She held on longer than she meant to, pressing her cheek gently to Lily’s.Goodbyeseemed too harsh a word, and she knew she didn’t want it to be forever.
“I’ll see you again,” she whispered, more to herself than to the child. “It won’t be forever. I want to watch you grow up, Lily.” Her arms ached with emptiness when she finally gave the baby back to Ivy. She forced a smile, but her eyes burned. “I knowAlaric wanted to go now, in deference to the weather,” she said. “Maybe in the spring, I’ll be able to walk away from...here.”
Ivy nodded, but asked one more time, “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.” She thought to qualify, “For now, anyway.”
“Alaric said messengers moved regularly between Caeravorn and Braalach, so you can write to me at any time,” Ivy offered, and then whispered lower, “if you need rescue.”
Alaric’s voice boomed across the yard then, announcing it was time to go.
Claire embraced Ivy, mindful of the baby between them. “Thank you for being such a good friend.”
“You, too,” Ivy cried softly. “Oh, God, I’m going to miss you so much.”
A minute later, Claire watched as the MacKinlays departed, Ivy and Lily situated on the seat of a wagon, Alaric at the helm of the party exiting the yard.
Claire stood rooted, the wind lifting her hair, watching until they disappeared beyond the bend in the road. The yard quieted again, emptied of noise and color.
She pulled her plaid tighter, exhaling slowly. She had made her choice. Whatever the reason—fate, madness, or a little bit of both—Caeravorn held her now.
Chapter Twelve
The Last Plenty
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A few days passed, the rhythm of Caeravorn settling into something quieter, emptier. The only change for Claire was in the evenings—she no longer ended her day in Ivy’s chamber, sharing the quiet company of a friend and the comfort of holding the baby. Alaric, Ivy, and Lily were gone, and their absence left the keep a little colder.
Still, each morning and afternoon found her in the sick house. The work was steady, demanding, sometimes disheartening, but it gave her purpose. Callum still needed watching, Diarmad still needed training, to her way of thinking, and she liked to think the other men, too, appreciated her efforts and maybe even her company.
To her surprise, she had also been invited to join the servants for supper in the kitchen. The offer had come directly from Mairi, the broad-shouldered, middle-aged woman who spoke a little English and had always been quick to help whenever Claire came seeking supplies or advice. Mairi had made a place for her at the long table inside the kitchen, insisting she needn’t eat alone in her chamber. Claire hadn’t realized how much she missed easy company until then. Shy at first, she soon found herself warmed by the fire, laughing at things she only half understood, grateful for the small sense of belonging. Thereafter, she thought of the kitchen rather as the breakroom, where the keep’s workers shared meals and camaraderie. She often sat next to a shy maid named Evir, a particular favorite of Ivy’s, who had begun to teach Claire a bit of their Scots’language, definitely a slow process, challenges met immediately by its complex pronunciation and unusual sound combinations.
Being welcomed into the kitchen, as it were, made it hard not to notice, however, how the keep—and the kitchen in particular—grew noisier and busier with each passing day. Women from the village hauled in baskets of onions and roots, men delivered barrels of salted fish and meat, and the pantry and larder filled to the brim. Outside, she saw sides of beef carried on poles, hides being scraped, and boys trotting past with armfuls of firewood, creating fat piles in the bailey and all around the village. Claire loved the communal effort of it, and thought if not for her own busyness inside the sick house, she wouldn’t mind pitching in.
At supper one night, Mairi explained why everyone seemed busier now than when Caeravorn had housed another laird and his army.
“’Tis the Last Plenty,” she said, her usually undemonstrative face lit with quiet excitement. “We fill our bellies afore the lean months come. Else by Christmastide we’d all be gaunt as crows.”
“The Last Plenty,” Claire had repeated softly, struck by the phrase. Practical, yet poetic. A final feast, a fattening against the lean season ahead, before winter thinned larders and stomachs alike.
Then, exactly, ten days after Alaric and Ivy had left, the hall was transformed—the Last Plenty supper was here. Torches flared in iron brackets, casting leaping shadows across the high beams. Rushes had been strewn fresh, mixed with sprigs of rosemary to sweeten the air. The trestle tables groaned under their burden: roasted lambs glistening with fat, pigeon pies she vowed not to touch, platters piled high with sweetbreads—one of Claire’s favorite things—wheels of soft cheese, an array of boiled, broiled, and baked fish, and a vat of newly-brewed ale that frothed when dipped.
Ciaran had taken the high seat, somber but watchful as his people poured in, their voices rising to a cheerful din.
Claire found herself at the lower end of one table, she and Evir seated across from an old soldier, now farmer, and his wife, the man sporting a patch over his left eye. They offered her food readily enough, and tried to include her in conversation, at which she smiled and with Evir’s help, was sometimes able to reply. She nodded along, hiding her wonder, intrigued by such liveliness when mostly the people of Caeravorn seemed too busy and too burdened for fun.
Between so much food gracing each table and the pleasant company, she had enough to entertain her, and yet her head swiveled constantly, intrigued and enlivened by the atmosphere. It was unlike any dinner she had ever known, and yet she thought it suited her more than she expected, all the laughter, the voices raised in song, the fire warming her face. For the first time since arriving at Caeravorn, she didn’t feel like an intruder in someone else’s world. She felt, if only faintly, part of it.
Sometimes her spinning gaze landed on Ciaran, though she tried not to stare at him. But then that was rather difficult, since he wasn’t wearing either his customary scowl or simply his “everyday” clothes but seemed to have dressed for the occasion. His usual fawn-colored tunic and dark breeches had been traded for one of a deeper hue, the linen cleaner and finer, belted neatly at his waist. The heavy folds of his breacan were fastened with a bronze brooch at his shoulder, catching the firelight when he moved. It was not finery—not formal by modern standards—but it seemed a deliberate choice, a mark of respect for the feast.
And though he sat so still amid the riot of his hall, his dark eyes missing nothing, he appeared, at least to Claire’s mind, generally pleased with the festive atmosphere. It struck her as odd, seeing him content rather than grim, as though he’dbeen allowed one night’s reprieve from the normal weight of command.
She chewed her lip, sneaking glances at him, since she hadn’t spoken to him since the day he’d agreed to let her remain at Caeravorn. She thought it strange that she’d crossed paths with him only once in that time, in the yard late one afternoon, he coming from the keep while she’d been walking toward it. They’d exchanged brief, polite greetings in passing, that was all. Otherwise, she’d hardly seen him at all. Whether that was deliberate on his part or simply the demands of a laird’s life, she had no idea. But the question gnawed at her sometimes, as it did now: had he been avoiding her, or was he simply that busy? Though she told herself repeatedly she’d chosen to remain at Caeravorn for the wounded, for the work she was doing in the sick house, she knew deep down that Ciaran was also part of her reasoning, and the greater distance between them of late was bothersome, and she felt it more keenly than she wanted to admit.
The merriment of Last Plenty deepened as the night wore on, likely aided by the liberal consumption of ale and wine. The old man with the patch said something across the table to her, hard to understand even if she did have a good grasp on the language, the din having increased dramatically.
His wife surprised Claire by speaking English for the first time that night. “He’s heard tell ye are right skilled in the sick house,” she said, her words careful but clear. “He wonders, had ye been here when he lost his eye, if it might have been saved.”
