Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mairi arrived for her third herb lesson.
Catriona noticed a bunch of dried lavender and a jar of honey she'd brought as a gift.
Catriona didn't know if she had the intention of memorizing anything.
The first two lessons weren't very productive.
She watched Mairi set the items down, the girl's movements a little too quick, a little too bright.
"Lavender for sleep," she said, setting the bunch on the worktable with the air of someone who had done their preparation. "That's the only one I remember." She gave a small, sheepish grin that made her eyes sparkle.
"Lavender for sleep, for anxiety, for mild inflammation of the skin, for headaches when applied to the temple, and as a component in three different compound preparations.
" Catriona set the honey to one side and pulled the lavender toward her.
"Which of those did ye want to start with?
" She kept her tone dry, though her eyes were soft.
Mairi sat down and her hands found her knees and stilled there. Whatever she had walked in with, she was reassessing it. Her shoulders were tense, and she kept darting glances toward the door.
"Ye ken Donal's nephew arrived yesterday?"
"I didnae." Catriona pulled a sprig of lavender from the bunch, her fingers nimble.
"Aye. Big lad. Red hair. He looked at me at supper and then looked away, which Eidith says means he's interested, but I think it means he was looking at the bread behind my head." She tilted her head. "What do ye think?" She chewed her lip, her expression a mix of hope and doubt.
"I think," Catriona said, setting the lavender into the mortar, "that I cannae tell ye anything useful about Donal's nephew from this room.
I can tell ye that lavender requires a light hand with the pestle or the volatile oils break down and ye lose half the potency.
" She began to grind, her movements precise.
"Right." Mairi watched her grind. "He did look again later though." Mairi's voice was small, almost a whisper.
"At ye or the bread?"
"Me." A pause. "I think." A soft flush of pink rose to Mairi's cheeks.
Catriona pressed the pestle down. "What did Eidith say?"
Mairi brightened immediately, because this was what she had come for.
"She said I should speak to him at the evenin' meal and say somethin' intelligent.
She said," Mairi straightened her spine and arranged her expression into Eidith's precise severity.
"'A man worth havin' notices a woman who has somethin' to say.
A man nae worth havin' willnae listen regardless, so ye lose nothin' either way.
'" She mimicked the sharp, crisp tones of Eidith's voice perfectly, her brow furrowing with the effort.
Catriona looked up.
"That's," She paused. "That's actually good advice."
"I ken." Mairi deflated slightly. "It's annoyin' when she's right.
She's always right. It's one of her more exhaustin' qualities.
" She picked up a dried sprig of something from the edge of the table and turned it between her fingers.
"What's this one?" She examined the herb with forced intensity, trying to hide her smile.
"Elecampane. Daenae eat it."
Mairi set it down. "I wasnae going to eat it." She looked at Catriona, her eyes wide with mock-offense.
"Ye were examinin' it like ye were considerin' it."
"I examine things. It's a character trait." She folded her hands in her lap. Her shoulders dropped, just slightly. Here, then. This was what she had come for. The teasing light left her face, replaced by a more sober focus.
"Eidith told Cook yesterday that anyone who had a problem with the healer's presence in the keep could take it up with her directly." She let that sit for a moment. "Nobody has taken it up with her directly." Mairi's gaze was steady, her expression full of a quiet pride.
Catriona kept her eyes on the mortar. She felt a sudden, sharp prick of emotion in her chest, a sense of protection she hadn't known she had.
"There were two of the older men," Mairi continued, her voice dropping to the register she used for information she'd decided was important, "who were sayin' things in the yard after the last supply run.
About the fox. About James improvin' too fast." She paused.
"Eidith heard. She didnae say anythin' to them.
" Mairi's jaw tightened, her eyes flashing.
"That's unlike her," Catriona said.
"She assigned them both to the north wall inventory instead." Mairi's mouth curved. "In the rain." A small, triumphant smile touched her lips.
Catriona said nothing.
She ground the elecampane and listened to the fire and thought about a woman with silver-threaded hair and a spine like a blade set on its edge.
Who had looked at her that first morning in the courtyard and said I keep order here and had meant it in more directions than one.
She felt a surge of respect, her shoulders straightening as she worked.
"She willnae say it," Mairi said. "Ye ken that.
She'd rather eat those boots Seumas is always threatenin' to eat.
But she watches for ye." She glanced toward the door and back.
"They all do, a bit, now. Seumas. Donal.
Even Fergus, and Fergus didnae watch for anyone who hasnae been here at least a decade.
" Mairi's voice was warm, and she reached out to briefly cover Catriona's hand with her own.
"Mairi."
"Aye?"
"What does elecampane do?"
Mairi looked at the jar. "Strengthens the lungs," she said, without hesitation.
"Ye use it in James's second-stage preparation.
Ye make it on Tuesdays and Fridays and ye leave it to steep for exactly four hours because ye told me once that anything less is insufficient and anything more turns bitter.
" The girl spoke with a sudden, sharp confidence that made Catriona stop.
Catriona stopped grinding.
She looked at Mairi. Her eyes were wide with genuine surprise.
Mairi looked back at her. She had not stopped what she was doing. She had not needed to. She met Catriona's gaze with a steady, defiant brightness.
"Ye were listenin'," Catriona said. Her voice was soft, a little breathless.
"I'm always listenin'." Mairi reached forward and straightened the jar of honey she'd brought. "I just talk while I do it." She gave a small, elegant shrug, her eyes dancing with amusement.
Supper that evening had the particular quality it had developed over the past two weeks. Settled, almost routine, the hall filling at the same pace, and the fire going.
The particular arrangement of people that had established itself without anyone deciding on it.
Catriona at the middle of the table beside Mairi.
Donal three seats down, talking without looking up.
Fergus to Anthony's left, working through his supper with his head down, methodical, not pausing between bites.
Eidith moving between the kitchen and the hall. A word here, a look there, never stopping, never rushed, everything running in her wake.
I ken these people now.
The thought arrived quietly, without fanfare, and she let it sit there without examining it too closely.
Fox was under the table. He was always under the table at supper. Catriona had stopped pretending she didn't know this. She felt the brush of his fur against her ankles, a secret, comforting weight.
She was listening to Mairi describe an increasingly elaborate theory about the significance of where Donal's nephew had positioned himself at the table when she felt it.
The particular quality of stillness that moved through a room when something had just happened and not everyone had registered it yet.
She looked at Anthony's plate.
The piece of roasted meat that had been occupying the near edge of it was gone.
Not eaten. No motion of fork to mouth, no displacement of the other items on the plate. Simply gone.
Under the table, Fox moved. Nobody heard him do it. No scrape of claw, no thump of flank, nothing.
Oh, ye absolute menace.
She felt it start in her chest before she could stop it. The press of it up through her throat, the absolute inevitability of it.
She laughed.
Not the contained kind, not the kind she managed.
The kind that escaped before the door was closed on it, bright and real and too loud for a woman sitting at a laird's table who was supposed to be keeping a professional distance from the proceedings.
Mairi beside her dissolved immediately. Seumas made a sound that was half-cough, half-surrender. One of the kitchen lads at the far end of the table abandoned all pretense and put his face in his hands.
Catriona pressed her fingers to her mouth. It didn't help.
She looked up, because she couldn't help that either, and found Anthony watching her.
Not the plate. Not Fox, wherever Fox had taken himself and his prize. Her.
Look away.
His expression had the quality it sometimes had. Neutral on the surface, something else entirely underneath. The thing she kept catching at the edges and not quite being able to name before he put it away again.
He was watching her laugh and not looking away, and the steadiness of it, the deliberateness of it, pulled the breath out of her mid-exhale.
She stopped laughing.
She didn't mean to.
Her mouth was still curved, her shoulders still shaking slightly with the last of it, but the sound stopped because he was looking at her with that expression and something in her chest went very quiet and very careful.
Name it.
Some stubborn part of her pushed.
Look at it straight and name it.
She couldn't.
A heartbeat. Two.
He looked away first.
He cleared his throat, a small, gravelly sound in the quiet. His hand reached calmly for the bread at the edge of his plate. He tore a piece. He ate. Unhurried. Cut the next piece. Nothing in his manner suggested the last few seconds had happened.
But she saw the way his fingers were stiff as he held the knife.
So he did feel it.