Chapter 12 #2
“Excellent.”
“And he looks angry.”
“Even better,” she murmured, mostly to the oak door frame.
A short, cautious pause. “I ken nae to bother him when he looks angry.”
“Wise lad.” She reached out and tugged gently at his ear, just enough to make him swat her hand away with an indignant huff that did not hide his grin. “Ye’ll go far.”
Brian watched her with those steady, dark eyes. She could practically see him recalculating.
She straightened fully, smoothing her skirts. “I willnae be fightin’ this morning. I have affairs to attend to.” She looked at him softly. “If ye’d like to help me see to them, ye’re welcome to come. If ye’d still prefer a fight, yer uncle is at the woodpile.”
Brian fell into step beside her without another word.
He stayed exactly three paces behind her when they reached the kitchens, where she immediately had to settle the morning’s first dispute.
Two MacLaren kitchen girls and one MacGregor woman had developed incompatible, fiery opinions about the correct method for salting winter pork. Alba listened to all three, asked two sharp questions, and delivered a verdict that satisfied nobody completely but resolved the matter entirely.
When she turned, she found Brian standing on his tiptoes beside the heavy worktable, examining a tarnished copper pot with intense personal interest.
“What’s that smell?” he asked.
“Rendered fat.”
“It’s terrible.”
“Aye.” She caught him gently by the shoulder, steering him away from the steaming pot, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Daenae tell the cook I said so.”
He looked up at her, delighted by the secret, and mimed locking his mouth shut with one small fist.
“Come.”
He followed her to the storerooms for the grain count. There, he stood beside John O’Connor with the wooden sword still gripped tightly in one fist, watching the sacks. Halfway through the barley tally, he tugged hard on her sleeve.
“Yer handwritin’,” he said, staring down at the thick ledger she was marking, “looks more frightenin’ than Uncle Sebastian’s face.”
John O’Connor made a sudden, choked sound into his fist.
Alba kept her eyes locked on the ledger, her quill pausing. “Thank ye, Brian.”
“It’s very jagged.”
“I will bear that in mind.” She glanced sideways at him, lips twitching. “Shall I write yer name in it, and ye can tell me if it frightens ye too?”
Brian considered this proposal, then nodded once, solemnly, as if agreeing to a duel. She scrawled his name with an extra flourish at the bottom of the page and turned the ledger toward him.
He studied it, squinting. “Aye. Frightenin’.”
She laughed and had to set the quill down for a moment to recover.
“Uncle Sebastian’s is bad too,” Brian went on, entirely unbothered by her amusement. “But his is just big. Yers looks like it’s angry at the page.”
She pressed her lips together, but laughed again despite herself. She set the quill down, then deliberately picked it back up. “Would ye like to help me count the oat sacks or would ye like to go back to the woodpile?”
He helped count the oat sacks. He miscounted twice and announced both errors himself. She found herself hiding a sudden smile behind the heavy ledger.
By midmorning, he had stopped trailing three steps behind. He walked right beside her, his small legs adjusting to her longer pace without either of them remarking on the shift.
He asked if the castle had any horses he could name. He asked why the South Storeroom smelled of damp earth while the North one smelled of dry grain. He asked, very seriously, if she had ever been in an actual battle. When she said no, his face fell in disappointment before brightening again.
“Uncle Sebastian has been in seven,” he said, describing two of them.
“He sounds very brave,” she said carefully, her chest tightening slightly at the reminder of the violence that shaped the man.
“He is.” Simple. Certain. It was the way children stated things they had never thought to question. “He’s the bravest person I ken. Except,” Brian frowned, his small brow furrowing as he recalculated. “Maybe ye’re the same brave.”
“I am nae certain that’s true.”
“Ye daenae look scared of him. Most people look scared of him.” He glanced up at her sideways. “Do ye nae think he’s frightenin’?”
She thought about the dim corridor. His forehead pressed hard against hers in the suffocating dark; the rough catch in his breathing when she had looked directly at his mouth.
“Sometimes,” she said. The truth slipped out, more honest than she had ever intended.
Brian accepted this with a slow nod, apparently satisfied with the diplomatic answer, and immediately moved back to asking about the naming rights to the horses.
The servant schedule took most of the late morning. She worked through the parchment at the small table in the upper corridor, redistributing duties now that the MacGregor households needed to be incorporated into the castle’s daily rhythm.
Brian sat directly across from her, the wooden sword resting across his knees. He had produced a thick piece of bread from somewhere and ate steadily, watching her write.
She was reassigning the linen duties when he suddenly slid off the bench. He came around to her side of the table, leaning in to look at the parchment over her shoulder.
“That word,” he said, pointing a crumb-dusted finger. “What does it say?”
“Philomena.”
“That’s a long name.”
“It is.”
“Longer than Sebastian.”
“Also true.”
He considered this, filing it away as relevant data, and went back to his bench and his bread without further comment.
They crossed the courtyard together just after midday, cutting toward the kitchen garden where she needed to speak with the groundskeeper about the winter frost beds.
The cold had settled in heavily overnight.
The cobblestones were glazed with a thin, slick frost that had not lifted despite the pale midday sun.
Brian slipped his hand into hers.
He did not look at her when he did it. He did not announce the gesture or ask for permission. His small, cold fingers simply found hers between one step and the next and wrapped tightly around them. He adjusted his pace to match hers and kept walking.
Alba looked down at his small hand, swallowed by her own.
The wooden sword was tucked securely under his other arm. His dark curls were escaping whatever comb someone had forced through them this morning. There was a small, dark smear of kitchen grease on his left cheek that she had not noticed until now. She would mention it in a moment.
Something in her chest went quiet. It was a sensation she did not have a name for. It was not soft, in a way; perhaps quieter than soft.
She looked up. Sebastian was directly across the courtyard.
He stood with his back to the woodpile, a heavy iron axe resting against one broad shoulder.
He was not chopping wood. His linen shirt was damp through at the chest and between his massive shoulders, dark with the cold sweat of hard, punishing physical labor.
His sleeves were rolled past his elbows despite the biting frost.
His expression was entirely devoid of the careful, deliberate blankness he wore in the Great Hall or the Study. It was a raw, heavy look—something she could not find a word for and chose not to analyze. It was an expression that broke through his control before he could put the mask back on.
She remembered the corridor. She thought about the distinct, rough quality of his voice when he had said her name.
She remembered waking up this morning, lying perfectly still with her palm flat against the cold stone wall, suddenly realizing in a panic that she only had two days left and had no idea what she would do when the time ran out.
He had kissed her in a dark corridor, and then, this morning, he had been chopping wood, looking angry.
He had not sought her out. He had not appeared in a doorway, a kitchen, or a staircase the way he had every other morning for the past few days.
She did not know what to do with the sudden ache of his absence.
Insufferable brute.
She turned abruptly, her jaw clenched, and continued walking. She grasped Brian’s hand even tighter, her eyes locked on the wooden kitchen garden gate ahead.
From the corner of her eye, she saw the sharp, violent crack of an axe driven into a splitting block with far more force than the timber needed.
She did not look back. She kept her chin high, Brian’s hand in hers, and her pace exactly where it was.