Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
She woke to warmth and silence.
The fire had burned low. Embers breathed red and slow in the hearth, casting long, bloody shadows across the stone floor. Outside, the wind had dropped. The storm was over.
A sound broke the quiet. It came from the adjoining room. A soft, ragged exhale. The groan of a heavy floorboard under weight.
Margaret was off the mattress before she was conscious of the choice.
The cold stone bit into her bare soles. She didn't feel it.
She crossed the room, her shift brushing her shins, and reached for the adjoining door, and found it unlatched.
He must have come through it when he returned from the fields.
She pushed it open just enough to see through the crack.
He was asleep.
He looked different like this. Not in any way less, but different.
He must have come back after checkin' on the animals. After makin' sure everythin' held. After all of it.
He lay on top of the covers, fully clothed from the waist down, his boots set aside near the door. One arm was thrown above his head. The blankets had slid and were bunched at his side, leaving the upper half of him entirely unguarded.
The firelight in his room was dimmer than hers, but it was enough.
It caught the angle of his jaw, the strong line of his throat, the broad slope of his shoulders tapering into the defined planes of his chest, and the flat, steady rise of his stomach with each slow breath.
He was built the way men were built when their strength came from real labor—solid and without vanity, with every line of him shaped by years of purpose.
The light traced the curve of his arm above his head, the muscle there even at rest, and the long shadow it cast across his ribs.
I felt those arms. Last night, in the rain. I gripped his shoulders and felt exactly how little effort it would take for a man like that to hold the whole world still.
Then the memory returned. The cold, the dark, and his hands tightening around her arms with a strength that surprised her, then his mouth, and the way she had responded instinctively, without thought, without carefully planning, despite the calm she had been working to maintain for weeks.
She had kissed him back fully and without hesitation, and for that fleeting moment, it felt like something real.
Heat climbed her neck and settled in her face before she could do anything useful about it.
That is enough.
She pulled the door shut with both hands—quietly, deliberately, and with determination—but stayed in the middle of her room and took a breath. Once. Then again.
He kissed me. I kissed him back. The sheep had cried, and he had walked away. That was the whole of it, and she would do well to remember the last part as clearly as the rest.
She found her slippers and grabbed the shawl, wrapping it against her chest. She opened the corridor door and headed to the kitchen.
The stone hallway was cold and silent, with the torches burned down to stubs in their brackets, her footsteps barely making a sound on the worn flags.
The castle was still asleep, during that brief hour between the end of the night watch and the start of the morning shift, when the corridors belonged to no one.
The warmth of the kitchen fire hit her before she reached the doorway.
Mrs. O'Halloran was already at the long table when Margaret pushed through the kitchen door, her sleeves rolled up to the elbows, a round of bread dough in front of her.
The fire was high. The air smelled of woodsmoke, warm milk, and something sweet bubbling at the back of the hearth.
"Lady MacKenzie." The cook looked up without breaking her rhythm. "Ye're early."
"I couldnae sleep."
"Aye, well." Mrs. O'Halloran pressed the heel of her hand into the dough with practiced authority. "Storm will do that. Sit, I'll have something warm for ye in a moment."
Maisie was at the far end of the kitchen, already dressed, measuring oats with a wooden scoop and humming something low and tuneless under her breath. She glanced up when Margaret entered and smiled the easy smile of a woman who had been awake for a while and was comfortable with the hour.
"Did ye sleep at all?" Maisie asked.
"Some," Margaret said, which was true, technically.
She settled onto the bench near the window and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
Outside, the sky wore that particular pale gray of very early morning, the kind that hasn't yet decided whether it wants to be beautiful.
The courtyard below was empty and wet, the cobblestones dark with last night's rain, and the air through the cracked shutter smelled of earth, damp stone, and the fresh cleanness that follows a storm.
Mrs. O'Halloran was talking about the bread, the flour stores, and whether the grain delivery from the south would arrive before the end of the week.
Margaret made the appropriate sounds. She was aware of doing this, of the performance of listening while her mind was entirely elsewhere, which was not a habit she was proud of but couldn't stop at the moment.
His arms held me.
She stared at the window.
He kissed me in the rain, in the dark, with his hands in me hair without carin' that the storm was screamin' around us.
It was neither tentative nor questioning, nor anything she might have expected from a man who had spent a week showing indifference. It was confident. It was instantaneous. It was the kind of kiss that left no room for misunderstanding.
And then the sheep had cried, and he walked away.
"Lady MacKenzie?" Maisie set a cup of warm milk in front of her.
"Thank ye," Margaret said. She wrapped both hands around it.
Mrs. O'Halloran was now discussing the butter churn, which had been causing trouble since Tuesday, and what she planned to say to the man responsible for repairing it. Margaret nodded at what felt like appropriate intervals. The milk was warm and sweet, and she could not taste it at all.
The worst of it is nae that he had walked away.
She had expected that, on some level, because Fergus MacKenzie walking away was as reliable as the tide.
The worst of it was the moment before. The way he had looked at her just before he reached for her, that single suspended second where every wall he had built had simply gone, and she had seen him. Not the Laird. Not the soldier. Him.
And I have nay idea what to do with that.
"The eastern grain shed will need clearin' before the autumn stores come in," Mrs. O'Halloran announced. "I'll be needin' extra hands for it, me Lady, if ye'd put the word to the Laird."
"I will," Margaret said.
Then she heard him. His voice came from the corridor, quiet and probing, calling out to someone near the door.
One word. She thought it was her name, or something close enough that her body reacted instinctively before her mind did.
She was already on her feet and moved two steps to the left, behind the large stone pillar that divided the cooking hearth from the prep table, before she realized what she was doing or consciously decided to move.
She stood there with her back against the cool stone and her warm milk still in her hands.
What are ye doin', ye dumb lass? What on earth are ye doin'?
She truly did not know. She was a grown woman, a married woman, hiding behind a kitchen pillar from her own husband because he had kissed her. Yes, and also because she had not fully recovered from it yet and could not look at him without betraying her feelings.
"She was just here," Maisie's voice carried easily from the other end of the kitchen, cheerful and entirely unsuspicious. "Nae long ago. Came down early, she did. Perhaps she's gone up to the bairn."
"Aye," Mrs. O'Halloran confirmed, without a flicker of hesitation. "She warmed milk nae long ago. She'll be in the nursery, me Laird."
A pause.
Then the sound of his footsteps moved away down the corridor.
Margaret let out a breath she had not known she was holding. She stepped out from behind the pillar. Maisie looked at her from the far end of the kitchen with an expression of perfect, beautiful neutrality.
"More milk?" Maisie offered.
"Please," Margaret said.
Neither of them mentioned it. Margaret sat back down on the bench, wrapped her hands around the fresh cup, looked at the gray morning outside the window, and thought, with a clarity that was almost painful, that she couldn't keep doing this.
She couldn't keep hiding behind pillars, closed doors, and carefully maintained composure.
She had come here with terms. She had set them herself.
She had stood in Isobel's courtyard and told this man exactly what she expected of him.
And then had hidden in a kitchen.
She took a slow sip of milk.
Right. Enough.
Margaret set her cup down and pushed to her feet.
"I'd better check on the bairn," she said.
Maisie nodded. Mrs. O'Halloran was already back at the bread. Margaret took a small pot of warm milk from the hearth, wrapped a cloth around the handle, and went back into the corridor.
The nursery was at the end of the east passage, a small room that caught the morning light well when the weather allowed. The door was pushed to, but not fully closed. She could hear nothing from inside, which meant Lilly was either asleep or quietly content, and either was a blessing at this hour.
She pushed the door open with her shoulder, the milk pot in both hands, and stopped.
Fergus was there.
He stood beside the crib with his back to the door, still wearing the same clothes he had on during the storm, his dark hair unbound and damp at the ends.
He hadn't heard her come in. His entire attention was on the child in front of him, which, Margaret realized, was the only reason she was seeing what she was seeing.
Lilly was awake. She lay on her back with both arms raised, her small fists opening and closing in that slow, purposeful way she had when something had caught her attention.
Her eyes were fixed on Fergus with the absolute, unblinking concentration of a bairn who has decided that this particular person is interesting and intends to investigate further.
She stretched one hand toward him, fingers spread, reaching.
Fergus reached back. One large finger, extended slowly, and Lilly's hand closed around it with immediate satisfaction.
His jaw softened. Just slightly. Just enough.
Margaret had never seen that before. It was a raw, unguarded look. It was there and gone before he even knew she was watching.
So that is what ye look like when no one is watchin'.
He turned. The softness closed like an iron gate. His jaw clamped tight. His dark eyes locked onto hers, stripping away that fleeting vulnerability.
"Where were ye?" His voice was flat. Heavy. "She was cryin', and ye were nowhere to be found."
The words landed. Margaret felt the hit.
She didn't lower her gaze. She walked across the room, her skirts whispering against the floorboards, and placed the earthenware milk pot on the small table next to the crib. The wood scraped loudly in the tense silence.
He was doing it again. She could see it happening in real time, the distance building itself, brick by brick, as if last night had not happened.
As if the rain, the shed, and his hands in her hair were things they had both agreed to set aside without talking about it.
He was going to stand in this nursery, speak to her in that clipped, Laird-of-this-castle voice, and pretend that he had not kissed her twelve hours ago.
Nae today. Nay.
"We will feed her first," Margaret said, lifting the milk pot and turning to the crib with a calm she did not entirely feel. "And then ye are comin' with me."
Fergus straightened. "I've work to—"
"Ye gave me yer word." She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. She looked at him over her shoulder, steady and direct. "Ye'll remember what that means."
A beat of silence.
Lilly made a small, impatient sound and reached again.