She set it on the edge of the table where she could see it.
“Now,” Ava said, “I want to teach ye somethin’ practical. We’re goin’ to make a herb butter.”
“What’s that for?”
“Everything. Toast. Vegetables. Fish, if Cook gets fish from the coast. It takes ten minutes, and it improves almost any meal.” She brought over a small ceramic bowl, a block of butter softened near the hearth, and a knife. “Ye’re going to chop the herbs. I’ll show ye the grip first.”
Esther’s chopping was careful and just a bit slow, with the focused look of a child who had been told to be precise and took it very seriously.
The thyme came out in pieces of varying sizes. Ava did not correct the unevenness. It didn’t matter, and Esther’s face when she finished had the particular satisfaction of someone who had done something real.
“Now we fold it in,” Ava said and guided her through it.
The butter yielded slowly beneath the back of the spoon, the herbs disappearing into the yellow, the aroma rising warm and inviting in the cool kitchen air.
“It smells like a proper kitchen now,” Esther said.
“That’s what herbs do. They make a place smell lived in.” Ava handed her a small piece of bread, slightly stale, and nodded at the bowl. “Try it.”
Esther spread the butter with the careful concentration she applied to everything, took a bite, and chewed. She looked at Ava.
“It tastes like the herb,” she said, as if this were slightly surprising.
“Most things taste like what ye put in them,” Ava said. “That’s the whole of cookin’, really. It just takes a while to understand which things go together and why.”
Esther finished the rest of the bread. Then she looked at the remaining herbs on the table with a contemplative expression that Ava was starting to recognize—the look that meant she was formulating something in her mind, making connections.
“Could I have a plant?” she asked. “To grow. In me window.”
“Which one?”
“The lavender.” She glanced at it. “So me room smells like the linen cupboard.”
Ava looked at her. At this child who had arrived in this castle half-starved and silent and had slowly, carefully, piece by piece, decided she was allowed to want things.
Small things, at first. More food. A book. A walk by the loch. And now: a lavender plant for her window, because she liked the smell.
“Aye,” Ava said. “We’ll get ye a cuttin’ from the garden. Lavender’s easy to grow, it doesnae need much fussin’ over.”
“Like me,” Esther said, matter-of-factly, and reached for more bread.
Ava busied herself tidying the herb bundles so that Esther wouldn’t see her expression.
She found Noah that evening in the library, where he was more often than not when there was no crisis requiring him elsewhere.
He was reading something she couldn’t see the title of and had his boots off, which was the closest he came to visibly relaxing.
He looked up when she entered. His eyes settled on her with a kind of attention that was unlike anything she’d seen before, a steadiness that wasn’t performative.
“How was the kitchen?” he said.
“Good.” She sat down in the chair across from him. “Esther wants a lavender plant for her window.”
“I’ll have the gardener sort it.”
“I told her I’d take a cuttin’. It’s nae difficult.” She paused. “She said something today.”
“What did she say?”
