Chapter Twenty #2
He’d spent considerable effort convincing Anastasia their kiss had meant nothing. The lie had worked better than he’d expected—which was exactly what he’d wanted, he reminded himself, even as he was beginning to doubt that entirely.
Another glance showed Anastasia and Etta paused by Dearbhail's cottage.
The older woman emerged, speaking to Anastasia, who turned to his sister with a questioning look.
Etta must have translated, because a moment later Anastasia smiled at Dearbhail, who reached out and touched the pale braid hanging over her shoulder with open curiosity, from which Anastasia did not recoil.
Bram watched the quiet interaction and was confronted by another uncomfortable truth: Anastasia was not keeping Craig na Coille at a distance.
The castle walls were making a place for her.
The thought sent a confusing surge of pleasure through him, followed by a sharp, juvenile resentment as he watched her smile at Etta.
He hadn't seen a smile like that, not directed at him, since the night before he'd sent her away with his lies.
He’d thought returning home would restore order to his life.
He’d find the traitor, gather his men, seek his vengeance, and resume his duties.
Instead, he’d brought home a problem he couldn't solve with a sword.
Every argument he'd made for keeping his distance from Anastasia was dissolving, leaving him with a truth he was not yet ready to face.
***
“Wait,” Anna interrupted, trying to follow the story through Etta’s heavily accented English. “They’re arguing over whose sheep it is?”
“Aye. Mòr says the ewe bears her mark, while Beitris says the mark was poorly made and has faded enough that it might belong to either of them.”
“But surely they recognize their own sheep.”
Etta gave her a funny look. “They all look the same, dinna they?”
Anna laughed. “I guess so. But how long has this been going on?”
“Since yesterday morn, though Fearchar sent them both away after Mòr called Beitris a thieving old—” Etta stopped herself, her blue eyes dancing. “I canna say—Mam would slap me for repeating.”
Anna frowned unhappily. “Your mother’s not here,” she reminded her, “Lean over and whisper, why don’t you?”
Etta laughed outright and did just that, curving her hand near Anna’s ear. She said something, presumably in Gaelic, which Anna could not understand, and thus the fun was lost.
“You’re going to need to translate—”
She paused as the doors at the far end of the hall opened, and her attention shifted instinctively toward them.
Bram entered with another man—named Harsain, she’d since learned, the longtime captain of Brma’s army, the one who’d brought word to Craig na Coille that Bram had been captured months ago.
She immediately dropped her gaze to the bread on her trencher, her fingers tightening around her cup at the same time. Three days at his home, and her eyes still sought him out. She really needed to work on that.
“Madainn mhath,” Etta called past her.
Anna looked up then because pretending she wasn’t even aware of his presence would have been childish, and watched him stride across the hall toward the table.
Even the way the man walked was attractive, which particularly annoyed her.
There was nothing lazy or awkward in his gait, no slouch to his shoulders or unevenness to his stride.
Bram moved with the same easy athleticism she’d noticed in nearly everything else he did, his back straight, his steps long and certain without appearing hurried.
He didn’t swagger, either, which might at least have given her something to dislike.
He simply crossed the hall with the unconscious confidence of a man perfectly comfortable in his own body and perhaps equally comfortable knowing that eyes watched him.
But seriously? Was there nothing physically unattractive about Bram MacCailin she could seize upon?
Bram answered his sister in Gaelic before turning his attention to Anna and repeating the incomprehensible words to her.
Anna couldn’t help smiling a little. “Yeah, I haven’t picked up the language yet,” she said, not unkindly.
His mouth shifted at one corner. “Forgive me. I failed to recall—”
“No worries—your sister had kindly promised to correct that,” she allowed. “Good morning.”
“And to ye.”
There. Perfectly civil. She turned her gaze back to Etta, refusing to grant him a moment more of her attention or herself the hope that always seemed to follow.
She turned back to Etta. “So what happens if Fearchar can’t figure out who owns the sheep?”
Etta said, not quite dismissively, “Fearchar will sort it. He always does.” She sipped from her cup and spent the next half a minute picking out a certain dark seed from the bread in front of her.
Unlike the formal supper, breakfast was a fluid affair. People came and went as their work demanded, and servants moved between the half-occupied tables with bread, cheese, and ale.
“So what exactly does Fearchar do?” Anna asked. “I know you said he’s Bram’s steward, but what does that actually mean?”
Anna had already learned that Bram’s younger sister required very little encouragement once launched upon a subject, and Anna was happy to learn and be distracted all at once.
She liked Etta. The girl was sweet and curious and possessed none of the wariness Anna had initially feared she might encounter here.
Better still, Etta seemed genuinely interested in Anna rather than merely suspicious of her strangeness, and Anna found herself relaxing around her with surprising ease.
“He sees to the running of Craig na Coille.”
“Which means...?”
“The servants, the kitchens, the stores, the stables—though the stablemaster answers for the horses themselves. Fearchar sees that there is grain enough, meat and fish salted for winter, malt for ale, peat and wood laid by. He keeps account of what is used and what must be bought or traded for.” She paused, clearly thinking, and then added, “He collects rents and dues from Bram’s tenants and sees that what is owed to Craig na Coille is delivered when it ought to be. ”
Anna’s brows rose, but Etta was plainly nowhere near finished.
“He keeps the household accounts and pays what Craig na Coille owes. If a roof needs mending or a wall repaired, Fearchar sees men are put to it. He settles quarrels among the servants, assigns work when there is need of more hands, arranges lodging when guests come, and sees that everyone is seated where they ought to be when Bram entertains.”
“Holy sheesh,” Anna said, imagining it might have been easier to ask what the steward didn’t do.
“When Bram is away,” Etta went on, “folk bring lesser disputes to Fearchar as well. A disagreement over rents or grazing, a boundary between holdings, someone claiming another has failed to give what is owed. Anything he can settle without Bram, he generally does. Anything he cannae, he brings before him.”
Anna finally did ask, “Is there anything he doesn’t do?”
Etta frowned thoughtfully. “He doesnae command Bram’s fighting men. That is Harsain.”
“Okay, good. I was beginning to wonder when he slept.”
Etta laughed. “Fearchar says he’ll sleep when he dead.
” She tossed a small chunk of bread into her mouth and said, “In truth, Mam manages just as much, right alongside him, certainly all the household stores. She kens every grain of oats that enters the keep, and she has more direct authority over the household staff.”
Anna was amazed and began to imagine that she might understand more as days went by, and she witnessed each or any of those parts in action.
“And where ye come from?”
Anna turned and looked at Bram, who’d spoken. He sat two chairs away from her this morning.
He had finished eating and sat with one forearm resting beside his trencher, watching her with an attentiveness that caused a blush to rise in her cheeks.
“What about where I come from?” she asked. He had said where, not when, she realized.
“Would a household be managed in much the same fashion?”
“No,” she answered. “Not really.”
Etta immediately asked, “Who keeps the stores, then?”
“We don’t really have stores like this, not as you’ve described. Not in an ordinary home, anyway. People buy what they need.”
“From a market?”
“Basically, yes.”
Etta frowned. “And if the market has naught?”
“That doesn’t happen very often.”
“But in winter?”
“We still have food in winter.”
“How?”
“Oh, um,” she stalled, and managed only, “that’s a much longer conversation.”
Etta laughed. “I have naewhere to be.”
She explained as simply as she could that most people where she came from did not grow or preserve the majority of their own food, that enormous numbers of people were involved in producing and transporting it, and that ordinary families generally bought what they required rather than storing enough grain or meat to survive an entire winter.
“So ye dinna keep a garden?” Etta asked. “Chickens?”
“No.”
“A cow?”
Anna laughed. “Definitely no cow.”
“Then what did ye keep?”
“A coffeemaker and several houseplants I was slowly killing.”
Etta tilted her head, her expression arrested in confusion.
“Never mind.”
She told Etta that she lived alone in a small townhouse, which produced another round of questions about why an unmarried woman would have an entire house to herself, wanting to know who cooked for her, who washed her clothes, who made her bed.
“I do all that,” Anna answered, becoming a little bit uncomfortable, almost wishing she’d invented some medieval answer to suit them. “I like living alone.”
“?Tis nae safe.” Bram’s voice cut cleanly into her conversation with Etta.
Anna’s gaze shifted to him. There was nothing provocative in his expression, but the remark felt more personal coming from him.