ye let them out.” Ava held her fingers out for Esther to smell. “That’s why ye always bruise herbs before ye add them, it wakes them up.”
Esther considered this with the gravity of someone filing information away. She reached out and pinched a rosemary sprig herself, rubbing it carefully between her small fingers, then held them to her nose.
She smiled, the unguarded kind, the one that had taken months to appear and now came more easily every week.
“What’s that one?” She pointed to the next bundle along.
“Sage. Very good with pork, and also, and this is the important part, very useful for settlin’ a sore stomach. If ye ever feel queasy, a sage tea is better than most things the healer will give ye.”
Ava moved along the row. “And this is lavender, which is nae for cookin’, usually, though ye can use a little in sweets. Mostly it’s for sleepin’. A lavender sachet under yer pillow.”
Esther looked interested. “Does it work?”
“For me it does.” She picked up the lavender and held it out. “What do ye think?”
Esther leaned in, closed her eyes while she smelled it, then opened them. “I think it smells like the linen cupboard.”
“Because Mrs. Murray puts sachets in the linen. She’s done it for years.” Ava set the lavender down. “Now, the ones ye have to be careful with.”
Esther straightened on her stool, which meant she was paying the closest possible attention.
“Everything we’ve smelled so far is safe to eat, in the right amounts.
But there are herbs that look similar to safe ones and arenae.
So the first rule of any herb garden is: if ye daenae ken it, ye daenae touch it.
” Ava held up a finger. “Second rule: if ye’re nae certain, ye ask.
There’s nay shame in askin’. The shame would be in nae askin’ and gettin’ it wrong. ”
“What happens if ye get it wrong?”
“Depends on the herb. Some will just give ye a sore stomach. Some are considerably worse.”
She picked up a small illustrated page she’d brought from the library, an old herbal, its margins soft with use. “Which is why we have books. Other people have already made the mistakes. We learn from them instead of repeatin’ them.”
Esther looked at the illustration with interest. “Can I borrow that?”
“Ye can keep it. I made a copy of the pages we’ll need.”
Esther took the herbal with both hands and the careful reverence she gave to all books, a habit she’d developed since learning to read, as if each one were something valuable that could be taken away.
She set it on the edge of the table where she could see it.
“Now,” Ava said, “I want to teach ye somethin’ practical. We’re goin’ to make a herb butter.”
“What’s that for?”
“Everything. Toast. Vegetables. Fish, if Cook gets fish from the coast. It takes ten minutes, and it improves almost any meal.” She brought over a small ceramic bowl, a block of butter softened near the hearth, and a knife. “Ye’re going to chop the herbs. I’ll show ye the grip first.”
Esther’s chopping was careful and just a bit slow, with the focused look of a child who had been told to be precise and took it very seriously.
The thyme came out in pieces of varying sizes. Ava did not correct the unevenness. It didn’t matter, and Esther’s face when she finished had the particular satisfaction of someone who had done something real.
“Now we fold it in,” Ava said and guided her through it.
The butter yielded slowly beneath the back of the spoon, the herbs disappearing into the yellow, the aroma rising warm and inviting in the cool kitchen air.
“It smells like a proper kitchen now,” Esther said.
“That’s what herbs do. They make a place smell lived in.” Ava handed her a small piece of bread, slightly stale, and nodded at the bowl. “Try it.”
Esther spread the butter with the careful concentration she applied to everything, took a bite, and chewed. She looked at Ava.
“It tastes like the herb,” she said, as if this were slightly surprising.
“Most things taste like what ye put in them,” Ava said. “That’s the whole of cookin’, really. It just takes a while to understand which things go together and why.”
Esther finished the rest of the bread. Then she looked at the remaining herbs on the table with a contemplative expression that Ava was starting to recognize—the look that meant she was formulating something in her mind, making connections.
“Could I have a plant?” she asked. “To grow. In me window.”
“Which one?”
“The lavender.” She glanced at it. “So me room smells like the linen cupboard.”
Ava looked at her. At this child who had arrived in this castle half-starved and silent and had slowly, carefully, piece by piece, decided she was allowed to want things.
Small things, at first. More food. A book. A walk by the loch. And now: a lavender plant for her window, because she liked the smell.
“Aye,” Ava said. “We’ll get ye a cuttin’ from the garden. Lavender’s easy to grow, it doesnae need much fussin’ over.”
“Like me,” Esther said, matter-of-factly, and reached for more bread.
Ava busied herself tidying the herb bundles so that Esther wouldn’t see her expression.
She found Noah that evening in the library, where he was more often than not when there was no crisis requiring him elsewhere.
He was reading something she couldn’t see the title of and had his boots off, which was the closest he came to visibly relaxing.
He looked up when she entered. His eyes settled on her with a kind of attention that was unlike anything she’d seen before, a steadiness that wasn’t performative.
“How was the kitchen?” he said.
“Good.” She sat down in the chair across from him. “Esther wants a lavender plant for her window.”
“I’ll have the gardener sort it.”
“I told her I’d take a cuttin’. It’s nae difficult.” She paused. “She said something today.”
“What did she say?”
“I was telling her that lavender doesn’t need much fussing over.” She looked at him. “She said, like me.”
Noah was quiet for a moment.
“She said it plainly,” Ava said. “Nae sad. Just matter-of-fact. Like she was simply observin’ somethin’ true.” She thought about it. “I think she’s decided she’s all right. I think she’s been decidin’ it for months, and today it just came out.”
Noah set his book down. He was looking at her with that expression e that had taken her a long time to understand wasn’t reserve or distance but was, in fact, the closest he came to saying things he didn’t have words for.
“Thank ye,” he said.
“Ye daenae need to thank me for that.”
“I do,” he said it plainly. “I daenae ken how to do what ye do with her. I never did.” His voice was even. “She’s different because of ye. This castle is different because of ye.”
Ava looked at him steadily and didn’t argue, which was something she was gradually learning to do—accept what was true without immediately searching for a counterargument.
“Come here,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “I’m readin’.”
“Ye werenae. Ye were starin’ at the same page for ten minutes before I came in.” She held his gaze. “Come here.”
He came. He sat on the arm of her chair, which was not its intended use, and she leaned her head against his arm, and they stayed like that for a while in the warm library, quiet with the fire burning low and the rest of the castle going about its evening entirely without them.
Outside, somewhere down the corridor, she could hear Esther’s voice. Reading aloud to herself, the way she’d started doing lately, practicing the sound of words in the air.
Her stutter was still there, but she no longer stopped when she felt it coming. She pushed through it now. She’d decided the stutter was just part of how she talked, and that was that.
Ava listened to her read.
This is it. This is the thing. Nae the handfastin’, nae the dress, nae any of the occasions Caitlin was so eager to arrange. Just this, a warm room, a child reading aloud down the corridor, a man sitting badly on the arm of a chair because ye asked him to.
This was what she’d been afraid to want too much.
She decided she was done being afraid of it.