Chapter 22 #2
The clan roared around him in warmth, grease, and violent movement. And through every single frame of it, Fergus remained intensely aware of Margaret.
Always.
Even when she disappeared briefly behind the thick columns of smoke or into the crowd of weavers, some primitive part of his mind tracked her. The bright flash of her green dress between the lanterns. The low cadence of her voice. The specific, clear shape of her laugh.
It was a dangerous habit. She was a dangerous woman.
Isobel appeared beside the traditional musicians sometime later, carrying a wide wooden cup of sweet wine.
"Oh, nay," Margaret said, stepping back.
Isobel ignored her completely, turning her face to the surrounding tables. "Do ye all ken that Lady MacKenzie used to sing for her people?"
Margaret pointed a finger straight at her friend's face. "Isobel, I swear."
"With her mother," Isobel continued loudly, her voice carrying over the music. "Every summer evenin' until half the village came listenin' outside her windows in the Lowlands."
The nearby tables erupted into a chorus of pounding timber.
"A song then!"
"Aye, let us hear the Lady!"
Margaret laughed once in pure disbelief, her cheeks turning a bright red. "Absolutely nae. The pipes have ruined me ears tonight."
"Coward," Isobel said serenely, taking a sip of her wine.
"I hate ye deeply," Margaret hissed.
"Nay, ye love me with all yer heart."
More voices joined in from the darkness beyond the fire pits. The old men by the whisky barrels turned around.
"Sing, Lady MacKenzie!"
"Just one verse for the glen, me Lady!"
"Come now, show the MacKenzies what ye have!"
Margaret shook her head hard, her loose curls slipping farther free from their horn pins to spill over her shoulders.
"Me mother isnae here to hold the lower melody," she said, her voice dropping into a quieter register. "It wouldnae sound right without her."
For a brief, rare moment, the rowdy crowd softened, the men lowering their cups.
Then an older weaver near the hearth fire called out, her voice cracked with age but steady: "Then sing for her anyway, me Lady. She'll hear it over the ridge."
The crowd took it up immediately, louder this time.
"Aye!"
Margaret pressed her lips together into a thin line.
Fergus watched her fingers tighten once around the handle of her mug until the skin over her knuckles turned white.
She was embarrassed, not frightened. He knew her well enough now to realize she didn't scare easily, and she wasn't truly unwilling either.
She simply looked exposed, standing there in the middle of three hundred people who belonged to him.
Isobel reached out and gently touched her bare arm, her expression softening. "They'll love it, Margaret. They want to hear the soul of ye."
"That's precisely the problem," Margaret whispered.
Laughter echoed around them again, easing the tension. Then Margaret sighed, a long, exhausted sound. She set her mug down on the wooden table, straightened her green wool apron, and stepped into the open circle of the firelight.
The simple movement changed the entire dynamic of the meadow.
Not immediately, and not with a shout, but the silence spread outward from her boots one by one as people noticed her position.
Conversations faded into murmurs. The nearest fiddlers lowered their bows, the strings groaning softly.
Even the running children slowed to a halt, their sticky faces turning toward the light.
Margaret stopped within the very center of the firelight's radius. The wind moved softly across the grass, carrying a small cloud of red sparks around the hem of her red skirts, catching the fabric's depth and turning it briefly, brilliantly alive.
Fergus had seen her beauty before. He had seen her in his dark chambers with Lilly asleep against her chest in the middle of the night. He had seen her in the early morning gold beside the solar window. He had seen her furious and unyielding, staring him down in the great hall.
But this? This felt entirely different.
The massive peat fire painted a rich, deep gold across her skin, emphasizing the tiny dusting of freckles lightly scattered over her shoulders and the bridge of her nose. Her thick hair caught a deep, burning copper hue where the flames touched the edges of her curls.
She briefly glanced at Isobel, her chin dipping. Then she lifted her face toward the dark, silent hills behind the castle walls and started to sing.
The first note slid cleanly into the freezing night air.
Everything inside Fergus went completely, utterly still.
Her voice was initially low, dark, and resonant.
It was soft enough that the nearest clansmen leaned forward unconsciously, tilting their chests toward the fire to feel the vibration.
Then it gradually rose, drawing strength from the valley, carrying across the entire lower meadow with an almost impossible, bell-like clarity.
The song itself was ancient. Fergus recognized pieces of the melody from his own disjointed childhood, though he had not heard the Gaelic words in twenty years. It was an old air about a woman waiting beside a gray sea for a soldier who never returned to his valley.
But Margaret sang it differently. It wasn't mournful. It was hopeful.
That was the exact thing that reached under his heavy ribs like a cold blade and closed hard around his lungs.
The sound moved through his chest in ways he did not possess the language to describe.
It wasn't gentle. Nothing about Margaret Mackenzie had ever been gentle where he was concerned.
It slid across his bare skin like intense heat, like the press of fingers, like standing entirely too close to a dangerous cliff edge and wanting to take another step forward anyway.
The peat fire cracked sharply beside him, spitting a single ember into the dark. Margaret's voice climbed higher, hitting a clear, soaring note that echoed off the castle walls.
Christ.
Fergus dragged a thick, rough hand across his jaw, his teeth grinding together.
She did not look at him while she sang. That should have eased his defenses, but it did not.
Every time her voice softened into the lower register, he found himself imagining that exact sound pressed against his own throat.
Against his mouth. In the dead dark of the night between their adjoining rooms, where he already slept poorly enough without having to picture this.
Across the meadow, an older clansman exhaled a shaky breath into his beard. Another man muttered a quick prayer under his breath. Fergus understood both reactions perfectly. She was unraveling the space.
Margaret reached the final, lingering verse of the air.
The wind caught her green skirts, softly swirling them around her ankles.
The orange firelight moved over the line of her throat.
Then finally, her hazel eyes lifted from the dark hills.
They searched the crowd, moving past Alasdair, and found him.
The last line of the song nearly destroyed him. Because she held his dark gaze across the distance of the fire pit while she sang it. The final note faded slowly, vibrating into the cold Highland night until it was nothing but breath.
A heavy silence followed. One heartbeat. Two.
Then the entire meadow erupted into a madness of noise.
Cheers broke across the festival grounds so loudly that little Lilly startled awake in Maisie's arms, her small fists flailing.
Men pounded their heavy fists against the oak tables until the horn cups rattled onto the grass.
Women shouted for another song immediately, their voices rising in a deafening chorus.
Margaret laughed breathlessly, her shoulders dropping as she was startled by the sheer force of their approval.
A bright, dark blush spread high across her cheeks, visible even in the firelight.
She quickly stepped back from the open circle, tucking her hands into her apron as if she already regretted letting them see that much of her.
But Fergus could still feel the lingering sound of her voice vibrating inside his ribs, a physical hum that refused to leave his blood.