“I should check on her before she sleeps.” She picked up the primer and held it to her chest. “Thank ye for the tea.”
Noah rose as well, crossed to the door ahead of her, and held it open. She had to pass close enough to do so. Close enough that she caught his scent—woodsmoke, leather, and something underneath both that she couldn’t quite identify.
“Ava.”
She stopped just past the threshold. Didn’t turn around.
“Thank ye,” he said quietly. “For what ye’re doin’ for her.”
She nodded once. Then she walked down the corridor without looking back, the primer pressed flat against her sternum as if it might muffle something.
It didn’t particularly work.
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Before ye go.”
Noah stopped with his hand on the great hall door. Breakfast had wound down, the last of the servants clearing the far tables, and he'd assumed the morning was done.
He turned. Ava was still at the table, her cup in both hands. Esther had left ten minutes ago, already chattering to Caitlin about something she'd seen in the garden, her voice carrying down the corridor bright and easy — a sound he still hadn't entirely gotten used to. The hall felt quieter without her.
The morning light from the east window caught Ava's hair where it had come loose at her temple, and he had been trying not to notice that, or the way her dress sat across her shoulders, since she'd walked in an hour ago. He'd managed it with mixed success.
Her expression was one particular quality of someone who had rehearsed what they were about to say and was now committed to it regardless of consequences.
“Aye?” he said, “Esther and I are goin’ to the loch this mornin’. “We’d like ye to join us.”
The hall had mostly emptied, the last of the servants clearing platters from the far end.
Noah looked at Ava. Then at Esther, who was sitting very still beside her with her eyes fixed on the table and her hands folded in her lap with the careful precision of a child pretending not to care about the answer.
“I have reports to go through,” he said.
“Ye always have reports.”
“The eastern border accounts need checkin’,”
“Noah.” Ava set her cup down. “The accounts will be there when ye get back. The mornin’ willnae.” She looked at him steadily. “It’s a fine day. We’re goin’ to the loch. Ye could come with us, or ye could go read about the eastern border.”
He looked again at Esther, who was now studying her folded hands with intense focus.
“The loch,” he said.
“Aye.”
“But we’ll be back by noon.”
“By noon,” Ava agreed, with the equanimity of someone who had expected to negotiate and was pleased to find it unnecessary.
He told himself on the way up to change his boots that he was going for Esther’s sake.
Ava is right about the accounts, they’ll keep. This is about Esther.
He told himself this with some conviction, but the small flutters in his heart said there was more.
Esther was waiting in the courtyard when he came down, standing half behind Ava with her fingers curled into the fabric of Ava’s skirt.
The morning light was bright and clear after two days of rain, with the stones still damp underfoot, and the air carrying the distinctive freshness of a Highland morning following a storm.
