He set the report down, then picked it up again.
He was not, he reminded himself, a man who sat around thinking about women. He was a laird.
He had responsibilities, correspondence, and a dozen decisions that needed his attention. His brain had chosen this morning to be entirely uncooperative about all of them, occupied instead with the particular, unhelpful clarity of a man who has gotten exactly what he wanted and cannot stop thinking about it.
The sound of the door.
The grey morning light.
The way she'd looked at him and said,I'm nearly there. It was not a deflection, not a softening of the truth, just an honest account of where she stood.
Most people, in his experience, told him what they thought he wanted to hear. Ava told him the truth and left him to manage his reaction to it, which was, he turned a page without reading it—a behavior entirely characteristic of her.
Also entirely maddening, and also the reason he had been staring at a grain transport report for forty minutes.
He stood and crossed to the window. He stayed there, his hands on the stone, and forced himself to look at the courtyard. The stable hands, the supply cart at the gate, and the ordinary, functional morning of a castle that didn’t know or care that its Laird was standing at a window like a man who’d never seen one before.
She said soon.That means somethin’. She meant it. She daenae say things she daenae mean.
He returned to the desk and carefully read the eastern border report from start to finish. It took eleven minutes, during which he made three marginal notes. When he finished, he was only minimally thinking about her.
Progress.
Elliot arrived at half past nine. His expression clerarly showed he had information and had decided to share it.
“The MacDonald trade proposal needs a response by end of week,” he said, dropping into the chair across from the desk with the ease of a man who had never once knocked before entering. “I’ve drafted something, but ye’ll want to look it over.”
“Leave it.” Noah held out his hand without looking up.
Elliot placed a folder on the desk, sat back, and said nothing.
Noah read two letters and signed them. Elliot kept silent in the pointed way of someone waiting to be asked about what he’d actually come for.
“What?” Noah said.
“Nothin’.”
“Elliot.”
“I’m just sittin’ here.”
“Ye never just sit anywhere.”
Elliot considered this. “Fair. How’d ye sleep?”
“Fine.”
“Fine,” Elliot repeated. “Ye look...”
“If ye say rested, I’m assignin’ ye to the northern watchtower.”
“I was going to say focused,” Elliot said, with dignity. “More focused than usual. Which is notable.”
“The MacDonald draft.”
“Right, aye. Grain terms, straightforward. They’ll likely accept. How’s Miss Harris?”
Noah looked at him directly.
