Her stomach twisted.
Food.He probably went for food.
She followed the smell.
The kitchen was its own territory, hot and loud. Heat rolled out, thick with onions, herbs, and meat. The cooks moved around one another without thinking, knives rising and falling, spoons scraping pots. A spit turned over the central fire, fat hissing where it fell.
Emma stopped by the door.
On the nearest table lay a cut of meat she recognized too well. It was scored, the spices rubbed in, with a small pot of sauce beside it, darkening to the exact shade she remembered from the night she had watched Logan eat as if nothing else in the world existed.
Her heart sank.
Of course. That dish.
She remembered Isobel had once called it his favourite. It was the same one they made when he had been gone for too long.Or when he was about to leave.
The heat in the room seemed to climb straight into her face.
“What is this for?” she asked. The sharp edge in her voice caught her by surprise.
The head cook, a broad woman with a thick plait down her back, looked up, eyebrows rising. “Me Lady?”
“This.” Emma pointed at the meat, the sauce, and the neat piles of herbs. “For what?”
“For supper, me Lady,” the cook said slowly. “For the Laird.”
Emma’s throat tightened. “Because he is leaving?”
“Leaving?” The cook frowned. “Nae that I have heard. David sent word that he will eat in the hall. Said the Laird liked it very much.” Her frown deepened. “Is he leaving?”
Emma let out a breath so hard she had to catch herself on the edge of the table. Relief washed over her in one rude rush that left her knees weak.
Perhaps he isn’t leaving anymore.Perhaps he decided to stay.
“No,” she said. “He is not. He is not.”
Saying it twice steadied her and irritated her both.
How quickly had she come to that conclusion? How ready her mind was to fill any blanks with absence.
Heat of another kind crept up the back of her neck, and she straightened her shoulders.
The cook watched her now with a careful respect, as if Emma might knock over a pot if approached from the wrong side.
Emma looked again at the meat on the table. At the care in the scoring, the measured pinches of spice, the way the cook nudged the pan on the fire, making sure the heat caught the bottom and not the sides.
An idea came to her.
“What can I do?” she asked.
The cook’s mouth fell open. “Do, me Lady?”
“Yes.” Emma stepped into the kitchen, her skirt brushing a sack of flour. “Tell me.”
“Ye?” The cook set her knife down, as though it felt wrong to grip a blade while her mistress talked about work. “Me Lady, ye daenae need—we have it in hand.”
“I want to,” Emma insisted. “He has eaten pirate food and your food for months. He has never eaten anything I made. I would like to change that.”
