“My lord!” Bertram’s voice cracked across the moment. “The merchant from York has arrived early. He waits in the courtyard.”
Gareth’s hand dropped. His expression smoothed into the cool mask he wore in public, and Elodie felt the loss of his almost-smile like a physical ache.
He signed to her.We will speak later.Then he was gone, striding toward the courtyard with Bertram hurrying in his wake, leaving Elodie standing in the middle of the hall with her skin still tingling where he’d touched her.
Marian appeared at her elbow. “Are you well, my lady? You look...” She made a face that suggested flushed and distracted.
“Fine,” Elodie managed. “I’m fine. Just—it’s warm in here. Very warm.”
Marian’s knowing grin suggested she wasn’t fooled for a moment. Then, her expression shifted to something more businesslike. “The refugees—they’re settling in well. I’ve assigned the new families to quarters in the east wing, and the children are already learning signs.” She ticked off items on her fingers. “Cook needs approval for the increased rations. The weaver’s wife wants to know if we need more wool set aside ere winter comes. And Sir Miles asked me to tell you the patrol schedules have been updated—he’s put the new signs into practice.”
Elodie stared at her. Four months ago, Marian had been a kitchenmaid who flinched at shadows. Now she was running half the castle’s communications.
“When did you become so terrifyingly competent?”
Marian’s gap-toothed grin returned. “I’ve always been capable, my lady. I just didn’t have a language for it before.”
The afternoon found Elodie in the herb garden with Old Wynne, her hands buried in fragrant soil as she helped harvest the last of the summer’s bounty—fat bundles of lavender and rosemary ready for drying, thyme gone woody and potent in the early September heat. The old healer worked beside her incompanionable silence, her gnarled fingers surprisingly gentle as they stripped leaves into a waiting basket.
“He watches you,” Wynne said without preamble.
Elodie’s hands stilled. “What?”
“Lord Gareth.” Wynne didn’t look up from her work. “Watches you like a hawk watches a mouse. Only softer. He thinks no one notices, the witless man.”
“I—we’re—” Elodie fumbled for words. “We’re friends. I’m teaching him to sign.”
Wynne snorted. “Taught plenty of folk plenty of things in my time. Never looked at any of them the way he looks at you.” She sat back on her heels, fixing Elodie with her sharp, rheumy gaze. “’Tis plain as day, lass. You’re good for him. Good for this castle. Whatever brought you here—storm or magic or the Good Lord’s own hand—you belong.”
The words hit Elodie like a blow to the chest.You belong.Such a simple thing to say. Such an unthinkable thing to believe.
But when she opened her mouth to argue—to explain that she was a visitor, a temporary anomaly, a woman out of time who might leave eventually, somehow, someday—she found she couldn’t.
Because maybe, despite everything, Old Wynne was right.
Evening painted the sky in shades of rose and amber as Elodie walked the battlements, wrapped in her thoughts rather than her cloak—the early September air still held the day’s warmth, soft against her bare arms. Below, the inner bailey bustled with the day’s final activities—horses being led to stables, chickens shooed into coops, servants carrying buckets of water and armfuls of firewood.
And in the training yard, a small figure stood facing a much larger one.
Elodie leaned against the merlon, watching as Gareth adjusted young Thomas’s grip on a practice sword. The stableboy couldn’t have been more than ten, all skinny limbs and oversized enthusiasm, but Gareth treated him with the same patient attention he’d give a knight who’d won his spurs. His hands guided the boy’s arms through the motion of a basic strike, slow and careful, correcting the angle of the blade with gentle pressure.
Thomas tried again. The sword wobbled. He grimaced, then—inexplicably—made a face of exaggerated suffering.
Gareth’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Thomas signed something Elodie couldn’t quite see, and Gareth’s shoulders shook in what might have been silent laughter. He signed back, and Thomas’s face lit up with fierce concentration. He squared his shoulders. Reset his stance. Swung.
The practice blade cut cleanly through the air—not perfect, but passable. Good enough that Gareth’s stern expression softened, and he reached out to ruffle the boy’s hair.
The gesture was so quick, so unconscious, that Elodie wasn’t sure Gareth even realised he’d done it. But she saw Thomas’s face change—saw the worship in the boy’s eyes, the desperate hunger for approval that Gareth probably didn’t understand he was feeding simply by paying attention.
Her vision blurred. She blinked hard, but the tears came anyway, sliding down her cheeks in hot trails.
I love this man, she thought, and the thought no longer terrified her.I have for months.
Below, Gareth looked up. Across the yard, across the gathering dusk, their eyes met.
He signed.Are you well?
