“Careful,” he said. “Ye’re a servant in this castle. Ye daenae get to speak to me that way.”
“I’m Esther’s minder.” Ava did not step back. “And I’ll speak to anyone any way I like when it comes to her protection.”
“Her protection.” He said it with a short sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “From her own father? Ye’ve been here a few weeks, and ye think ye ken this family better than the man who was born into it?”
He took another step closer, the flat, irritable quality of a man who had decided courtesy hadn’t worked. “Ye’re nobody. Ye’ve nay family, nay standin’, nay name that matters. Ye’re here because me brother decided ye were convenient, and when he’s finished with ye, ye’ll go back to whatever village produced ye, and that’ll be the end of it.”
Ava felt the words land exactly as intended, felt them deeply, and then something steadier rose from within.
“A father doesnae abandon his daughter for two years and appear in a stable like he’s done nothin’ wrong and expect a welcome.” Her voice was quiet and entirely serious. “A father doesnae leave bruises. A father doesnae make a child flinch at footsteps.”
She took one step toward him, which surprised him. “She was six years old when ye left her here. Six. And she spent the first three weeks in this castle too frightened to speak above a whisper.” She held his gaze. “That’s what yer fatherhood amounted to. A six-year-old who didnae ken how to be in a room without waitin’ to be punished for it.”
“Ye daenae ken anythin’ about what happened,” William said, and something moved behind his eyes, a flicker that might havebeen genuine. Gone before she could be sure. “Ye daenae ken anythin’ about me, or me marriage, or the circumstances.”
“I ken what I see,” Ava said. “And what Esther shows me every day without meanin’ to. That’s enough.”
“Ye smug little…” He stopped. Reassembled the pleasantness, piece by piece. “Whatever ye think ye ken about this family...” he said, more quietly. “Ye’re a visitor here. Ye’d do well to remember that.”
“I’m nae a visitor,” she said. “I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
The words surprised her just as much as they surprised him. She’d thought them before but had never spoken them so plainly. Not like that.
“Is that right?” Something shifted in his expression, the calculation clicking back in, the recognition that she’d given him something. “Ye think ye belong here. In me family’s castle.” A pause. “Interestin’.”
The slap came fast.
The back of his hand, sharp and contemptuous, was the kind of slap that was more about sending a message than causing harm. It snapped her head to the side and left her cheek burning, with her ears ringing.
She straightened. Kept her eyes on him.
“That is for speakin’ above yer station,” William said.
The stable went very still.
Until a voice came from the entrance.
“Get away from her.”
Noah stood in the doorway.
He wasn’t moving yet, and somehow that made it worse. Completely still with the light at his back, with the kind of stillness Ava recognized from the council room, from the courtyard, from every moment she’d watched him decide that a situation needed control before it needed action.
He looked at William with an expression she had never seen on him before. Not anger, something colder than anger—the look of a man weighing a decision he would need to handle very carefully, or something irreversible.
“Brother.” William turned with ease that was almost admirable. “We were just gettin’ to ken each other.”
“I said, get away from her!”
William stepped back, deliberately pacing himself.
“She insulted me,” he said, spreading his hands in the gesture of a reasonable man. “She insulted the Laird’s own brother. Discipline within a household kens that she needs to be punished.”
“She,” Noah said, crossing the stable toward Ava without taking his eyes off William, “is mine.”
“Is she?” William’s eyes moved between them, the calculation almost visible. “So it’s true. Ye’ve fallen for the help.” He clicked his tongue. “Father would’ve had something to say about that.”
“Ye daenae get to speak about what our father would have said. Ye lost that right a long time ago.”Noah stopped beside Ava.
