“I could nae sleep,” she said, stepping closer. “Can I stay with ye?”
Erin let out a long, exaggerated sigh.
“Of course ye can,” she said. “There is always room for one more body in a bed that was meant for one.”
Jamie climbed up eagerly, settling between them with a contented hum, her small hand finding Iona’s sleeve as though it belonged there.
“It is cramped,” Erin muttered, adjusting the blankets. “And I will hear about it from me bones in the morning.”
Jamie giggled.
“So grumpy,” she whispered.
“I am nae grumpy,” Erin said.
“Aye, ye are,” Jamie replied.
Iona laughed softly, the sound warm and unguarded as she drew her daughter closer and let herself settle into the narrow space between them.
23
“Is it true?”
Frederick looked up from the ledger in his hand. Jamie stood just inside the doorway of his study, one hand still on the frame as though prepared to run if the answer displeased her. Her hair, now left to grow as she pleased, had been tied back poorly and was already half falling free. There was a smear of dirt near her cuff and a brightness in her eyes that told him she had not come merely to ask a question. She had come expecting something.
“That depends,” he said, setting the ledger aside. “On what ye have heard.”
Jamie stepped farther into the room. “Lennox said ye might take me to the stables.”
Frederick gave a slow nod. “Did he?”
“Aye.”
Frederick rose from his chair. “Well, he shouldnae have ruined the surprise.”
Jamie’s face lit at once. “So, it is true?”
“It is,” he said. “If ye are prepared to listen and do precisely as ye are told.”
Jamie nodded with suspicious speed. “I can do that.”
Frederick arched a brow. “Can ye truly?”
She pressed her lips together, clearly remembering an earlier conversation in which that answer had not entirely convinced him.
“I can try very hard,” she amended.
“That is more believable.”
He crossed the room and took up his cloak. Jamie was already turned toward the door before he had fully fastened it, which told him two things at once. First, that her patience remained as underdeveloped as ever. Second, that she had been hoping for this more keenly than she had let on.
They made their way through the keep with Jamie half a step ahead, and Frederick slowing her every third pace with a hand to the back of her shoulder or a quiet word when she forgot herself and nearly broke into a run. The lower yard opened before them bright with afternoon light, the air carrying the mixed scents of hay, leather, horseflesh, and turned earth. The stables lay along the eastern wall, broad and well kept, their doors open to the mild day. A groom crossed the yard carrying a pail, and two boys were sweeping the center aisle with more enthusiasm than accuracy.
Jamie slowed only when they reached the threshold. An unfiltered look of complete wonder was worn plain on her features.
The stable always had that effect on children who had not yet been given a horse of their own to love. The size of it. The warmth. The sound of shifting hooves and soft snorts from within. Frederick watched the wonder move across her face and felt, unexpectedly, something ease in him.
A man emerged from the second stall to the left, brushing straw from his sleeves as he came. He was broad through the chest, weathered by years outdoors, with iron-grey at his temples and a scar running from the edge of his chin into the beard there. Jamie straightened at once when she saw him approach.