Chapter 5 #2
She had read it as a man acting on evidence. Had told herself that was all it was.
She pressed the pestle down with steady pressure.
"I didnae win anythin'," she said. "I gave him information and he acted on it. That's nae the same as winnin'."
She saw Mairi was considering this with the look of someone who disagreed but was deciding whether to say so.
Catriona noted that.
The pause, the restraint, the choosing. Not what she'd expected from a girl who talked the way Mairi talked.
"Eidith says ye're to come to the hall for the evenin' meal," she said finally. "Nae optional, I think. Those were her exact words, nae optional."
"Of course they were."
"She also said," Mairi paused again, and this time something more careful moved across her face. "She said if anyone gives ye trouble at table, to tell her after and she'll handle it herself. She didnae explain what she meant by trouble."
Catriona set the pestle down. Looked at Mairi directly. "But ye ken what she meant."
Mairi held her gaze for a moment.
"Some of the men are still uneasy. About how fast James improved. About the fox." She glanced at the animal in question, who was asleep in the corner with extravagant completeness. "About ye bein' here at all. They're nae sayin' anythin' yet, nae with the Laird about, but they're thinkin' it."
Catriona absorbed that.
It was nothing she hadn't walked into before, in a dozen different forms, in a dozen different places. The shape of it was always the same. Something they couldn't explain, so something to be afraid of, so something to be rid of.
She'd stopped being surprised by it years ago. She hadn't stopped finding it heavy.
"Thank ye," she said, and meant it.
Mairi nodded once. Quick, almost businesslike, as if she'd delivered what she'd come to deliver and the rest was someone else's to carry. Then she brightened again, back to her usual self.
"Fox moved three pairs of boots this mornin'. Nobody kens where he's put them."
Catriona looked at the fox. It did not open his eyes.
"He does that," she said. "Daenae leave anythin' ye care about on the floor."
Mairi laughed, short and genuine, and took herself back down the corridor.
Catriona sat alone at the worktable with the elecampane and the comfrey and the information Mairi had left behind, and thought about halls and dinner tables and men who hadn't said anything yet.
Nae yet.
She picked up the pestle and kept working.
The plant resisted him as if it had made a personal decision about it.
Anthony crouched at the base of the east wall in the grey light before sunrise, one gloved hand wrapped around the stem of something small and deeply uncooperative, and pulled.
The roots held.
He pulled with more intention. The roots held with equal intention.
He shifted his weight, changed the angle, and pulled a third time.
The plant released all at once and he rocked back on his heels, catching himself with one hand against the wall before he went down entirely.
Which was the only acceptable outcome because Fergus was standing eight feet away, watching all of this with his arms folded and the expression of a man who had a great deal to say and was choosing his moment.
Anthony examined the plant. Compared it to the others still in the ground.
Narrow stem. Pale underside on the leaf. Grows near stone, out of direct sun, nae in the open.
He'd paid more attention to that particular conversation than he'd given any outward sign of.
He discarded one stem that didn't look right, pulled three more, worked along the small cluster with the kind of careful attention he generally reserved for matters of considerably greater importance than plants.
"Me Laird," Fergus said.
"Nay."
"I've nae said anythin' yet."
"Ye're about to." Anthony crouched again, working at a stubborn root. "Whatever it is, keep it."
Fergus was quiet for approximately four seconds. "I only thought, ye could have sent a servant for this."
"I could have."
Anthony straightened, brushed dirt from the leaves with more care than was strictly necessary, and began sorting through what he'd pulled, setting aside the ones that looked right, discarding the rest.
"And by the time the mornin' meal was cleared, half the keep would be whisperin' I dote on the woman."
Fergus considered this. "And this is less conspicuous."
"Nobody saw me."
"Aye," Fergus said, with the tone of a man exercising considerable restraint. "Nobody saw ye."
"Wipe that expression off yer face."
"This is just me face, me Laird."
Anthony tied the bundle with the cord he'd brought. Pulled the knot firm, checked the stems were secure.
He held it out without looking at Fergus directly, because looking at him directly would require acknowledging the grin that was happening there, and he had no interest in doing that.
Fergus took the bundle with the care of a man who understood that the next thing he said could go a number of ways.
He was smart enough to say nothing.
"Herb room," Anthony said, already turning toward the gate. "Her worktable. Leave them there and come away." He pulled off his muddy gloves as he walked. "Say nothin' about where they came from."
"And if she asks?"
"She willnae ask."
He knew this with certainty.
She would find the herbs, identify them correctly, within about ten seconds. Know exactly where they'd come from and under what circumstances, and she would say absolutely nothing about it.
Because she was the kind of woman who absorbed information quietly and drew her own conclusions without needing anyone to hand them to her.
That was the part that irritated him.
Not that she was sharp. Sharp, he could work with, sharp was useful.
It was that she never gave him the satisfaction of reacting. Never pushed back when he expected it, never let him see what she'd filed away or what she'd decided.
She simply knew things about him now that he hadn't chosen to give her, and she carried them without comment, and he had no way of knowing what she intended to do with any of it.
He'd understood that about her before the end of the first day. He had not yet decided whether it was a problem.
He crossed the courtyard as the keep came to life around him.
Men moving at the far end, the clang of the smithy starting up, smoke rising from the kitchen, the smell of bread cutting clean through the cold morning air.
Ordinary sounds. His sounds, the sounds of a household running as it should.
He listened through all of it for the one sound he always checked first.
From the upper east wing, thin, but there. James. Breathing.
He stopped in the middle of the courtyard and counted the rhythm without appearing to count anything.
Steadier.
Marginally, measurably steadier. The kind of improvement that meant nothing on its own and everything in the right direction. He'd stopped letting himself think the word healed a long time ago. It invited too much.
But better than yesterday, that he would take. That he allowed himself.
He stood there with mud on his boots and his empty hands at his sides and the cold of the morning moving around him.
Something in his chest loosened by a fraction.
Daenae.
He told himself immediately.
She was working. The boy was steadier. That was the whole of it. Nothing more than that and he was not going to make it into anything more than that.
"Fergus," he said. "The herbs."
"Already goin', me Laird." Footsteps, moving away toward the keep entrance.
Anthony turned toward the hall.
He had a full morning of actual work waiting. Correspondence from MacLennan, the matter of the northern pasture boundary, two men in the yard who needed their assignments reviewed.
He knew exactly where her window was.
His feet slowed anyway.
He walked beneath the east wing window without looking up at it.