Page 47 of Wanted By the Wicked Highlander

She turned away to speak with Cook in low tones about the salt situation—still entirely unresolved, the Northern Store having proved far less full than anticipated—and turned back to find Brian holding a carrot piece that was approximately the width of her thumb. He looked immensely proud of it.

She looked down at the pile. The pieces ranged wildly from that thumb-width to something approaching a full, jagged inch, with two that appeared to have been more broken by brute force than cut, and one that was inexplicably triangular.

“Brian.”

“They’re rustic,” he said immediately.

“They’re architectural.”

“They’ll taste the same.”

“They will nae cook the same.” She reached across the table and demonstrated the correct width, the knife moving in the clean, even strokes she had learned in this very kitchen at an age not so different from his. “Like this. Even pieces cook evenly. Uneven pieces give ye some that are mush and some that are still completely raw, and a supper that pleases no one.”

Brian considered this with apparent seriousness. “Uncle Sebastian would eat them anyway.”

“That,” Cook chimed in from the far end of the kitchen, “I believe entirely.”

Brian grinned broadly at her. Then he picked up the knife again with renewed determination and instantly produced a carrot piece that was, objectively, worse than any of the previous ones.

“Careful,” Alba caught the knife handle half a second before the blade angled sharply toward his tiny fingers, redirecting it back toward the wood. Her heart had jumped clean into her throat. “Give me that.” She said, worried but gently.

“I was helpin’.”

“Ye were attemptin’ murder.” She teased him and set the knife firmly on her side of the table, well out of his reach. “On yerself, which is the least useful kind. We need ye to stay alive and healthy, young man,” she said and poked his nose gently.

Brian looked at the knife. Then at her. Then he pressed his mouth tight together in an expression that was trying very hard not to be a smile and failing comprehensively. “I said I was a fast learner.”

“Ye said yer uncle said that. I have formed me own opinion.”

He grabbed a messy fistful of the poorly cut carrots, slid off the wooden stool, and immediately attached himself to her skirts. He was not seeking comfort, simply repositioning his defensiveline. He stood there holding the mangled carrots in one fist and her wool skirt in the other.

Cook made a strangled sound that was absolutely a laugh, poorly disguised as a cough. The kitchen girl beside her made no attempt at disguise whatsoever.

Alba looked at the dusting of flour she could feel clinging to her cheek, at the aggressive bread dough resting in its bowl, at the pile of geometrically inconsistent carrots on the worktable, and at the six-year-old clinging to her skirts.

The heavy kitchen door swung open as Sebastian entered and came to an abrupt halt.

He took in the chaotic scene. The full sweep of it, missing nothing. The flour stuck on her cheek. The sad bread bowl. The worktable scattered with carrot pieces of creative, dangerous variety. Cook and the kitchen girl in various stages of suppressed laughter. Brian attached firmly to Alba’s skirts with his fist full of badly cut carrots, looking up at his uncle.

Sebastian examined everything silently, saying nothing. The silence was so prolonged that Alba felt compelled to break it.

Before she could, Brian let go of her skirts and marched the short distance to plant himself in front of Sebastian, holding up his fistful of mangled carrots with the solemn gravity of a soldier presenting spoils.

"I cut these," he announced.

Sebastian crouched down, bringing himself level with the boy, and studied the carrots. He turned one triangular piece over in his large fingers.

"Ye did," he said finally. "This one's got a corner."

"It's rustic."

"Is that what ye're calling it?"

"Alba's word." Brian jerked a thumb over his shoulder without turning around. "She said mine were architectural."

A ghost of a smile moved at the corner of Sebastian's mouth, there and gone. "Architectural," he repeated, weighing the word. "That's generous of her."

"I nearly cut me finger off."