Page 36 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

Brian fell into step beside her without another word.

He stayed exactly three paces behind her when they reached the kitchens, where she immediately had to settle the morning’s first dispute.

Two MacLaren kitchen girls and one MacGregor woman had developed incompatible, fiery opinions about the correct method for salting winter pork. Alba listened to all three, asked two sharp questions, and delivered a verdict that satisfied nobody completely but resolved the matter entirely.

When she turned, she found Brian standing on his tiptoes beside the heavy worktable, examining a tarnished copper pot with intense personal interest.

“What’s that smell?” he asked.

“Rendered fat.”

“It’s terrible.”

“Aye.” She caught him gently by the shoulder, steering him away from the steaming pot, and dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Daenae tell the cook I said so.”

He looked up at her, delighted by the secret, and mimed locking his mouth shut with one small fist.

“Come.”

He followed her to the storerooms for the grain count. There, he stood beside John O’Connor with the wooden sword still gripped tightly in one fist, watching the sacks. Halfway through the barley tally, he tugged hard on her sleeve.

“Yer handwritin’,” he said, staring down at the thick ledger she was marking, “looks more frightenin’ than Uncle Sebastian’s face.”

John O’Connor made a sudden, choked sound into his fist.

Alba kept her eyes locked on the ledger, her quill pausing. “Thank ye, Brian.”

“It’s very jagged.”

“I will bear that in mind.” She glanced sideways at him, lips twitching. “Shall I write yer name in it, and ye can tell me if it frightens ye too?”

Brian considered this proposal, then nodded once, solemnly, as if agreeing to a duel. She scrawled his name with an extra flourish at the bottom of the page and turned the ledger toward him.

He studied it, squinting. “Aye. Frightenin’.”

She laughed and had to set the quill down for a moment to recover.

“Uncle Sebastian’s is bad too,” Brian went on, entirely unbothered by her amusement. “But his is just big. Yers looks like it’s angry at the page.”

She pressed her lips together, but laughed again despite herself. She set the quill down, then deliberately picked it back up. “Would ye like to help me count the oat sacks or would ye like to go back to the woodpile?”

He helped count the oat sacks. He miscounted twice and announced both errors himself. She found herself hiding a sudden smile behind the heavy ledger.

By midmorning, he had stopped trailing three steps behind. He walked right beside her, his small legs adjusting to her longer pace without either of them remarking on the shift.

He asked if the castle had any horses he could name. He asked why the South Storeroom smelled of damp earth while the North one smelled of dry grain. He asked, very seriously, if she had ever been in an actual battle. When she said no, his face fell in disappointment before brightening again.

“Uncle Sebastian has been in seven,” he said, describing two of them.

“He sounds very brave,” she said carefully, her chest tightening slightly at the reminder of the violence that shaped the man.

“He is.” Simple. Certain. It was the way children stated things they had never thought to question. “He’s the bravest person I ken. Except,” Brian frowned, his small brow furrowing as he recalculated. “Maybe ye’re the same brave.”

“I am nae certain that’s true.”

“Ye daenae look scared of him. Most people look scared of him.” He glanced up at her sideways. “Do ye nae think he’s frightenin’?”

She thought about the dim corridor. His forehead pressed hard against hers in the suffocating dark; the rough catch in his breathing when she had looked directly at his mouth.