He preferred to do this himself. There was a rhythm to the whetstone, a repetitive, mindless motion that settled the kind of thoughts that didn't settle any other way.
He found a low stone wall and sat. Theshhh-shhh-shhhof steel on stone was the only sound for a long time.
He heard her before he saw her. The particular soft, rhythmic scrape of her boots, a sound he had catalogued weeks ago and found he could not erase.
Catriona came into the garden from the east door. She carried her basket and her wool shawl, Fox moving like a red shadow at her heel.
She did not appear to notice him, a fact he didn't believe for a second. She crouched at a bed of lavender and began cutting stems by feel.
Fox glanced at Anthony, his eyes reflecting the moon, then decided the Laird was not a threat and lay down in the middle of the path.
Neither of them spoke. The whetstone moved. The herbs fell into the basket.
"Ye watch everythin'."
She said it without looking up.
Her voice was flat, matter-of-fact.
Anthony drew the stone along the edge, a spark jumping in the dim light. "It keeps folk alive."
"Aye." A beat. The softsnipof a stem. "And who watches ye?"
He did not answer.
The question sat in the cold air between them. He let it sit, taking his time. Her questions were never idle; they were hooks designed to find the gaps in a man's armor.
"Nay one needs to," he said finally.
She made a small, sharp sound in her throat, not a laugh, but a dismissal of his lie. She continued working, her head bowed so the moonlight caught the copper of her hair.
He looked at her then, sideways.
It was the half-attention of a predator, the way he looked at things he needed to be able to stop looking at in an instant. Her hands were quick, certain. She wasn't thinking about the herbs; her mind was miles away, or perhaps right here, dissecting the silence.
"Ye carry yer armor well," she said.
His jaw tightened, the scar on his cheek pulling.
"Best armor there is. Ye'd ken somethin' about that. Didnae I find ye under a waterfall with naught but a bag of powder and a fox? Ye had nae intention of being found by any man."
Catriona went still. Her hands stayed in the lavender, the silver light turning them pale as bone.
"Aye," she said, her voice dropping to a whisper. "Ye did."
Something in the way she said it. The lack of her usual sharp wit, the absence of a barbed retort, made Anthony stop. He held the blade mid-stroke, looking at the steel instead of her.
"Folk feared me," she said. She wasn't looking at him. "After me parents died. I was twelve. I'd tried everythin' I knew. I'd brewed the teas, I'd measured the tinctures until me eyes burned. I'd prayed harder than I'd ever prayed for me own life." A long, jagged pause. "They died anyway."
Anthony said nothing. He didn't move. The wind stirred the heather beyond the walls, a lonely, mourning sound.
Anthony looked at her now. Fully.
He let the half-attention drop. He saw the way she sat, not as a victim, but as a woman who had accepted the cold as her permanent companion.
She wasn't asking for his pity. She never asked for the softening most people offered when they wanted to feel better about themselves. She simply stated the fact.
Here is the wound. Look at it or don't.
