"Fox doesnae like anyone."
"He likes the miss."
"She feeds him."
"He likes ye too," James said. Matter-of-factly. "He comes and sits near yer chair at supper sometimes."
"He tolerated me," Anthony said. "Once. When he'd run out of better options."
James's mouth did the thing it did before he smiled. The small private twitch that Anthony had been watching since the boy was old enough to find things funny.
He knew every version of it. He'd catalogued them the way you catalogued the things you were afraid of losing.
He didn't quite let it out. Neither did Anthony.
They sat in the quiet of the room together, the fire low, the shutters letting in the late afternoon light.
This.This is what it was all for.
Anthony stayed until the boy fell asleep. Then he rose quietly, set the chair back against the wall, and left.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Ye ken I'm meant to look subtle."
Fergus said it through his teeth after the third villager in as many minutes had slowed to stare at them. Or more precisely, at him, six feet of armed man-at-arms attempting to pass himself off as casual company on a market road.
"Then perhaps stop glarin' at everyone as though ye're expectin' battle," Catriona replied without slowing.
"Habit."
"Work on it."
He huffed. Fell back another half step. Within thirty seconds, he'd drifted forward again to exactly the same distance as before, apparently without noticing.
She decided not to mention it.
The road down from the keep followed the ridge before dropping into the valley where the village spread along both sides of the river.
She'd seen it from the east window for weeks. The smoke of it in the mornings, the sound of the bells on market days carrying up the hill. She hadn't been this close to it since they'd ridden through on the way to McArthur.
That felt like a different year. It had been less than a week.
Fox moved beside her on the road, nose working, tail up.
He had the particular alert quality he got when there was something new to assess, ears swiveling forward, each step placed with consideration.
She watched him and felt her own shoulders doing something similar, the loosening that happened when there was open sky above her and no walls close on both sides.
She hadn't realized how much the keep had been pressing until she was outside of it.
The village opened around them as they came off the ridge path, noise first, before the sight of it.
Wool merchants argued across a stall gap about weight and price, neither willing to give ground.
Children ran the gaps between adults with the liquid ease of small people accustomed to being ignored.
A fisherman shouted prices at the square with the volume and conviction of someone who believed repetition was persuasion.
