“Are what?”
Jack cleared his throat. “Unsettled, me Laird.”
Logan felt something in his chest go hot and sharp. “They eat, dance, and play in me dining hall with beasts at the door?”
Jack nodded, then realized how that might sound. “Nae on the tables, me Laird. But near enough. She set rules. Names. It is like a… like a court of cows and goats.”
Logan’s jaw locked. “She did all of this in the days I have been gone?”
“Aye. David thought ye should ken. He didnae say it, but I… think he worries the castle is changing too fast while ye are at sea.”
Logan rose so suddenly that the bench scraped across the floorboards. Jack flinched despite himself.
On one hand, the anger was simple. Logan had left a fortress, and she was turning it into a barn. Beneath that, something else twisted. The image his mind conjured was too clear. Emma standing in the middle of his hall with her chin lifted, surrounded by noise and life and people who looked to her for orders about feed and rope and where the goat was allowed to roam.
A small, treacherous part of him wanted to laugh. Of course, she would not sit quietly. Of course, she would build something that made it impossible to ignore her presence.
He crushed that spark at once.
“Get ready,” he ordered.
Jack blinked. “Ready?”
“Aye. We are going back to the castle. Today.” Logan did not have to raise his voice. The words carried in the narrow space.
Pete, who had appeared in the doorway and was leaning against the frame with his arms folded, straightened a little.
“That’s it?” he asked lightly when Logan stepped past him. “A few goats and ye abandon the sea?”
“Mind yer tongue,” Logan snapped.
Pete’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing more.
Back on deck, the wind hit harder. The horizon lay ahead, open and grey, the path they had meant to take clear in front of the bow. Logan stared at it for a breath, then turned his head toward the faint strip of land behind them.
He had always thought nothing could pull him off the water once he set a course. Storms, enemies, hunger. Those he met and cut through. Now, a soaked guard and talk of a woman filling his hall with animals had him ordering the ship around without a second thought.
It terrified him how much of an effect Emma had on him.Especially since nothing else had ever affected him this much before.
The calf did not seem to understand the point of the game.
Emma stood in the middle of the Great Hall with her sleeves rolled, hair pinned off her neck, and skin damp at her throat. The candlelight threw soft patches across the stone, catching on scattered straw and the sheen on the calf’s nose. The little creature blinked at her, head tipped, as if weighing her choices.
She held up the ball of yarn. “Margaret, we have spoken about this,” she said. “You fetch, I throw. You bring it back. That way, we both feel rather clever about ourselves, do we not?”
The calf gave a doubtful sound that was almost a sigh.
Emma threw the yarn anyway. It bounced on the floor, rolled away, and stopped near one of the benches.
“Go fetch,” she urged.
Margaret turned around and walked straight past the yarn, stuck its nose almost against her face, and bleated loud enough to make her ears ring. Then it dropped its head and tugged at a bit of hay on the floor.
“That is not fetching,” Emma chided. “That is breakfast.”
The yarn kept rolling. It bumped a small carved cup on a low table. The cup tipped and hit the floor with a loudclack. She winced, then straightened as if nothing had happened.
Jenny appeared in the doorway with her skirt clutched in one hand, eyes wide and amused at once.
