“I am trying.”
“I can see that.”
Ava looked down at the cloth with open suspicion, as though it had betrayed her. “It looked much simpler when ye did it.”
“That is because I have been doing it forfortyyears.”
“Oh well,” Ava groaned, her voice laced with despair. “That does seem an unfair advantage.”
For a minute, there was just silence. Then she and the housekeeper burst into loud laughter that seemed to almost roll through the passageways.
Ciaran stayed where he was, one hand still resting against the doorframe. He should have moved on. The lesson was none of his business. He had wanted her introduced to the household and its expectations. The housekeeper was doing exactly that. There was no reason for him to linger there.
Yet he did.
Because the scene was funny.
Ava was plainly terrible at embroidery, but she was terrible in such a determined way that amusement came before judgment. She was trying, failing, and trying again with the same look she wore when arguing a point she refused to surrender.
The housekeeper reached over and corrected the angle of her hand. “There. Gently.”
Ava obeyed. The next stitch went in crooked anyway.
The housekeeper closed her eyes for one brief second.
“I saw that,” Ava drawled.
“I made nay sound, me Lady.”
“Well, yer face did, Mrs. Patmore.”
Ciaran bit his lip to stifle a laugh, because if he did not, he would likely reveal his presence.
He had expected something useful from this. If Ava sat with the staff, learned about stores, linens, keys, accounts, and the duties expected of a laird’s wife, then perhaps some steadier shape would settle over her place in the castle.
Instead, he found this.
Ava was so bad at the task that the whole lesson had turned into a quiet battle between thread and will. Worse, what drew him in was not merely the comedy of it. It was the fact that she was entirely herself in it. She was failing honestly and refusing to quit out of embarrassment.
That should not have pleased him. But for some reason, it did.
He stood there longer than he meant to, watching her narrow her eyes at the cloth as though being stern alone might force the next stitch into its proper place.
The sight made the resignation he had felt in the past few days sink in deeper.
She was no longer only a woman he wanted in moments of heat or conflict. She fit too easily into quieter things. A ride. A walk. A lesson at a table by the window. His attention kept finding her there and staying.
Distance, ultimately, did nothing.
The housekeeper finally took the embroidery hoop from her hands with the look of a woman deciding that retreat was necessary before the fabric died. “We shall try again tomorrow.”
Ava leaned back in her chair. “How encouraging.”
“At yer age, me Lady, I was already sewing cuffs.”
“At me age, I was beating Isobel at riding and considered that a far better use of me time. I suppose I have a lot to learn.”
That nearly got him again.
