Chapter 2 #2
The honesty of it caught her off guard. She had prepared for deflection.
She had prepared for a version of the conversation where he restated his reasons with more authority and expected her to accept them.
She had not prepared for this, for a man standing in a small room looking at her directly and saying the true thing instead of the defensible one.
She turned to the window. The herb garden shone in the afternoon sun, with tall purple lavender along the far wall. She had planted half of it herself in April, when the ground finally softened. She had not thought, when she put the seeds in the earth, that she might not be here to see them grow.
"I have made a life here," she said to the window. "I want ye to understand that. I wasnae sittin' in a chair waitin' for ye, Fergus. I made meself useful here. I learned what this castle needed, and I gave it. I built somethin' here." She turned. "I am nae the woman ye left."
"I can see that," he said.
She looked at his face for the condescension that sometimes dwelled in such statements, the subtle diminishment of it, the suggestion that he was surprised she succeeded. She did not see it. He appeared to be a man who was rethinking something important.
"Then I'll tell ye me terms," she said.
"Yer terms?"
"Aye, Fergus. Me terms." She clasped her hands in front of her, the way she had learned to do when she wanted to seem calmer than she felt.
"I'll come north. I'll care for the bairn, and I'll learn yer castle and yer clan, and I'll be what a lady of that house needs to be.
I will do all of that." She let the pause sit for a moment.
"But I am nae comin' north to be managed.
I am nae comin' north to be installed in a wing somewhere and consulted on the question of dinner menus while ye go about yer real work.
If I come, I come as yer wife. Fully. That means ye speak to me.
That means ye tell me when things are wrong before they become disasters.
That means I have a voice in the runnin' of that house and ye listen to it, nae as a courtesy, but because ye've decided it has value. "
"And if I daenae agree?" he said slowly.
"Then I willnae come."
She said it quietly. She had practiced it in her head during the early mornings when the castle was still, and she had too much time to think.
She worried that when the moment arrived, her words would come out brittle or too loud, shaped by emotion rather than by decision.
But they did not. They came out steady and clear, and she felt more relieved by this than she let herself show.
Fergus looked at her for a long time.
"Ye've changed," he said.
"I told ye I would."
"I daenae mean it as a complaint." His voice was different now.
The efficiency was still there, the brevity, but underneath was something else, something she recognized as a man trying to find an honest thing to say and taking the time to find it.
"On our weddin' night, I said things I willnae dress up as anythin' other than what they were.
And I left ye here." He paused. "Ye have every right to tell me to ride back north alone. "
"I still might," she said. "I havenae decided yet."
Something crossed his face. It was not a smile; rather, it was the moment just before a smile appeared in a man who had forgotten he could smile.
"I agree to yer terms," he said.
"Which ones?"
"All of them," he said without qualification.
"Ye'll have yer voice. Ye'll have me time when I can give it, and when I cannae, I'll tell ye why.
Ye'll nae be put in a wing. Ye'll be the Lady of me house because that is what ye are, and because from what ye've just said to me in the last ten minutes, it would be a considerable waste of yer gifts to put ye anywhere else. "
Margaret looked at him. She thought about the girl who had stood in the hall at Dunalasdair nine months ago with her fists clenched and her face composed, listening to this man tell her she was a distraction.
She thought about the long walk she had taken from that night to this one.
She thought about the lavender in the garden she had planted without knowing if she would be here to see it bloom.
"I'll need two days," she said. "To pack and say me goodbyes properly. I willnae be rushed out of here like an afterthought."
"All right. Two days," he agreed.
"And ye'll tell me about the bairn. Tonight, at dinner. What she likes, and what makes her stop cryin'. Everything ye ken, which I suspect is less than ye think."
"It is significantly less than I think," he said.
"Aye." She allowed herself, briefly, a small smile. "I ken."
She moved toward the door. She stopped with her hand on the frame and looked back at him, standing in the middle of the small room with the afternoon light falling through the window across the floor.
"Her name," she said. "What did ye call her?"
"Lilly," he said. "I decided in the corridor. Three weeks ago."
"Lilly," Margaret repeated. She turned it over, the sound of it. "That's a good name."