Chapter 4
Chapter Four
"There is a bird," Margaret said, "that has been followin' us for the past mile and a half. Just above yer left shoulder. I think it's judgin' ye."
Fergus said nothing.
"It has that look about it. Very severe. Very Highland." A pause, punctuated by the creak of the carriage wheels finding another rut. "I think it may be an ancestor of yers."
"Margaret."
"I'm only observin'."
"Observe quietly."
"I've been in this carriage for four hours with nothin' but the sound of yer horse breathin' and the occasional rock tryin' to remove the wheel. I have a great deal of observation stored up."
The road ahead was a long, gray ribbon of mud and ambition.
Fergus kept his eyes on it. He had told himself, in the careful, tactical way he prepared for most things, that the journey north would be manageable.
Two days. Three at most. She would sit in the carriage.
He would ride. They would stop for the night at suitable intervals and arrive at MacKenzie Castle having covered the necessary ground without incident.
He had not factored in the window.
She had pushed it open somewhere past the first hour and had not closed it since. Her voice came through it with complete clarity, regardless of what he did with his posture, his gaze, or the precise angle of his jaw.
"The road is worse than I expected," she said. "Is it always like this north of the border, or is this a special occasion?"
"It's a road."
"It's a series of holes held together by mud and bad intentions. That is nae the same thing as a road, Fergus."
"Ye're nae walkin' it."
"I'm feelin' every stone of it through the seat. I think I've lost a tooth."
He glanced sideways at the carriage window before he could stop himself. She was framed in it, her hair starting to curl at the edges from the damp air, her expression one of elaborate suffering that he suspected she was at least somewhat enjoying.
"Yer teeth are fine," he said.
A pause. He sensed it before it turned into words, the nature of her silence as she decided what to do with something he had said.
"Was that," she said slowly, "a compliment?"
"It was an observation."
"It was the closest thing to a compliment ye've produced in me presence in the entire duration of our acquaintance. I'm goin' to mark the day."
"Daenae."
"I already have."
The clouds were thickening over the peaks. Fergus looked at them and did not like what he saw. The mist had been sitting on the high ridge since morning, the heavy, patient kind that didn't burn off with the sun because there was no sun to burn it. By midday, it had come down.
It came down the way it always did in the Highlands, not all at once but in slow, rolling walls of grey that swallowed the path ahead in stages.
First, the far ridge. Then the tree line.
Then the road ahead of them. The temperature dropped with it, the air turning close and damp, the kind of cold that was not sharp but was thorough.
Fergus slowed his horse. He heard the river before seeing it through the mist—a low, rolling sound that grew steadily until it became a proper roar, the voice of water fed by three days of rain and still not done.
"Stop," he called to the driver. "Daenae get out."
He dismounted. His boots sank into the softened earth. He walked along the path, the sound of water growing louder with each step, until the mist thinned enough to reveal the crossing.
It was dangerous. Not impossible, not for a horse and a man who knew what he was doing, but still risky.
The river had widened and was flowing with the dull, deceptively calm pace of water that had somewhere to go.
The usual ford stones were hidden beneath a foot of grey, swiftly moving current.
He stood at the edge, watched it, and calculated.
The carriage door opened behind him.
"I said, daenae get out," he called at her, without turning.
"I wasnae askin' permission."
She appeared at his shoulder. She had her cloak pulled tight, her eyes already on the water, and she looked at it the way he had.
"The carriage willnae make it," he said. "The current will catch the wheels."
"Aye." She studied the far bank. "How deep at the center?"
"Stirrup-height. Maybe more."
"So we ride."
"Ye ride with me."
Her chin came up. He had learned to read that movement. "I have a horse, it's part of the ones riding the carriage."
"Yer horse isnae trained for crossings like this. Mine is."
"Neither am I," she said, "and yet here we are.
" She turned and walked back toward the carriage before he could answer, spoke briefly to the driver in a low, clear voice, and then went to her horse.
She mounted with a competence that was, he noted without pleasure, entirely inconvenient for his argument.
"I'm ridin'," she said from the saddle. "Unless ye'd like to spend more time tellin' me I cannae."
He mounted, then looked at her. She looked back with the expression of someone who had already won and was patiently waiting for it.
"Stay at me shoulder," he said. "If the horse goes, go with it willingly. Daenae fight it."
"Understood."
They entered the river.
The cold hit him immediately, climbing his horse's legs and reaching his stirrups within the first four strides.
The current pressed against them from the left, a steady, muscular push that needed constant correction.
His stallion understood the work. He felt the horse's body adjusting beneath him, the careful, planted steps of an animal that knew how to move through water.
He heard her horse three strides behind him. Then two. She was keeping pace, closer than he had told her to, because she was that kind of woman. He did not turn his head. He kept his eyes fixed on the far bank and kept moving.
The riverbed shifted.
He heard it more than felt it. A deep, underwater sound, the grind of stone against stone, and then her horse made a noise that no horse made when it was in control of the situation. He turned.
The horse had lost its footing. One foreleg struck nothing, caught in the current's grip mid-step, and the animal was scrambling, its haunches dropping, its head rising in the white-eyed manner of a horse deciding whether to panic completely or just partly.
Margaret had stopped fighting the saddle and was already shifting her weight to compensate, but the horse was past the point of being able to be balanced for.
Fergus drove his stallion across the current in two strides. His hand found her arm, then her waist, and he pulled.
She came free cleanly. She did not grab or struggle, and then she was against him.
Her arm was braced across his chest. His own arm was locked at her back.
The river pressed at them from both sides, and beneath it was nothing but the steady, deliberate planting of his horse's feet on the riverbed, one step and then another.
Neither of them spoke. He was fully aware of her: the weight of her, the warmth through the soaked wool, and the specific, unmanageable detail of her face being level with his jaw.
The river roared around them, the mist pressed close, and the world shrank to the width of a horse's back and the distance to the far bank.
Her hand gripped his plaid at the chest. He felt her fingers find the fold of it and hold.
He looked at the bank. He kept looking at the bank.
"Fergus," she said. Her voice was different, quieter, not the voice she used when she was making a point.
"Hold on," he said.
The stallion emerged from the water. The ground felt solid beneath them, and Fergus felt his horse settle into it with the relief of an animal that knew its work was done.
He gently set her down. He did it quickly, more quickly than was entirely necessary, and she found her footing, stepped back, and they both stood on the riverbank, breathing heavily.
Her horse had made the far bank twenty yards downstream and was standing in the shallows shaking itself with the expression of an animal that had strong opinions about the afternoon it had just had.
"Yer horse is fine," Fergus said.
"Good," she said.
"I told ye to ride with me."
She pushed a wet curl off her forehead. "Aye." A beat. "But I didnae."
He went to retrieve her horse. He did not say anything else. He did not know what he would have said.
* * *
The inn emerged from the mist an hour later, low and solid, with firelight casting an orange glow through the shutters and the smell of peat smoke drifting off like a greeting.
Fergus didn't hesitate to consider his options.
From here, he could see Margaret's skirts, heavy with river water, and the light was fading, while the mist had sealed the road behind them as firmly as a door.
He got them inside.
The innkeeper was a broad man with the unhurried demeanor of someone who had seen everything a Highland road could throw at him and had long ceased to be surprised by it.
He looked at the two of them, waterlogged and crackling with the particular, contained energy of people who were not speaking but were very aware of each other, and asked no unnecessary questions.
"One room," the man said. "Fire's lit and there's a plaid."
Fergus did not look at Margaret. He did not need to because he could feel her arriving at the same realization he had.
"Have it warmed," he said. "And bring somethin' hot for the Lady."
"Aye, me Laird."
The man disappeared. The common room was empty at this hour, the benches bare, the fire doing the patient work of warming a space too large for it. Fergus set his hands on the mantle and looked into the flame.
"One room," Margaret said. "Ye could sleep in the stables."
"I could." He straightened. "But I willnae. Ye'll freeze before mornin' if we daenae share the heat. I'll nae have ye ill before ye've even seen the castle."
"How practical of ye, Fergus."
"Aye."
"I thought for a moment ye might say somethin' approachin' warm."