"I'd imagine so."
"Some of them think," Mairi hesitated, choosing her words with more care than usual. "Well. Some of the older ones are saying it's too fast. That nothin' fixes lung sickness that fast."
"It isnae fixed," Catriona said plainly. "It's eased. There's a difference." She went back to the mortar. "What are the younger ones saying?"
Mairi's mouth curved slightly. "That ye argued with the Laird about the shutters and he let ye win."
Catriona made a non-committal sound. Kept her eyes on the mortar.
"That's nae nothin'," Mairi said. "He doesnae let people win."
Something about that snagged. Not the words, the certainty behind them. The way Mairi said it as plain fact, the kind of fact that didn't need defending because everyone already knew it.
He doesnae let people win.
She thought about the shutters. About the way he'd looked at James breathing in the quieter rhythm, then at the open shutter, then back. Said nothing and unfolded his arms.
She had read it as a man acting on evidence. Had told herself that was all it was.
She pressed the pestle down with steady pressure.
"I didnae win anythin'," she said. "I gave him information and he acted on it. That's nae the same as winnin'."
She saw Mairi was considering this with the look of someone who disagreed but was deciding whether to say so.
Catriona noted that.
The pause, the restraint, the choosing. Not what she'd expected from a girl who talked the way Mairi talked.
"Eidith says ye're to come to the hall for the evenin' meal," she said finally. "Nae optional, I think. Those were her exact words,nae optional."
"Of course they were."
"She also said," Mairi paused again, and this time something more careful moved across her face. "She said if anyone gives ye trouble at table, to tell her after and she'll handle it herself. She didnae explain what she meant by trouble."
Catriona set the pestle down. Looked at Mairi directly. "But ye ken what she meant."
Mairi held her gaze for a moment.
"Some of the men are still uneasy. About how fast James improved. About the fox." She glanced at the animal in question, who was asleep in the corner with extravagant completeness. "About ye bein' here at all. They're nae sayin' anythin' yet, nae with the Laird about, but they're thinkin' it."
Catriona absorbed that.
It was nothing she hadn't walked into before, in a dozen different forms, in a dozen different places. The shape of it was always the same. Something they couldn't explain, so something to be afraid of, so something to be rid of.
She'd stopped being surprised by it years ago. She hadn't stopped finding it heavy.
"Thank ye," she said, and meant it.
Mairi nodded once. Quick, almost businesslike, as if she'd delivered what she'd come to deliver and the rest was someone else's to carry. Then she brightened again, back to her usual self.
"Fox moved three pairs of boots this mornin'. Nobody kens where he's put them."
Catriona looked at the fox. It did not open his eyes.
"He does that," she said. "Daenae leave anythin' ye care about on the floor."
Mairi laughed, short and genuine, and took herself back down the corridor.
