"Nay." She'd expected as much. "Elecampane root?"
"I'm nae certain."
"Brown root. Smells like violets when ye cut into it." She glanced sideways at her. "Go and look. Bring back whatever ye find and I'll sort what's of use."
Mairi was already moving toward the door, clearly pleased to have a purpose, when it opened inward from the other side and she stopped short.
The room changed quality before Catriona fully registered the cause.
A collective stilling of the servants who'd been moving quietly around the chamber, Fox lifting his head from beneath the bedframe, the particular shift in air pressure that happened when Anthony McArthur entered a space.
She'd noticed it before. The man didn't announce himself. He didn't need to.
He stood in the doorway with arms folded, gaze going around the room in one clean sweep before landing on the open shutters. Then on her.
"Ye rearrange me keep boldly."
She didn't turn from what she was doing, hands measuring dried herb into the mortar with the same steadiness they always had.
"I rearrange illness."
The silence he let follow was deliberate. She'd clocked that about him by now. The way he used quiet the same way other men used volume, dropping it into a conversation and waiting to see what it flushed out. She went back to grinding.
He spoke again. "Those shutters were closed for a reason."
"Aye." She set the pestle down and turned to face him. "The wrong reason."
She met his gaze directly, the way she'd learned to meet the gaze of men who mistook certainty for aggression.
"His breathin' was worse at midnight than it was at dusk. The room was sealed tight, fire burnin' high, the same air being breathed and breathed until there was more smoke in it than anything else. I opened the shutters two fingers' width, banked the fire lower, and sat with him for an hour."
She held the pause the same way he had. "He settled. His breathin' evened. He slept better than he has in a week, by the look of him." She tilted her head slightly. "So aye. I rearranged."
He looked at the shutters. Looked at James, chest rising and falling in the quieter rhythm of genuine sleep rather than exhausted collapse. Looked back at the shutters.
Then he unfolded his arms and said nothing, and she was learning, already, to read that particular silence as the closest thing he had toye were right.
Around them the servants had gone very still in the manner of people storing up material for later.
Catriona could feel it. The particular quality of held breath that meant every person in the room was watching without appearing to watch, cataloguing every word for later circulation through the kitchens.
She caught the flicker of movement in the doorway. The young maid from the courtyard, frozen mid-step, eyes moving between them.
"The stores," Catriona said to her, without breaking eye contact with Anthony. "Go."
Mairi went. At some speed.
Anthony stepped back from the doorway into the corridor, not retreating, repositioning. The distinction was visible in how he moved.
"Fergus will escort ye to the market when ye need it," he said. "Whatever ye require, tell him."
"I told ye already I prefer to go meself."
"And I told ye ye'd have an escort."
"One man," she said. "Nae eight and a surroundin' formation like I'm a prisoner being transferred."
A pause. Not the deliberate kind this time, the kind where someone was deciding whether to argue. "One escort."
