Caitlin stopped. Her eyes were very wide and very innocent.
“Ye’re terrible at keepin’ a secret,” Ava said.
Caitlin’s composure collapsed entirely into delight. “I kent it! I kent it from the moment I heard the story.” She pressed her lips together, visibly restraining herself. “How was it?”
“I’m nae discussin’ that with ye.”
“Was it...” Caitlin lowered her voice to a whisper that carried approximately the same distance as normal speech. “Was he the Laird everyone imagines him to be? Ye ken, fierce.”
“I am nae havin’ this embarrasin’ conversation.”
“Ava.”
“Absolutely nae.”
“Just one word. Give me one word.”
Ava looked at her. Caitlin returned the gaze with the patience of someone ready to wait forever.
“Considerate,” Ava said finally, with great dignity, and walked away.
Caitlin made a sound behind her that suggested the single word had given her enormous information.
“I’m headin’ to the kitchens now,” Ava announced.
“That’s sweet, miss, the kitchen seems rather short-staffed these days.”
Ava walked to the kitchens, and it was warm and smelled of bread and something sweet that, on investigation, turned out to be Mrs. Ross attempting a batch of cranachan with the season’s last raspberries.
“Miss Harris.” Mrs. Ross was a small woman who managed her kitchen with the careful precision of a military operation.
She had developed an immediate and seemingly permanent liking for Ava because Ava had once correctly identified the source of a stock that had gone wrong and had never wavered since. “Ye’re here for the bairn’s afternoon bannocks?”
“And to see if there’s anythin’ ye needed. Caitlin mentioned ye were short-staffed today.”
“Morag’s taken to her bed with a cold.” Mrs. Ross clicked her tongue. “I’ve got the bread and the stock, but if someone could do the vegetables for supper, it’d be splendid.”
“I’ll do them.” Ava hung up her shawl and reached for an apron.
Mrs. Ross looked at her. “Ye’re the minder, lass. Ye daenae have to do this. It’s our job.”
“I ken how to peel a turnip. Give me the knife.”
She was given a knife, a stool, and a huge pile of turnips, and she sat in the corner of the kitchen peeling them as the kitchen moved around her.
Mrs. Ross was directing traffic, two of the younger girls were kneading bread, and the scullery boy was hauling water.
It was loud, warm, and filled with the smell of everything cooking at once, and Ava felt, sitting in the middle of it, something she recognized as contentment.
She’d spent enough years in tavern kitchens to feel at home in this kind of organized chaos. The rhythm of it, chop, turn. The soft percussion of knives on boards was familiar in a way that required no thought.
Which meant her thoughts went where they wanted.
Consideratehad been, she reflected, an accurate word. Also, insufficient. She turned a turnip in her hands. Also, not nearly all of it. He’d been... she searched for something more precise, present.
Entirely, deliberately present, in a way she hadn’t known to expect and hadn’t known how much she’d needed until it was simply there.
She had spent a long time around people who were elsewhere, even when they were with her. Mostly her father. The particular loneliness of being in a room with someone who looked past you instead of at you.
