Page 23 of The Highland Ghost’s Virgin

Flour didn't ask questions. That was the whole appeal of it.

Grisselle washed her hands at the basin and took the dough Senga pushed toward her, driving the heels of her palms into it the way she'd seen kitchen girls do a dozen times without ever once trying it herself. The dough gave, folded, resisted. She pulled it back into a ball and did it again.

Senga watched her over the rim of a mixing bowl, saying nothing.

Grisselle drove her palms in a second time, harder than the first, and something in her chest unknotted half an inch as the dough flattened under her weight.

"There’s a particular loaf that's earned yer temper this morning," Senga asked mildly, "or is it just bread in general ye have a grudge against?"

"It's only dough."

"Aye. It was, before ye started at it." Senga's eyes crinkled, though she let it go for the moment.

Grisselle folded it, turned it, and drove her palms in a third time, longer than any loaf required, until Senga finally reached over and stilled her wrists with one floury hand.

"Ye'll knead the life clean out of it, me Lady. It's bread, nae a grudge."

"Sorry. I didn't sleep well."

"Aye, I can see that." Senga's eyes went to the shadows under Grisselle's own, sharp and unbothered by manners. "Half this castle dinnae sleep, from the sound of the door bangin' at all hours."

Senga's mouth twitched, nudging a bowl of oats toward her instead. "Stir that. Slow, or ye'll have parritch on the ceiling."

They worked a while in silence, the fire snapping, until Senga spoke again without looking up. "Ye miss home, lass?"

"I don't know where home is anymore. England had my parents and the gossips. This has…" She stopped.

"Has what?"

"Wind that doesn't apologize for itself. My grandfather used to say the Highlands never once bothered pretending to be gentle."

Senga barked a laugh. "Yer grandfather sounds a wise man."

"He was the only one who ever made sense to me. He'd have loved this kitchen. Said a good meal was worth more than a good sermon."

"Now that's a man I'd have fed twice." Senga slid a tray of oatcakes onto the hearthstone. "Me own mother died birthing me youngest brother. Da raised the six of us on burnt porridge and worse temper. I learned to cook so I'd stop eating his."

"How old were you?"

"Nine," Senga said it plainly, no weight on it at all. "Ye learn quick when there's no one standing between ye and an empty table."

Grisselle's spoon slowed in the bowl. "I don't know about empty tables. But I know what it is to learn quick because no one's standing between you and anything at all."

"Aye." Senga's eyes flicked to her, something passing between them that needed no further words. "I thought ye might."

They didn't say anything else about it. By the time the loaves went into the oven, Senga had moved on to a tray of oatcakes, cutting them into neat triangles with a speed Grisselle envied.

"Best travel food in the Highlands, these," Senga said, sliding the tray toward the hearthstone. "A man could ride three days on a pocketful and never once go hungry."

"My mother's cook made shortbread for long journeys. MacDuff shortbread. Nothing traveled better."

Senga's knife stopped mid-cut. "Shortbread."

"It doesn't crumble the way oatcakes do, and it keeps for weeks."

"It's butter and sugar pretending to be food, is what it is." Senga resumed cutting with visible offense. "Ye cannae fill a man's belly on shortbread, lass. He'll be hungry again by the time he's finished admiring how pretty it looks."

"It filled mine well enough for sixteen years."