Frederick’s gaze shifted briefly to Iona.
She had come down the last steps but did not cross fully into the center of the group. Her posture was composed, but he knew her well enough now to see strain where others might only see quietness. Too many people. Too much welcome at once. Too many eyes, even kind ones.
Ariella rose carefully and turned to her then.
“Ye must be Miss Iona Pearson.”
Iona dipped her head. “Aye, Lady McNeill?—”
“Ariella,” his sister corrected at once, echoing their mother so exactly that Frederick almost looked at Caitlin to see whether either of them noticed. “Nay titles between us, if ye please. We are family now, or near enough that I mean to behave as though we are.”
There it was again. That easy acceptance that still seemed to bewilder Iona more than suspicion ever had.
Iona answered politely, but Frederick saw the uncertainty remain behind her eyes.
The introductions continued more thoroughly after that. Maxwell greeted Iona with grave courtesy and Erin with watchful respect. Lennox inserted himself where unnecessary and was rebuked by Ariella with the sort of fond impatience reserved for old allies.
Jamie answered questions selectively, growing bolder each time one of them earned a proper reply. By the time the luggage had been taken upstairs and the servants dismissed, the edges of the meeting had softened.
The strain had not softened in Iona.
Frederick noticed it more clearly that evening.
Dinner had been set in the smaller hall rather than the great one, which should have made the gathering easier. The table was full without being crowded. Candlelight warmed the stonewalls. Conversation moved easily from travel to weather to the stubbornness of Highland roads.
Maxwell remained predictably attentive to Ariella, refilling her cup before she asked and glaring at any dish he thought too heavily spiced. Caitlin asked questions with cheerful relentlessness. Ariella answered half of them and redirected the other half toward Jamie, who by then had become curious enough to ask Maxwell why he looked so grim when nothing dreadful had happened.
Frederick might have laughed at that on another night.
Instead, his attention kept drifting to Iona.
She sat straight, listened well, answered when spoken to, even smiled when politeness required it. Yet each new kindness seemed to make her tenser rather than easier. Caitlin’s warmth had already unsettled her. Ariella’s open welcome only added to it. Maxwell’s steady courtesy, his obvious devotion to his wife, the way Jamie had begun to lean into the family’s orbit with less fear and more wonder, all of it pressed at something in her that did not know how to rest.
He recognized the signs by now. The stillness that was too deliberate. The smile that arrived a fraction too late. The way her fingers tightened around the stem of her cup when too much attention landed at once.
By the time dessert had been placed on the table, he knew she needed space before she bolted from the room in body or mind.
He rose under the pretense of pouring more wine, moved behind her chair, and bent just enough that only she would hear.
“Come with me.”
She looked up at him, startled. “What?”
He kept his tone even. “Come stand by the hearth with me. Let them busy themselves with Jamie for a bit.”
Her eyes shifted at once toward the far end of the table, where Ariella had drawn Jamie into a discussion about whether babies kicked harder when annoyed, while Caitlin listened with shining eyes and Maxwell corrected every reckless theory offered.
Iona hesitated.
Frederick held her gaze. “They are occupied.”
That, more than anything, seemed to persuade her.
“Iona? Might I borrow ye?”
Ariella’s voice carried lightly across the table, warm and inviting, yet impossible to refuse.
Iona paused beside her chair, her hand still resting against the carved wood, caught between movement and stillness. Her gaze shifted instinctively toward Frederick before she could stop herself.