Ava would have opinions about it that he would need to navigate carefully. But she was also a MacGregor, or close enough, and MacGregor women had never been discouraged from knowing how to defend themselves.
“When ye’re a bit older,” he said. “I’ll teach ye meself.”
She seemed to accept this as a reasonable timeline.
She went back to the chair and picked up her book, which meant the survey was complete, and she was now simply occupying the space again.
He went back to his correspondence.
They worked in companionable quiet for an hour. Him writing, her reading, the fire doing its work in the background.
At some point, she moved to the floor beside his chair rather than the window chair, sitting with her back against his desk and her book in her lap.
He did not remark on it, and she did not explain it, and they both simply let it be what it was.
Dinner was for the four of them.
This had become the usual routine of evenings in the weeks since everything had settled. Noah, Ava, and Esther sat at the main table, with Elliot joining when he wasn’t elsewhere, which was most nights.
It was domesticity of a kind Noah had not expected, had not arranged, and had not been entirely sure he wanted until he had it.
Tonight, Esther told Ava about the clan seal with the focused authority of someone reporting an important discovery.
“He let me make an impression,” she said. “In the wax. It’s the stag.” She produced the folded paper from her pocket and laid it on the table next to Ava’s plate.
Ava examined it with appropriate seriousness. “It’s very well done.”
“I pressed it with both thumbs. He said ye need even pressure.”
“Good advice.” Ava looked at Noah over Esther’s head with a warm, slightly amused smile. “And what else did ye learn this afternoon?”
“The territory is very large. The swordfightin’ is a small part of bein’ a laird. Most of it is paperwork,” she said this last part with the tone of someone delivering mildly disappointing news.
Elliot, across the table, made a sound that was not quite a laugh.
“Ye disagree?” Noah said.
“I would never,” Elliot said. “It’s mostly paperwork. Very glamorous. Nothin’ like what the songs say at all.”
“What do the songs say?” Esther asked.
“Terrible lies,” Noah said.
“Heroic tales,” Elliot said at the same time.
Esther looked between them.
She had the expression she wore when adults were being entertaining, and she was not entirely sure whether to laugh.
She had been wearing it more often lately, which Noah counted as a kind of progress.
Ava passed the bread.
Noah poured the wine and water for Esther.
Elliot recounted a story about the boundary dispute from last month that he hadn't been able to share while it was happening, and it turned out to be much more absurd than it sounded in the reports.
Involving a misunderstanding about a fence, two extremely stubborn farmers, and a goat that Noah had not previously known, was at the centre of the whole affair.
