Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Is that me supper?"
The question came out before he'd fully processed what had happened.
One moment the plate was in front of him. The next, a flash of red fur, a sound like a small deliberate theft, and the slice of roasted meat was gone.
The hall went quiet.
Anthony looked at the empty space on his plate. Looked at the fox, who had arranged himself on the bench beside Catriona with the unhurried satisfaction of a creature that had accomplished exactly what it set out to accomplish and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.
It chewed. Slowly. Without the smallest indication of remorse.
Every man at the table was watching him. Waiting. The hall had the particular quality of a room full of people deciding very carefully not to make a sound.
Anthony looked at Catriona.
She was looking at the fox.
"What do ye call it?" he asked.
"Fox," she said calmly.
As if this were the most reasonable answer available, which she clearly believed it was.
"That's nae a name."
She lifted one shoulder. "Well. It is nae a cat. And he considers names unnecessary."
The fox, as if following the conversation with interest, turned its head toward Anthony.
Regarded him for a moment with amber eyes that conveyed nothing resembling apology. Then it turned its back. Deliberately, unhurriedly, and settled closer against Catriona's side.
From the far end of the table, Mairi burst into laughter and clapped both hands over her mouth.
The sound died in her palms but her shoulders kept shaking.
Beside her, two kitchen lads were staring at the tablecloth.
The hall waited.
Anthony watched the animal for a long moment. It continued chewing with complete composure, tail curled neatly, ears turned slightly away, the posture of a creature that had assessed the situation and found it satisfactory.
He exhaled through his nose.
Of all the plates on this table, mine?
"I am besieged," he said. Not to anyone in particular. To the situation itself. "First a healer who disobeys every instruction given to her. Now a beast that steals me supper in front of me entire clan."
"He has good instincts," Catriona said.
She was failing, visibly, to suppress the mirth around her mouth.
Anthony looked at the fox gravely. The fox did not look back. It had, apparently, concluded that he was no longer the most interesting thing in the room.
Aye. Of course.
"Aye." He reached for his cup. "Disrespect runs strong in yer household."
He heard it leave him before he could stop it. A short, quiet laugh, the kind that escaped when something caught you entirely off guard. Four seconds at most. He returned his expression to neutral immediately.
But the hall had heard it.
From the far end of the table, Mairi had abandoned all pretense, both hands pressed to her mouth, shoulders shaking openly.
Beside her, the two kitchen lads exchanged a sideways glance and allowed themselves small, careful grins, the kind that said they'd be talking about this for a month.
Even Donal, at the far end of the table, had set down his cup and was studying the grain of the wood with an expression of profound interest.
Fergus had found something extremely important to look at on the far wall.
I'll be hearin' about this from Fergus until spring.
Catriona's smile reached her eyes properly then, briefly, before she pulled it back.
She reached for her cup and said nothing more, but the warmth of it sat in the air between them for the rest of the meal. He found, to his considerable irritation, that he didn't particularly want it to end.
The fox finished the meat, cleaned his whiskers with one paw, and went to sleep against her hip.
Anthony did not ask for his supper to be replaced.
He found her the next morning with her pouch half-packed and her back to the door, tying herb bundles with the focused efficiency of someone who had already made a decision and was simply preparing to execute it.
He'd seen Fergus in the corridor a minute earlier, and Fergus had given him the particular look that meant,
Something is about to require your attention.
He stopped in the doorway.
"Ye're nae leavin'."
She didn't turn immediately. Kept tying. "I require lungwort. Yer stores are insufficient."
"Ye will ask before stepping beyond me gates."
She straightened then, slowly, and turned to face him. "I am nae yer prisoner."
"Nay." He held her gaze. "But ye are under me protection."
Her eyes sharpened. "Protection does nae require permission." "In me lands, it does."
The silence that followed had weight to it.
The particular weight of two people who had both decided not to move first.
She was good at this. Better than most men he'd faced across a table. She stood with her arms loose at her sides and her chin level and looked at him with the direct patience of someone who could do this all morning.
"I will be gone but an hour," she said at last. "Or do ye fear I shall vanish into the hills?"
"I fear many things." He kept his voice even, his gaze steady on hers. "Ye among them."
Something shifted in her face. Brief, involuntary, there and gone.
Her fingers stilled against the bundle of herbs in her hand, the twine slipping slightly before she tightened her grip on it. She looked at him for a moment that ran a beat longer than she'd intended.
Then she folded her arms. "Then come with me."
For one brief moment, clean, immediately unwelcome, he almost said yes.
The market. An hour. Her moving through stalls with that particular attention she gave things. The fox at her heels, no crisis requiring him, no one watching.
"I have duties."
"Of course," she said. Lightly.
The lightly was the problem. It landed somewhere between permission and dismissal, and she knew it.
He stepped closer, dropping his voice below the range of the corridor.
"Ye will nae leave alone."
"I always leave alone."
Not here. Not while I can stop it.
"Nay longer." He turned from her before the thought could form any further. "Fergus."
His man-at-arms appeared with the promptness of someone who had been nearby on purpose. "Me Laird."
"Ye will accompany the healer to the market and back." He kept his gaze on Catriona while he said it. "She doesnae leave yer sight."
Fergus looked between them with the expression of a man who had walked into the middle of something and was identifying the safest position to occupy. "Aye, me Laird."
Catriona went still. The particular stillness she had when she was composing a response she intended to be precise.
"I need nay guard," she said. Quiet. Controlled.
"Ye have one."
Fergus cleared his throat. "I'll keep me distance, lass. Just orders."
She didn't look at him.
Her gaze stayed on Anthony, and in it was something he recognized, not anger, not quite. The look of someone who had been told the terms of a situation they'd had no hand in designing and were deciding how much of themselves to spend on fighting it.
"Very well," she said. Quieter still. "If ye must parade me as spectacle."
The words landed with more precision than she'd probably intended, or perhaps exactly the precision she'd intended, which was the more likely option.
He felt something tighten in his jaw that he kept from showing.
"Return before dusk," he said.
She moved past him.
Her shoulder brushed his arm as she went through the doorway, deliberate, unhurried, not accidental.
A statement delivered without words.
He did not stop her. He watched her move down the corridor, Fox falling into step at her heel as if he'd been waiting outside the door the whole time. Which he probably had, until she turned the corner and was gone.
Fergus appeared at his shoulder and said nothing. Which was, occasionally, his best quality.
"Make sure she's back by dusk," Anthony said.
"Aye." A pause. "She'll be fine, me Laird. She kens how to handle herself."
"I'm aware of what she can handle." He turned back toward the study. "That's nae what concerns me."
He didn't explain further. Fergus had the sense not to ask.
He spent the afternoon in the yard.
Not training, he had men for that, and they didn't need him standing over them to do it properly. What he needed was something to do with his hands and his feet that wasn't sitting still.
He walked the perimeter instead, the way he did when he needed to think without appearing to think.
Hands clasped behind his back, pace steady, eyes on the walls and the gate and the guards rotating their posts. Anyone watching would see a laird doing a routine inspection.
Which he was. Also other things.
The east stable roof had been repaired. Properly this time, timber replaced rather than patched, which meant Duncan had taken the Friday deadline seriously.
He noted it without commenting.
Good.
Praise given too freely lost its value, but he filed it. Duncan had earned the next one.
He stopped at the far end of the yard where the outer wall met the gatehouse and looked down the road. Empty. She'd left an hour ago. She'd be in the village by now, or close to it.
One escort. Within sight.
He turned away from the gate. Quickly, the way a man turned away from something he'd checked more than once already.
Old Seumas was on his knees in the corner plot near the east wall, talking to something in the soil.
He was the keep's gardener, had been for thirty years, and he treated the grounds as his personal domain and everyone else as tolerated visitors within it. Anthony had always respected that.
A man who knew his ground was worth keeping.
Anthony stopped beside him. Looked down at the row of newly turned earth. "What are ye plantin'?"
Seumas did not look up. "Winter kale, me Laird. If ye daenae disturb the roots with yer great boots standin' that close."
Anthony took a small step back. "Yer joints?"
"Bad."
"Have ye spoken to the healer?"
A pause in the digging.
Seumas sat back on his heels, looked up at him. "She gave me a salve last week," he said, grudgingly. "For the hands."
"Did it help?"
Another pause. Longer this time.