Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
"Ye look different here," Isobel said.
They were barely past the eastern gate, the horses still adjusting to the uneven lower track. She spoke plainly and without warning, as if she had been holding it in since she stepped out of the carriage.
Margaret kept her eyes on the path ahead. "Do I?"
"Aye." Isobel let her mare pick her way over a loose scatter of stones. "I couldnae place it at first. But it's the way ye move through the castle. Like ye ken where everythin' is."
"I do ken where everythin' is."
"That's nae what I mean." Isobel glanced at her. "Ye move through it like it's yers."
Margaret said nothing. She pressed her heels softly into the bay's sides and let him find his own rhythm up the first steep hill, feeling the muscles bunch and stretch beneath her saddle.
Margaret had not been on horseback in open land since the grueling ride north from Dunalasdair, which had been a completely different experience. Forward movement driven by fear, a destination she dreaded, and a husband who had barely spoken three words to her for two solid days.
This afternoon was nothing like that. Instead, it was the Glen MacKenzie spreading wide and magnificent beneath a high, clear summer sky, with Isobel on the gray mare at her left shoulder.
She let her bay horse find its own pace up the first steep slope, feeling the muscles bunch and stretch beneath her saddle, then encouraged the beast to lengthen into a glorious canter where the ground flattened into green turf.
For a long, unthinking stretch, Margaret ceased managing her posture, her thoughts, and anything else at all. She simply flew.
They pulled up their mounts at the far ridge, where the land sharply dropped off to the south.
From this spot, on a clear afternoon, you could see all the way to the distant, silver gleam of a loch she had not yet found on any map.
The wind came off the ridge crisp and cold, pulling a thick, loose curl from her hair and whipping it across her face.
She pushed it back with a gloved hand, gazed out over the vast green landscape, and took a deep, steady breath.
"This is yers," Isobel said, her horse shifting slightly beside Margaret's.
Margaret turned her head to look at her friend.
"All of this." Isobel gestured with her chin.
Not dramatically, for she was never a woman for grand, empty gestures, but specifically, the way a person points at a solid, indisputable fact.
"The glen, the hills, the people in that castle.
Yers by the marriage decree, aye, but also yers now by the sheer amount of work ye've put into the soil.
" She paused, her eyes searching Margaret's face. "Can you feel that yet?"
Margaret turned back to the view, her fingers tightening on the leather reins. Below them, the wind moved through the tall summer grass on the slope, flowing toward the distant gray towers of the castle in a visible, rolling wave.
"Sometimes," she whispered.
They rode back down the valley path at a slow pace, which was Isobel's silent, graceful way of indicating that there was much more to say and she planned to say it at a pace that allowed for proper, uninterrupted conversation.
Margaret had forgotten this particular quality about herself. She had forgotten many things during the long months of isolation. She had forgotten that Isobel's silences meant something entirely different from those of others—namely, the way she observed a situation unfolding.
They talked about small, safe things first.
Little Lilly back at the keep. The winter festival preparations and the garlands for the great hall.
The treacherous state of the high road from Dunalasdair, which was significantly worse than last year, and apparently nobody's responsibility in particular.
Finally, they laughed over the gray mare's persistent tendency to drift left on downhill ground.
"She is nae driftin'," Margaret said, a small smile breaking through her reserve. "Ye're sittin' on the right, Isobel."
"I am sittin' exactly as I always sit in a saddle."
"Aye, and ye've always sat right." Margaret glanced at her companion sideways. "It's a long, rocky road north. The beast is simply tired."
Isobel looked down at the mare's ears, then back up at Margaret, her gaze sharpening. "When did you learn so much about horses, Margaret?"
"I always kent horses."
"You were absolutely terrified of them when you were fifteen."
"I was fifteen," Margaret defended, her cheeks flushing slightly as she kept her eyes on the rocky path ahead. "And they were very large, unpredictable things."
Isobel laughed, a bright, clear sound that echoed off the stone banks of the trail. The sound was so intensely familiar, so deeply tied to her old life, that something inside Margaret's chest did something it hadn't done in months. It let go without being asked, opening up quietly and unexpectedly.
She had not even known she was holding herself so tight.
They returned through the eastern gate of the castle, hearing the lively noise of the inner courtyard before they actually saw it. Steel striking steel. The sharp, clear, ringing rhythm of practiced sparring, relaxed yet highly precise.
The gate boy hurried forward to take their reins, and Margaret and Isobel stepped through the stone archway together, their riding skirts rustling against the gravel.
Fergus and Alasdair were in the exact center of the courtyard.
They had removed their heavy outer plaids and their doublets, down to their linen shirts. They moved with the terrifying, fluid ease of men who had done this a thousand times before on bloody battlefields.
The heavy training blades moved between them in complex, lethal patterns that had absolutely nothing to do with performance and everything to do with deep-seated habit.
It was not a performative fight. It was a profound conversation in a language that required no words.
Call and response, pressure and release, the body's instinctive shorthand for twenty years of trusting the other man's blade to stop an inch from the throat.
Isobel stopped dead in her tracks, her boots anchoring to the stones.
"I could watch him all day," Isobel said, her voice dropping into a soft, heavy cadence of comfortable admiration, the tone of a woman who had absolutely no reason to hide her desire. "With a sword in his hand."
She turned her head toward Margaret, a smile spreading across her face that was warm, teasing, and absolutely deliberate. "Best we keep our chambers well clear of yers tonight, Margaret." A brief beat. "If either of ye gets any sleep at all."
Margaret kept her eyes locked on the two men in the yard, her spine stiffening. "Ye neednae worry about that, Isobel."
"Oh?"
"Fergus wouldnae touch me that easily." Margaret said, her voice perfectly even.
She said it casually, intending for the words to come out that way—a bit of easygoing banter.
She delivered it the way she handled most things she desperately needed to be true, with the perfect, unwavering calm she had been building brick by brick since that first terrible morning in the hall at Dunalasdair.
It was the same composure that had carried her through nine months of abandonment, a freezing river crossing, a locked door, and a single, devastating kiss in the rain that he had turned his back on.
It came out lightly.
But it landed in the air between them like a block of lead, and Margaret felt Isobel go completely, utterly still beside her.
"Margaret."
"It's fine, truly."
"It isnae fine." Isobel's voice was quiet.
Not soft, quiet was entirely different from soft.
Quiet meant her tone possessed an edge that refused to pretend or play along with a lie.
"Ye thought he was comin' back for ye. When he finally rode south to Dunalasdair to fetch ye.
Ye thought it meant the real marriage was finally beginnin'. "
Margaret forced her eyes back to the dusty yard.
Alasdair had just pressed Fergus back two swift steps, his blade flashing in the afternoon light, but Fergus had answered the pressure with a brilliant lateral move that Alasdair hadn't fully anticipated.
Fergus's blade came up inside the parry. Controlled, dominant, and inevitable.
Margaret observed the fierce, stunning exchange without actually watching a single frame.
"I thought many foolish things," Margaret said, her fingers curling into her palms. "That was merely one of them."
"And now?"
"Now I ken better." She clasped her hands tightly in front of her apron. "He came back to Dunalasdair for Lilly. I came north to this castle for Lilly. We are..." She stopped, her throat tightening.
She chose her next word with agonizing care and put it down between them like a heavy stone. "Arrangin' ourselves. Around the bairn. It's workin' well enough for the clan."
"Workin' well enough," Isobel repeated, her tone flat with disbelief.
"Aye."
"Margaret." Isobel stepped directly in front of her, breaking her line of sight.
She wasn't blocking her view of the yard. There was no physical view to shield her from, and they both knew it, but she was simply standing where her honest face could not be ignored or avoided.
"Ye set yer terms. Ye went north. Ye have made yerself a place in this castle that would take them twenty years to fill if ye packed yer bags and left tomorrow. That is all real, Margaret. And it is also nae a single thing ye actually came here for."
Margaret looked up, her hazel eyes meeting her friend's dark ones.
"Ye came here to be his wife," Isobel said, her voice rising slightly, entirely kind but utterly unyielding.
"Nae just Lilly's caregiver, though ye are magnificent at that.
Nae just the Lady of this castle, though ye rule it well.
His wife. And ye are still," She paused, letting the word sink in.
"Ye are still sittin' in the dark, waitin' for him to finally see it. "