Page 83 of Blood of the Thistle

Anastasia rolled her eyes, but he saw no humor behind the gesture, only exasperation.

“Yes, thank you. I guess I should have asked: isn’t the baking done in the kitchen?”

“Nae. Better that so much heat remains away from the keep. They bake enough each day that the kitchens would be unbearable otherwise.”

She nodded thoughtfully, her gaze shifting to a long structure built into the inner wall. “And that building?”

“Stores,” he said. “Grain, salted meat...all that Fearchar keeps under lock and key.”

“What happens if the harvest is poor?”

Bram watched old Walter carry a sack of flour from the bakehouse, white dust pale on his dark tunic. “We buy what we can. Trade for what we canna. And we ration what remains.”

Finally, she faced him. “And if there’s nothing to buy? If everyone’s harvest is poor?”

Bram met her gaze, holding it for the first time since he’d approached. “Then winter is hard.”

She absorbed that quietly, her gaze moving toward the chapel as she asked whether everyone at Craig na Coille worshipped there. Bram answered, but was distracted as he realized that Anastasia had scarcely looked at him. Her attention wandered easily over the structures and the few people inside the bailey but rarely sat too long on him as it once had, returning to his face only briefly when courtesy seemed to require it before slipping elsewhere again.

On the road, Anastasia had met his gaze readily, sometimes holding it with unnerving directness while she questioned or challenged him, and more than once he’d known she was about to say something lighthearted merely from the particular light that entered her eyes. Even during their disagreements she had looked directly at him, demanding his attention as readily as she gave him hers. There didn’t appear to be anything furtive in the way she avoided his gaze, and nothing was so obvious that he might accuse her of deliberately refusing to look at him, so that he imagined—and was vexed by the very thought—that she’d simply lost the inclination.

The thought irritated him enough that his next answer was shorter than the question deserved.

Just then, Mòrag, wife of Donnan the crofter, stepped inside the gate, along with her widowed daughter Iseabail, the two carrying baskets between them on their way toward the keep. Bram had known Mòrag all his life and could not recall ever seeing her idle for longer than the time required to draw breath, while Iseabail had returned to her mother’s household after losing her husband to fever two winters ago. Both women greeted him warmly in Gaelic, though Mòrag’s attention soon shifted to Anastasia, whom she regarded with the open curiosity

“Madainn mhath,” Anastasia said, carefully enough that Bram imagined she’d rehearsed it, almost certainly under Etta’s instruction.

Her pronunciation was imperfect at best, but earnest enough to bring answering smiles from both women. Mòrag replied in Gaelic, speaking far too quickly for Anastasia to follow, though rather than turn to Bram for help, as he half expected she might, Anastasia shook her head apologetically and attempted to explain with a few words and a helpless gesture that she hadn’t understood.

“She says your accent is terrible,” Bram interrupted.

That accomplished what he’d intended. Anastasia swung her head toward him at once, her eyes widening, and Bram allowed the jest to stand for several seconds, watching her expression shift and settle before admitting, “Nae. Mòrag said ye’ve improved since yesterday.”

A little surprise showed in her face, but he was almost certain she tamped down the want to smile.

“Oh.” And she returned her attention to the women. “Thank you.”

“She asks if Etta has been teaching ye,” Bram translated next.

“She is trying,” Anastasia answered, smiling with self-deprecation.

Bram translated, after which the older woman laughed and responded at considerably greater length.

“She suggests Fearchar would be a better teacher than Etta. Or my màthair,” he said, realizing that Anastasia wore no braid today. Some of it was gathered away from her face and secured at the back of her head while the rest fell loose down her back, and the morning sun caught individual strands of pale gold along her temple and cheek.

“Possibly Etta is the only one who has the time to teach me,” Anastasia suggested, deftly avoiding saying anything negative against Etta.

Bram repeated this to the mother and daughter, while seeing that the freckles scattered lightly across the bridge of Anastasia’s nose were more noticeable now that her skin had regained some color after their difficult journey north, while her lashes, surprisingly dark against such fair coloring, lowered whenever she concentrated upon Mòrag’s words as though determination alone might somehow allow her to understand them.

It had been days since Bram had been this close to her, he realized.

The prickling awareness of another gaze finally dragged his own from Anastasia, and he found Iseabail watching him with an expression far too knowing for his comfort. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d blushed with embarrassment but felt an incriminating heat rising up his neck. His expression frozen, he shifted his regard to Iseabail’s mother, catching enough of the question to pull his thoughts back where they belonged.

“She says the green suits ye,” he told Anastasia.

Anastasia glanced down at herself. “That’s very kind. Etta gave this to me.”

Bram conveyed the answer, curtly now, and Mòrag responded with some observation about the color being especially becoming with Anastasia’s fair hair. He translated that as well, though his patience for the exchange had abruptly thinned. It seemed he’d been reduced to standing between the three women relaying compliments about gowns and discussing Etta’s questionable ability to teach Gaelic.