“Damp,” Mistress Fitzgibbon said, holding a stem of last year’s Cranesmuir meadowsweet up to the stillroom’s grey morning light with an expression that suggested she’d found something considerably worse than damp in it.
“This batch smells of it, Master Bryce, and damp meadowsweet is worth less to me than the string it’s tied with.”
Walter took the stem she offered without hurrying, turned it once between his fingers, and brought it close enough to catch the scent properly before he answered.
Dry.
Clean.
Nothing in it that hadn’t been sitting, entirely correctly, in a well-ventilated storeroom since last autumn’s harvest.
“It’s not damp, mistress.” He said it plainly, no defensiveness in it, the same register he’d have used correcting a colleague’s misread chart.
“If it were, you’d smell must under the flower-scent, and there’s none here.
I’d guess this stem’s simply been kept near your bread-oven a season too long the heat’s dried it harder than it ought to be, which reads as staleness if you’re not looking for the right fault.”
Something shifted behind Mistress Fitzgibbon’s eyes not quite surprise, more the recalibration of expecting a young man to either capitulate or bluster, and getting neither.
She’s testing you, Margaret observed, dry, almost amused.
The way any competent steward tests a new supplier before trusting him with a winter’s contract.
You’ve passed the first measure.
There will be others.
He’d seen the shape of this particular dance before, he realized, somewhere in the back of a memory three months old now Mistress Gillis reading his letter of introduction with the same unhurried, assessing patience, charging him double simply to see whether he’d argue the price or simply pay it.
Fitzgibbon’s version ran subtler, better dressed, but the bones of it were identical: a woman deciding, through manufactured difficulty, exactly how much backbone a man actually carried under his manners.
“A fair answer,” she said at last, setting the stem down.
“Ye’ll forgive an old habit, Master Bryce.
I’ve had suppliers try to pass me spoiled stock as fresh more times than I care to count, and a woman running this kitchen learns to test before she trusts.” New chapters come out on g.com first.
“I’d think less of you if you didn’t test, mistress.”
That earned him something close to a genuine laugh brief, surprised out of her, the particular sound of a shrewd woman finding unexpected pleasure in a negotiation that wasn’t going the way she’d braced for.
Across the stillroom, a red-haired girl at the long table paused mid-chop on a bundle of rosemary, glancing up just long enough to catch the exchange before returning to her work with the specific, unhurried attentiveness of someone who intended to remember every word of it for the kitchen’s gossip later.
“Twenty pounds, at the price we discussed, delivered before the first hard frost.” Mistress Fitzgibbon drew the contract toward herself and dipped her pen, businesslike now that the testing was finished.
“Though I’ll ask ye to hold the price firm through spring’s order as well as autumn’s, Master Bryce, if we’re to make this arrangement worth the ink.”
“Twice yearly, same terms, same price.” Walter turned the proposal over once a small concession against the guarantee of standing custom, the kind of trade that cost him little now and secured considerably more later.
“I can hold to that, mistress, so long as the quantity doesn’t climb past what Una’s patch can supply honestly.”
“Fair.” She signed with a decisive stroke and turned the paper for his own signature, and the whole of the negotiation settled into place with the particular satisfaction of two practical people agreeing on terms neither felt cheated by.
“Mind the snow on the high pass when ye ride home,” she added, already reaching for a small parcel wrapped in muslin from a shelf behind her dried leaves, dark and fragrant even through the cloth, the particular smell of a tea that hadn’t come from any hedgerow Walter recognized.
“Castle-tea.
My own blend.
Ye’ll want it on a cold morning, and I’ll not have Una’s man riding south with nothing to warm him.”
He accepted it with the small, genuine pleasure of a gift that cost the giver something real rather than nothing at all, and tucked it into his coat beside the signed contract.
A steward appeared in the stillroom’s doorway before she’d finished tying off the parcel’s string, breathless in the particular way of a servant sent to fetch someone and knowing better than to arrive slowly.
“Mistress Fitzgibbon, the laird asks for ye in the hall directly.”
“Within the hour, tell him.” She waved the steward off without looking away from Walter, unhurried despite the summons, a woman who’d clearly spent years perfecting the art of appearing to answer a laird’s call while actually finishing her own business first.
“Master Bryce, ye’ve dealt fair with me this morning, and I’ll not forget it.
The offer landed with more weight than its casual delivery suggested, an opening onto exactly the kind of deeper Leoch entanglement Walter had spent the whole ride north quietly resolving to avoid.
“I’d be glad of it in time, mistress.” He kept his voice easy, unhurried, the refusal dressed carefully enough that it wouldn’t read as one.
“Though I’ll not want to overstay my welcome on a first visit.
Perhaps when I next bring the spring order.”
“Aye, well.
The offer stands.” She didn’t press it, which told him she’d read the deflection correctly and respected it regardless, and gathered her own skirts to answer the summons she’d made the steward wait on.
“Mhairi, see Master Bryce fed before he rides a man shouldn’t cross a Highland pass on an empty stomach, whatever hurry he’s in.”
Mhairi set a plate down at the long table with the brisk efficiency of a girl who’d been given a task and intended to discharge it properly, bread and a wedge of hard cheese and a boiled egg still warm from whatever pot it had come from, and Walter ate it standing, aware for the first time since dawn of exactly how empty his stomach had gone on the strength of nothing but nerves and a negotiation.
“Ye handled her well,” Mhairi said, not looking up from the rosemary she’d returned to chopping, the words arriving with the particular bluntness of a servant girl who’d decided a guest important enough to earn her mistress’s tea was safe enough to speak plainly to.
“She’s sent men off with naught but a flea in their ear for less cheek than ye gave her over that meadowsweet.”
“Wasn’t cheek.
Just the truth of the stem.”
“Aye, well.
She’ll like ye the better for it regardless.” Mhairi’s knife kept its steady rhythm through the rosemary, and something in the corner of her mouth suggested she found the whole exchange considerably more entertaining than her flat delivery let on.
“Ye’ll want to mind the pass regardless of the tea, Master Bryce.
It’s a fair climb, and the light goes early past the ridge this time of year.”
He finished the bread with the particular satisfaction of a full stomach after a morning’s work well done, folded the contract safe into his coat beside the tea, and thanked her on his way out through the stillroom’s low door the negotiation closed clean, the season’s supply secured, and nothing left of the morning’s business except the walk across Castle Leoch’s own courtyard toward whatever the rest of the day still had waiting inside its walls.