All that stood between him and a future full of happy begetting was ensuring the Oliphants weren’t guilty of McIlvain’s disappearance.
That thought—and the growling of Leanna’s stomach—nudged them apart and, chuckling, they strolled, hand-in-hand, once more toward the great hall.
When he’d first started taking meals with the family, he’d been seated opposite the laird, in a position of honor. It had taken Leanna all of two meals to get him seated beside her, and now it felt right to be able to brush his leg up against hers as they dined, or to toss barbs back and forth with her sisters and other guests.
Currently, they were listening to Wynda expound on her idea of a way to replicate pages of a portfolio quickly and easily.
“Nay, nay. ‘Tis a sort of stamp.”
“Made with a parsnip?” asked Fenella, who always joined them late, thanks to her duties in the kitchen.
Wynda rolled her eyes. “No’ a parsnip stamp. More like…a signet ring. A bunch of signet rings, all lined up in a row—”
“Why would ye want a row of signets?” interrupted Coira.
But Wynda continued as if she hadn’t heard. “Except instead of crests, they would be letters. So each stamp is a letter and together they form words. And ye put ink on them.”
“How?” Nicola demanded. “If ye pour ink on them, it’ll get in all the nooks and crannies of the carving, aye?”
“Mayhap she could dip the stamp into ink,” suggested Lady Oliphant helpfully.
“Nay, nay!” Wynda was clearly getting frustrated, and Kenneth smirked as he stabbed his own roasted parsnip. “These stamps would be too big to lift and dip into a tray of ink. Mayhap we could… I dinnae ken.” She planted her elbow and rubbed at her forehead. “Roll it on or something.”
On Kenneth’s other side, Robena sniffed as she tore her brown bread into smaller pieces. “I dinnae think ‘tis feasible. Ye’d need someone verra, verra talented to carve out all the little letters from soft wood. I ken some masters carve lutes that way, but this wood would need to be so soft, ‘twould be useless after a few stamps.” She shrugged. “And once the words were stamped, ye’d have to throw it away, because ‘twould have served its purpose.”
“Purpose, aye,” Laird Oliphant mumbled from his position at the head of the table. “And that seems as useful as a net might be to a fish.”
There was a moment as his daughters—and Kenneth—stared at him, waiting to see if he was going to expand upon this bizarre analogy. When he settled back in his seat and lifted his venison, they all decided, “Nay, that ‘twas it,” and went back to their argument.
Wynda shook her head. “The words could be reused, see?”
“ ‘Tis ridiculous!” Coira’s elbows were planted on the table, and she chewed with the same intense vigor she did everything else. “And wasteful. Ye would no’ need that same combination of words again, ever!”
Leanna joined in, grinning at the tension in the air. “Nay, but some words—like the and and and Lord and that and see… Those words could be reused.”
“Aye!” Coira scowled at her youngest sister and gestured with a hunk of bread. “But other words—like feather and rhinoceros and steadfast—those ye’d only use once.”
“Blanket!” one of the sisters called. “Indention!”
The rest of them started calling out suggestions of uncommonly used words.
“Nananana!”
“Dulcimer.”
“Lacy?”
“Trunk.”
“Organ!”
“Thrust. Moist. Dewy.” That was definitely Leanna.
“Tongue,” Kenneth volunteered to the list.
Wynda nodded. “Deflower. Cockerel. Ecstasy.”
The sisters dissolved in giggles—even Coira grinned—as their mother began to fan herself with her hand.