“Only to scurry back to the service hall like the rat he is the moment Argyll returns, so I heard,” Ian put in. “The man puts on airs far above his station. Good thing for me, I suppose, as the man disnae ken I’m here. I’ll have to be on my way when he resumes his proper place.”
“Then I hope the duke stays wherever he is.”
The two men shared an inscrutable look at her comment.
“Aye, might be better all around if Argyll never returned,” Ian said, pushing his drink aside. “Bad gone to worse, if ye want my opinion.”
“I dinnae,” Finn grouched, and tore a hunk off the last piece of bread on the platter they shared.
The sight of it turned Aila’s thoughts away from the steward and back to Boyce. She’d heard Niall ask Boyce earlier what else he milled. The answer hadn’t truly registered until now. “How is it we eat bread like this when the only mill about grinds oats and nothing else?”
Finn grunted in contempt and tossed the remainder of the bread back on the platter as if too disgusted to finish it. It rimmed the edge like a ball in a hoop and skittered along the table and over the edge where Rab happily gulped it down. “Derne ships in wheat flour from England for the duke. The pair think they’re too lofty to eat an oatcake like the rest of the country. Only one of them has the excuse of being a bloody Sassenach.”
“If ye hate him so much, why do ye work for him again?”
Ian smirked at her question and lifted a brow to his friend. “Aye, why is it ye work here?”
It was in no uncertain terms — and a few foul ones — that Finn told Ian where he could go. Another few to Aila with apologies for his language.
She didn’t have a problem with the language he employed. God knew, her normal vocabulary was far more colorful. What she did add to her arsenal of things to contemplate was the true reason Finn had taken the position here in Inveraray.
And why he refused to speak of it.
* * *
A short while later, Aila returned from taking Rab for a turn around the empty bailey to find that, having finished their meal, the men were ready to retire for the evening. It couldn’t have been past nine, and she wasn’t used to such early hours. No telly to kill time. No music since her phone battery had died. With only one book with her and no better way to pass the long hours, the previous night prior to Finn’s arrival had proven tedious despite Rab’s comforting weight stretched out alongside her. Tonight would be another long night.
Alone, if Finn didn’t come around again.
The shepherd led the way down the passage, stopping along the way to sniff at the bases of the statues. Finn was close behind. Aila found that odd as the men tended to have a ladies first approach to such things. Ian trailed behind her and asked her to name the statues for him with the explanation that Finn had told him about it earlier. She named them as they passed by with one of Ian’s rare smiles as her reward.
Whether Finn smiled or not, she couldn’t see. He didn’t slow his pace until they’d reached the top of the stairs.
“Game of whist, Ian?”
“Nay, no’ tonight.” Ian shook his head. “I’m still reeling from the twenty pounds I lost to ye last night.”
They played cards while she’d settled for a hundredth reading of Agatha Christie’sThe Murder at the Vicarage? As much as Aila loved that book, envy shot through her. She crossed her fingers that Finn would ask her to play even though she didn’t know the game. Unfortunately, his brooding gaze passed over her with no such invitation. He bid his friend good night and left them both on the landing.
“He likes ye.”
Aila scoffed at Ian’s hushed observation. “Oh, obviously.”
Finn entered his room and closed the door without a look back. With a sinking heart, she glanced up at Ian only to find a smirk on his lips. “What?”
“Ye like him as well.”
“Maybe.” She punctuated the word with an evasive shrug.
“I beg ye to go after him.” The quiet desperation in his voice surprised Aila. If anything, he tended to lean toward sarcasm or indifference in his normal tone. He glued his eyes on the ceiling, studying the roughhewn planks as thoroughly as she studied him.
“Finn and I have been friends for as long as I can recall. We were schooled together, traveled together, and attended university together. He is my son’s godfather, and I, his. If I were inclined to talk about my feelings, the greatest would be my concern for him.”
He dipped his chin to look at her, his brown eyes unsettled. Running a hand through his hair, he looked down the hallway to Finn’s door. “He’s traveling down a path from which there may be nae return. Dinnae let him lock himself and his troubles away. He’s been doing so for far too long. Ye’ve accomplished in days what I could nae in months. Ye’ve taken his thoughts off vengeance and given him hope.”
Aila shoved aside the leap in her heart in favor of clarification. “Vengeance for what?”
He shook his head. “That isnae my story to tell. All I ask is that ye dinnae let the darkness continue to call him. He’s a much better man when in the light. We all are.”
