"And he stays back. I cannae work at a market stall with a man-at-arms breathin' on me neck."
"Within sight."
She considered pushing further. Decided it wasn't the battle that mattered today. "Fine."
She heard something that was almost, almost, the exhale of a man who'd anticipated a longer fight.
Then his footsteps moved away down the corridor, even and unhurried, the way they always were.
Catriona turned back to James. He slept on, chest rising and falling with the slightly improved steadiness of a body beginning, cautiously, to trust the air it was being given.
"Better," she told him quietly. "Keep goin'."
She spent the better part of the morning learning the keep the way she learned any unfamiliar terrain, on foot, unhurried, filing everything.
The kitchens she found by following the smell of woodsmoke and fresh bread.
The herb stores were where Mairi had said, in the lower corridor, cool and slightly damp, the kind of storage that kept things from rotting.
She went through the shelves methodically: lavender, nettle, sage, some dried rosemary that had lost most of its potency, willow bark still good, a jar of something that was absolutely not for stew. She took what was useful, left the rest, and carried it back upstairs.
The kitchen staff had watched her come and go with the cautious politeness of people who hadn't formed an opinion yet and were reserving the right to.
An older woman - broad-shouldered, efficient, the kind of person who ran a kitchen the way a general ran a field - had acknowledged her with a single nod and returned immediately to her work.
Catriona respected that.
Fox, naturally, had found his way into the kitchen, examined the room thoroughly, and fixed his attention on a joint of cold meat sitting on the far table.
"He willnae steal anything," Catriona said to the lad who'd frozen mid-step.
Fox looked at the meat. Then at Catriona. Then back at the meat.
"He might steal one thing," she amended.
From across the kitchen, without looking up from her work, the broad-shouldered cook said, "Move the joint, Tam."
The lad, whose name she now knew was Tam, moved the joint.
Fox watched it go with the dignified resignation of an animal too proud to give chase.
She had her worktable set up in the small room adjacent to James's. Eidith's arrangement, made without being asked, which told Catriona more about the woman than an hour of conversation would have. Practical. Observant. Not warm exactly, but not unkind either.
She filed that away too.
She was grinding elecampane root, focused on the consistency of it, when Mairi appeared in the doorway with a small basket and the expression of someone carrying both herbs and information, and considering which to deliver first.
She delivered the herbs first, to her credit. Set the basket on the corner of the table.
"Comfrey, and the brown-rooted thing ye described, I found two jars of it. And Cook says there's dried thyme if ye need it."
"Good." Catriona sorted through the basket without looking up. "Leave the comfrey. Take the thyme back, I daenae need it yet."
Mairi removed the thyme. Didn't leave.
Catriona looked up.
"The servants are talkin'," Mairi said. Dropped it simply, like a fact, with the slight forward tilt of someone who considered this information a gift rather than a warning. "About ye. About James breathin' better this mornin'."
