That was not an answer, and they both knew it.
Iona waited.
Erin sighed as if indulging a child. Then she leaned closer, lowering her voice though there was no one near enough to overhear besides Lennox, and he was busy pretending interest in a crack in the far wall.
“Ye should tell him about Jamie,” Erin whispered.
The words sank into Iona with alarming weight.
For a few breaths, she said nothing at all. Her thoughts, which had moved all morning in restless circles, suddenly narrowed into one path she had been avoiding for so long that even looking at it made her ribs seem to hold fast around her lungs.
I have to tell him.
The truth was no longer merely hers. Not now that Caitlin had called Jamie heir. Not now that the child had begun to ask questions. Not now, that Frederick was under the same roof and the shape of his face lived too plainly in Jamie’s features to be ignored forever.
Still, fear rose first, hard and immediate.
What if he changed? What if kindness had limits? What if acceptance only stretched so far as a son who resembled him and not a daughter hidden in plain sight? What if he looked at Jamie differently once he knew? What if he looked at her differently?
Her stomach knotted.
Erin’s voice softened. “He has earned more truth than ye have given him.”
Iona hated how accurate that was.
Across the courtyard, beyond the low garden wall and the open stretch of stone, movement caught her eye.
The training yard.
Men were already at practice there. Blades flashed. Boots struck packed earth. Voices carried in bursts too distant to fully make out. And at the center of it, easy to find even among armed men, stood Frederick.
He had removed his shirt.
For one mortifying instant, that was the only thought in her head.
Infuriating man.
Sunlight caught over the breadth of his shoulders and along the hard lines of his back as he turned, correcting a younger warrior’s stance with one hand and a few clipped words. Scars marked him there too, pale against bronzed skin, and something about the sight made her pulse shift into a quicker, warmer rhythm that had nothing to do with the morning chill.
He moved with the same economy he did in everything else. Nothing wasted. Nothing uncertain. Authority rested on him even half-dressed, perhaps more so for the lack of effort in it.
I should look away.
She did not.
As if he felt the weight of her attention, Frederick turned.
The distance between them was not small, yet the moment his gaze found hers the rest of the yard seemed to dim around him. He did not wave. Did not call out. He only looked at her, steady and direct, and something low in her belly tightened in answer.
A shiver slipped across her skin.
Excitement, unwelcome and immediate, moved through her before she could deny it.
Erin, curse her, made a soft sound of satisfaction beside her.
Iona straightened too quickly, nearly upsetting the basket at her feet, then caught it before it could spill and gave the older woman a warning glance that earned her absolutely no mercy.
“I have to speak with him,” she said.