Chapter 5
Chapter Five
"She hasnae stopped since yesterday evenin'."
Mrs. O'Halloran delivered this report before Fergus had fully dismounted, before the dust had even settled around his stallion's hooves.
Not a single word of welcome had been offered.
The housekeeper stood in the middle of the muddy courtyard. She looked as if she had been through a siege, her apron crumpled and her hair falling out of its pins in frantic wisps.
"She cried through the night, me Laird. Cried through the mornin'.
Cried through me attemptin' to feed her, which she did eat, mind ye, but cryin' throughout as if the very porridge were an insult.
She is currently in the kitchen because that is where Maisie is, and Maisie is the only soul she'll tolerate, and the poor lass has been on her feet since. "
"Mrs. O'Halloran." Fergus swung down from the saddle, his boots hitting the earth with a heavy thud.
"Aye, me Laird."
"This is Lady MacKenzie."
The housekeeper turned, her eyes widening.
Margaret had come to stand at Fergus's shoulder. Her cloak was still travel-worn, the hem stained with the mud of the river crossing, and her hair was pinned back into something that approximated order after the morning's disaster.
She did not look like a woman who had just traveled for days; she looked like a woman who was taking a mental inventory of the stones beneath her feet.
She met Mrs. O'Halloran's gaze with a calm, level attention that seemed to immediately recalibrate the older woman's entire assessment of the situation.
"Where's the bairn? What's goin' on with the lass?" Margaret asked.
Her voice was steady, cutting through the housekeeper's frantic energy like a cool breeze.
Mrs. O'Halloran blinked, her mouth snapping shut before she found her voice. "Been yellin' all day, me Lady."
"How old?"
"Seven months, I believe, me Lady."
"Is she feverish?"
"Warm from the screamin', but nay. Nae feverish in the blood."
"Teethin', then. Or frightened by the change in the air." Margaret glanced once at Fergus. Not for permission, but simply orienting herself in his space, she then looked back to the housekeeper with an air of quiet command. "Take me to her. Now."
Fergus stood by his horse, the reins still in his hand, watching the two women disappear into the gloom of the great hall. He was the Laird, yet he felt as though the wind had just been stolen from his sails.
* * *
The kitchen was loud, hot, and entirely failing to solve its central problem. The smell of roasting mutton and damp wool was thick enough to chew.
Lilly was in Maisie's arms, her face a bright, mottled red of pure fury. Her small fists clenched in protest over the great injustice of being seven months old in an unfamiliar castle with no one who smelled like home.
The maid's face, when she looked up, showed that she was stressed.
Two kitchen girls hovered near the hearth, ostensibly stirring pots but doing nothing useful.
The cook stood at the far end of the room with her back turned, pretending to worry over a tray of bread but clearly straining to hear every breath taken in the room.
Fergus paused in the doorway, his broad frame blocking the light. He felt tremendously out of place among the steam and the screams.
Margaret did not hesitate. She walked straight into the heat, her stride purposeful.
"Here, ye can give her to me," she said to Maisie, her arms already open. It was not a request; it was a transition of power.
Maisie transferred the bairn with speed. Lilly registered the change. The shift to new arms, a different warmth, and a scent that didn't belong to the weary maid. She pulled in a great, shuddering breath, her chest heaving as she prepared for a fresh escalation of her protest.
"Aye, I ken," Margaret said quietly, her voice a low, melodic hum that seemed to vibrate against the child's skin. "It's a terrible world, isnae it, mo chridhe? All this stone and noise and nay one to tell ye where ye are."
The escalation did not come.
Lilly's face remained scrunched, her eyes squeezed shut in suspicion, but the cry that followed was smaller.
Margaret was already moving, a slow, unhurried shift of her weight from foot to foot.
She brought one hand up to the back of the bairn's head, cupping the soft fuzz of her hair, and Lilly's tiny fist found Margaret's finger.
The child clenched it, as if it were a question she had finally received an answer to.
"She's beautiful," Margaret said softly.
She was looking at Lilly with an expression so open, so raw and unguarded, that Fergus found himself staring at the side of her face for longer than was sensible. The firelight caught the honey-colored curls at her temple and the dusting of freckles across her nose.
He cleared his throat, the sound loud in the quiet room. "Its name is Lilly."
Margaret looked up. Her expression was patient, as a teacher deciding how much patience to deploy with a difficult student. "What did ye just say?"
"I said its name is Lilly."
"Ye said its name." She tilted her head, her gaze sharp. "Like when ye told me of her in Dunalasdair. It's cryin'. It needs tendin'. It is a problem to be solved." A pause, her eyes narrowing. "She, Fergus. The word is she."
From somewhere near the hearth, one of the kitchen girls made a sound she converted, not entirely convincingly, into a cough. The cook at the far end suddenly found her stirring demanded her absolute, undivided focus.
Fergus felt the heat of the kitchen rising into his collar.
He looked at the child, who was now watching him with large, wet eyes. "Lilly," he said, his voice deep and carefully enunciated.
"Better." Margaret looked back down at the bairn, whose eyelids were growing heavy despite her recent convictions. "Hello, Lilly," she whispered. "I'm sorry it took me so long to get here."
Something in Fergus's chest stirred. A strange, tight sensation he had not authorized and certainly did not appreciate. He stood in the doorway of his own kitchen, watching his wife settle into the chair nearest the fire without being invited, without asking if the seat was available.
She sat as if she had lived here for twenty years, while he felt, without any rational basis, like a visitor.
He turned and left the room before anyone could remark on him standing there like a statue.
He found useful work. There was always useful work for a laird who preferred the company of stone to the company of women. The south granary wall had developed a lean that required his attention, and two of his men were waiting on a decision regarding the boundary markers on the eastern ridge.
He gave the decisions, assessed the masonry, spoke to his steward about the stores of salted beef for winter, and did a creditable impression of a man who had not noticed the quality of the silence in the hall since Margaret arrived.
The air felt different. It was less heavy, yet more charged.
He was standing in the courtyard, examining a loose hinge on the main gate, when Mrs. O'Halloran appeared at his elbow. She looked significantly more composed than she had three hours ago.
"She's asked for the nursery," the housekeeper said. "The wee room off the upper landin'. The one with the mornin' light."
Fergus didn't look up from the gate. "Aye. That's fine. Let her have what she needs."
"She's also asked about the linen situation in the east corridor."
Fergus paused, his hand still on the cold iron. "The linen situation?"
"The damp, me Laird. The hangin's. The way the moisture clings to the stone and rots the fabric." Mrs. O'Halloran's expression was carefully arranged into a mask of professional neutrality. "I may have mentioned it's been on the list of repairs for a while now."
"It has been on the list," Fergus admitted, his jaw tightening.
"Aye, me Laird." A pause. "She said we'd start there. This evenin'."
He stared at her. "She's been here three hours."
"Two and a half, me Laird," Mrs. O'Halloran corrected.
She walked away with the stride of a woman who had just received the first satisfying news of the week, leaving Fergus to wonder when exactly he had lost control of his own keep.
* * *
He showed her the chambers himself.
He had planned for Maisie to do it, but he found himself climbing the stairs with Margaret beside him and Lilly drowsy on her shoulder. There was no good moment to change the situation without making it seem like a statement of some kind, and Fergus was tired of making statements.
The room was at the end of the upper corridor, large enough for comfort, with a window that looked north toward the jagged ridge and a fireplace that drew well.
He had used it for nothing since taking the castle; it had been a room of dust and shadows. It had been cleared and aired sometime in the past week. He had not asked who ordered that, and Mrs. O'Halloran had not volunteered the information.
Margaret stood in the center of the room and looked around the way she had looked at everything since they arrived. Taking inventory, quietly and completely, without making a performance of it.
"It's a good room," she said.
"Aye."
"The window sticks." She had already crossed the floor to try the latch. "But it can be fixed with a bit of grease and a steady hand."
"I'll have someone fix it."
"I'll manage it." She turned to face him. Lilly had drifted entirely to sleep against her shoulder, one small, starfish-shaped fist twisted loosely in the fabric of Margaret's travel cloak. "Which rooms are yers, Fergus?"
He nodded toward the far wall, where a heavy oak door sat recessed into the stone. "Through there."
She looked at the wall. At the narrow door that he had not specifically intended to highlight. Her gaze returned to him, her expression doing something complicated and unhelpful to his composure.
"Adjoinin'," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Aye."
"Ye prepared this room for me?"
"The housekeeper did."