“I am glad,” Isla replied. “The laird needs someone to make him look less like the castle and more like a man.”
Ariella bit back a laugh. “What does that mean?”
Isla flushed. “Only that he is… solid. And quiet. And sometimes one feels that if one spoke too loud, the walls might crumble from the shock.”
Ariella did laugh then, the sound surprising her with how easily it came. “I daenae think he will crumble.”
“Nay,” Isla agreed gravely. “He would only stare until ye wished ye had crumbled.”
By the time Isla finished helping her unpack, Ariella knew four of the servants by name, that Isla’s maither, Mairi, ruled the kitchen and Mrs. Macrae the corridor, and that Ewan had once tried to ride one of the laird’s horses bareback and been caught halfway by Finley.
She also knew that Hunter’s flight had not caused the scandal she might have feared.
Isla continued the conversation that had started down in the solar as she folded one of Ariella’s gowns and laid it carefully in the chest. “Mister Hunter does nae like being told what to do. He comes and goes as he pleases.”
“That is nae very responsible,” Ariella said.
“It is nae very anything,” Isla replied. “It is just him.”
Later that afternoon, she began her campaign.
If the keep needed a lady, then it would have one. She might not know yet how to help with treaties or grain accounts, but she knew what made a hall more bearable in winter and what colors cheered a tired eye.
She started with the dreadful curtains.
They hung high in the hall, strips of fabric that might once have been red but now sagged in a tired, brownish gloom. The edges were frayed. One sagged more than the other, making the whole wall seem crooked.
“This is an emergency,” she informed Isla.
Isla frowned. “What sort of emergency?”
“An emergency for the eyes,” Ariella said. “If I stare at that long enough, I will begin to see it in me sleep. Come, we shall find Mrs. Macrae.”
Which was how she found herself, not long after, marching across the hall where Maxwell and Finley stood over a map.
Both men looked up as she approached.
Maxwell’s gaze landed on her first, steady and unreadable. Finley’s mouth tipped into a grin.
“Ah,” Finley said. “The hall grows brighter already.”
Ariella decided she liked Finley very much and that it would be wise not to say so aloud in front of the laird.
“Laird Maxwell,” she said, coming to a halt near the table. “This requires yer attention.”
He did not look impressed. “What does.”
“The curtains,” she said, pointing.
There was a small, incredulous silence.
Finley folded his arms, clearly delighted. “Curtains.”
“Aye,” Ariella said. “They are a menace.”
Maxwell’s brows lowered slightly. “In what way do ye find them menacing.”
“They are falling to pieces,” she said. “They are the color of old mud. They drag the whole hall down like a sad tale. It is an emergency.”
