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“Gingerbread rounds,” she repeats, quieter.

“Aye.” I let my voice drop, laden with certainty. “I ken everything you like, Ellen MacGregor.”

Something in her face eases, almost against her will; the sharpness melts at the edges, and for a breath she looks pleased by the knowing. Pleased that it’s me who knows.

Then she stares at me like accepting sweets from me might be counted as a moral failing.

She inhales, slow, and lifts her chin like a queen granting mercy.

“Very well,” she says. “A walk.”

“And the picnic?” I press, greedy for the small surrender.

Ellen’s mouth twitches.

“And the picnic,” she concedes, voice clipped. “But if this is some elaborate ploy⁠—”

“It is,” I say honestly.

I add quickly, “A ploy to feed you.”

Softly, she huffs a laugh through her nose, as if she hates that I’ve managed it at all.

“Lead on, then,” she says, standing with smooth precision.

I offer my arm.

After the briefest pause, she takes it.

Her touch is light through the fabric of my sleeve.

And my heart, traitorous bastard that it is, lurches hard, as if she’s pressed a live coal to it.

We leave the morning-room together, and she moves at my side with that careful, contained grace of hers.

I’m painfully aware of the small things: the brush of her skirt as it sways, the quiet pull of her beside me, the way her fingers curl—gentle, tense—around my arm.

It’s nothing, but everything to me.

I stop at the door, prepared to ask if she needs anything at all before we step out. I ease my arm from beneath her fingers.

And her eyes—those watchful hazel eyes, ringed in honeyed gold—lift to mine.

For the space of a breath, my mouth forgets what it’s meant to do.

Because she still has that wall up. That careful distance. That refusal.

Months.

It has been there for months, raised stone by stone with patience that would shame a mason. Months of her turning her shoulder when I come into a room. Months of her silence being a blade pressed to my ribs: not driven in far enough to finish me, only far enough to make certain I don’t forget I’m capable of bleeding.

But now⁠—

Now I can feel it giving. There are hairline cracks running through it, fine as frost on glass. An almost-imperceptible loosening, as though the mortar is failing, and some quiet portion of her is growing tired of the labour of keeping me out.

I step nearer, keeping my hands where decency demands, settling my voice into something I can trust.

She lifts her chin, and doesn’t wait for the question.