After the lesson, they went for supper together.
The three of them sat at the small end of the long table. A habit that had established itself somewhere over the past weeks without anyone formally deciding on it.
Esther talked.
This was also new or somewhat new. She shared her opinions on the soup, the bread, and the ongoing question of whether the fat beetle from the garden had found what it was searching for, which she had clearly been pondering since the afternoon.
“Maybe it lives in the wall,” she said. “In a wee, a wee crack. With a family.”
“A beetle family,” Noah said seriously.
“Aye. A very busy one.”
“That would explain the back and forth.”
Esther nodded, satisfied that her uncle understood the gravity of the situation. She reached for more bread.
Ava caught Noah’s eye across the table. He looked back at her with an expression that held several things she was choosing not to analyze too closely. Then he turned to Esther and asked her what the beetle’s name was, which sparked a lively debate that lasted the rest of the meal.
Under the table, Ava’s foot was very deliberately not touching his.
She did not think about the corridor until much later.
He is on the other side of the wall, she thought. Probably reading something very dull about the eastern border and not thinking about her at all, which was entirely reasonable of him. She was doing the same thing, essentially.
She stared at the ceiling.
He said he loved ye.
He said it plainly in a corridor at midnight, and he meant every word, and ye ken he meant every word, and ye’re lyin’ here pretendin’ to think about the eastern border.
She pulled the blanket up.
Smiled at the ceiling.
Terrible trouble.
Outside the window, the Highlands lay dark and quiet.
The fire breathed its last warmth into the room.
It didn’t feel like trouble at all.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The eastern border report was, objectively, one of the most boring documents Noah had ever read.
He had read it three times.
He had written nothing.
He turned to the next page.
The words gathered before him, seeming to carry meaning, but refused to produce any.
He read a paragraph about grain transport routes, understood it on the first pass, forgot it immediately, and had to read it again. His quill sat dry in his hand.
The candle on his desk had burned down a quarter of an inch since he had last noticed it, which meant he had been sittinghere doing nothing useful for considerably longer than he had intended.
