Not for the flower only. He could tell by the way she said it, the weight behind it, the steadiness of it. For what he'd said about Henry. For the two weeks and the chair and the things he'd held in place so she could find her own way to put them down.
He held her gaze for a moment.
"Dinnae mention it," he said. And then, because he was very aware of the wall behind her and the inch and a half between them and the fact that they were entirely alone in a small cold garden with no particular reason to stop being alone: "Come. We must prepare fer the fair."
She looked at him. "Now ye're interested in the fair."
"I'm always thinkin’ about it."
"A moment ago ye were very interested in a flower."
"That was practical. I told ye."
She pressed her lips together hard, which meant she was laughing and not going to let it out.
She fell into step beside him toward the door and he held it open and she went through and he followed, and neither of them mentioned the flower again.
She was still holding it when she turned the corridor.
He noticed. He said nothing about it.
He was very good at that.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The inn at Lorne smelled of peat smoke and sour ale and the sweat of men. The air was thick and stagnant, clinging to the damp stone walls.
Callum MacDougall sat at the far end of the room with his back to the wall and his cup untouched, listening to Fergus finish his report. His eyes were hooded, watching the room with a predator’s slow, rhythmic patience.
Fergus stood steady, despite his mud-flecked cloak dripping onto the rushes. "Tell me of the King's envoy," Callum asked.
Fergus spoke without preamble.
"Henry. Arrived with two others. They were received, fed, and turned away with naething." Fergus's jaw held the way it held when what came next was going to land badly. "He refused them. All the delegations."
When Fergus stopped talking, Callum looked at his untouched cup. The reflection of the fire danced in the dark surface of the ale, a small, flickering, restless orange that had more movement in it than anything else at that end of the table.
"The sheets," he said. The words came out low and deliberate, less a question than a confirmation of something he already suspected.
"Nay," Fergus said, meeting his gaze without flinching. "Refused. Flat refused, all of them turned away with nothing tae show fer the journey." Fergus shifted his weight slightly.
Fergus was not a man who embellished. That was why Callum kept him. He laid out what he'd seen and what he'd heard in the order he'd encountered both, and stopped talking the moment he ran out of either.
Callum had learned over the years to trust the spaces between Fergus's words as much as the words themselves—the pause after the main report, the careful absence of opinion, the way his jaw held when he was delivering something he knew would land badly. The silence that followed was living and heavy with implications that Callum was already turning over before Fergus had fully finished.
Callum looked at the cup for a long moment.
The ale was dark, the fire was warm at his back, and the room around him was full of the noise of men who had nothing useful to do with their evening and were filling it with drink, talk andlaughter. Callum’s focus narrowed until the sounds of the inn became a dull, unremarkable hum at the edges of his attention, and what remained in the center of it was the single, clarifying fact Fergus had just handed him.
"And the King's men accepted this," he said. His fingers found the edge of the table and began a slow, deliberate rhythm against the wood, a habit he had when his mind was moving faster than he wanted to show.
"They had nay choice." Fergus's voice was careful, measured. "Gunnarsson told them he would allow them tae observe them at the town fair instead. A public gatherin' fer the whole clan, merchants, traders, open tae anyone. They say he'll present the woman publicly and show the alliance standin' fer all tae witness."
"A fair," Callum said, and something shifted behind his eyes. Not the flash of anger Fergus had clearly been watching for, but something colder and considerably more useful. He felt the first clean spark of genuine interest kindle in his chest, the sensation of a problem that has just revealed a crack in its surface. "Open tae anyone."
"Aye. Those were his words, as it was reported."
Callum turned his cup slowly on the table. Once. Then again. The wood was wet and dark under his fingertips and the fire steady at his back. He sat very still, in the way he sat still when the thinking was serious. The way that people who didn't know him mistook for calm and people who did knew it was theopposite. He was not calm. He was calculating. His pulse was slow and even, a clock keeping reliable time as it ticked toward whatever decision was forming in the space behind his eyes.