Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
She had not meant to look out the window.
She had settled Lilly twenty minutes earlier. The chamomile cloth, the rhythmic rocking, the low hum of a song her mother had sung to her once in a kitchen that smelled of fresh bread and beeswax felt like a lifetime ago and a country away.
Lilly had gone down without an argument, a rare gift Margaret had learned to accept as a blessing rather than a pattern.
She had stood over the crib for longer than necessary, one hand resting lightly on the bairn's back, feeling the steady rise and fall of her breath, the small warmth of her radiating into the cool air of the chamber.
The chamomile cloth, the rhythmic rocking, the low hum of a song her mother had sung to her once in a kitchen that smelled of fresh bread and beeswax, it all felt like a lifetime ago and a country away.
She was still in her nightgown. She had not bothered to dress. It was late, the fire had burned low, and she had no intention of going further than the window to close the shutter against the wind that had been rattling it for the past half hour.
She crossed the room carefully, so as not to wake Lilly, and reached for the heavy wooden shutter.
The storm hit the glass like a massive, wet fist.
Margaret pressed her face to the pane. The sky was a bruised purple, torn by jagged streaks of white lightning.
In the strobe-like flashes, she saw it, the sheep shed at the far edge of the south field. It was the new one Fergus had built with his own hands alongside his men, its timber frame shuddering in the gale like a living thing.
One of the side barriers had come loose.
It was swinging wide, banging against the main post with each violent gust, a rhythmic thud that echoed the pounding of her own heart.
The sheep inside would be panicking. The whole structure would be lifted and shattered if the wind caught the roof at the wrong angle.
She did not give this a second thought.
She was down the stone stairs, through the grand hall, and out into the courtyard before she fully realized she was still in her nightgown.
Her feet were bare. The rain was more like a wall of cold, relentless water rushing sideways through the darkness.
The ground beneath her first three steps turned into a sucking, muddy mire.
She ran anyway.
The wind screamed across the open field, bending the long grass flat and driving the rain into her face hard enough to draw blood.
She could see the shed, the flicker of torchlight from somewhere inside it, moving frantically.
Someone was already there. She ran toward the light, her nightgown soaked through in seconds, the thin fabric clinging to her like a second skin.
Her hair was a wild tangle in her eyes. The mud sucked at her feet, trying to pull her down with every desperate step.
She heard him before she reached the shelter.
"Get that beam in the ground, now, daenae let it—" A crack of thunder swallowed the rest of the command.
Then she was around the corner of the structure, ducking into the partial shelter of its frame.
Fergus was there. He was soaked to the bone, his dark hair plastered flat against his face, and his massive shoulder braced against a support beam that two of his men were trying to anchor into the rain-slicked earth.
A third man worked on the loose barrier with a length of fraying rope.
Fergus saw her the instant she appeared. His eyes widened, dark and fierce.
"Go back!" The words cut through the roar of the storm, sharp and immediate. Even in the chaos of wind and rain and men shouting, his gaze found hers with a directness that left no room for misunderstanding.
Margaret ignored it. She reached for the swinging barrier.
It was heavy, far heavier than it had looked from the window.
The wet wood was dense and unwieldy, vibrating with the force of the wind.
It took both her hands and the full weight of her body to stop its lethal swing and drag it back toward the post.
"I said go back, Margaret!"
"They need help!" She jammed her shoulder against the wood, her arms shaking with the effort. The cold was a physical weight. "Someone tie this! Now!"
For a moment, one suspended moment, with rain pouring off his jaw and the storm howling around them like a pack of wolves, Fergus looked at her. Really looked at her. She looked back, her jaw set, her hazel eyes burning with a light that rivaled the lightning. Neither of them moved.
Then another gust hit, harder than anything before it. The roof gave a sound that raised every hair on Margaret's body, a deep, agonizing groan of timber under terminal stress.
Fergus was already moving.
"Fine!" The word came through his gritted teeth. "Stay. But ye do exactly as I say."
"Gladly," she shouted back. It was a lie, but this was not the moment for the truth.
The next half hour was a blur of noise; Fergus called instructions, and she followed them. She did not do it because he was the Laird; she did it because he knew this wood. He had built it. He understood its weaknesses, and she was not foolish enough to let her pride get in the way of survival.
She braced where he instructed her to brace. She pulled when he barked, "Pull." She moved out of the way instinctively, like a hunter, when a section of rope snapped free and whistled past her head like a lash.
They did not speak. There was no space for anything but the work. But she was aware of him every second.
She was aware of the weight of his voice cutting through the gale.
She watched him move through the chaos with a contained, furious efficiency.
There was no wasted motion in him. She had seen him work before, from the safety of a window.
This was different. This was alongside him.
The heat of his body was a ghost through the rain.
By the time the structure was finally secured—the beam anchored, the barrier roped tight, the sheep herded back to the covered end—the storm had not broken, but it had steadied. It settled into a heavy, rhythmic downpour, the savage, roof-tearing gusts finally passing over the ridge.
Fergus straightened, his chest heaving. He looked at his men. They were shivering, their faces pale in the torchlight.
"Go," he said, his voice a low vibration. "Back to the hearth. Warm yerselves. That's an order."
They went. They went without argument, moving with the speed of men who had been waiting for the word. In moments, the shed was filled with nothing but the sound of the rain and the soft shifting of the sheep in the dark.
And the two of them.
Margaret did not move toward the castle. She couldn't. Her legs felt like water, and the fire in her blood was too high.
* * *
She was still there.
She stood in the rain with her arms at her sides.
Her nightgown was soaked through, the linen transparent against the curves of her body.
Her hair was dark, plastered against her neck and face.
She was not shivering. She was simply standing, watching him with that calm, steady look that had haunted his dreams since she arrived.
It was the look of the dinner table. The look of the loch.
I see ye.
His jaw tightened until it throbbed.
"Did I nae just tell them all to go?" His voice came out lower than intended. It was a dangerous sound, stripped of the need to shout. The storm had taken the excuse of volume away and left him with nothing between them but the falling rain.
"Ye did," she said, her voice a soft bell.
"Then?"
"I am nae one of yer men, Fergus."
He looked at her. Water traced down the bridge of his nose, along his neck, soaking through his plaid shirt and the linen shirt beneath it.
He was cold and exhausted. His shoulder ached from the memory of the beam.
Meanwhile, his wife stood in his field, wearing a wet nightgown, with mud on her bare feet.
She looked, God help him, as if she had every right to be exactly where she was.
"Ye should be inside," he said, his voice cracking.
"And ye should nae be out here alone. Nae ever."
He took a step toward her. He told himself it was to make his point. To be heard over the rain. "Ye daenae listen, Margaret."
"And ye daenae ask." Her chin lifted, that fierce Highland pride flaring in the dark.
"Ye tell. Ye order. Ye send people away when the work is done as though needin' help was a temporary failin' to be corrected.
" Her hazel eyes did not move from his. "I stayed because someone should. Because I wanted to."
"I daenae need ye to."
"I ken what ye think ye daenae need, Fergus MacKenzie."
He was close now. Closer than he had ever allowed himself to be. The rain fell between them, a silver curtain. The shed groaned once, a settling sound, and the sheep rustled in the straw. None of it was loud enough to drown out the fact of her standing there.
"Everythin' with ye is a fight," he said. The words came out rough.
"Only when ye make it one."
She was soaked through. Her nightgown clung to every line of her, the thin fabric giving up any pretense of modesty. He had been trying not to see it for the past thirty minutes. He was very, very tired of trying.
The memory of the loch hit him. Her back bare in the evening light, highlighting the curve of her waist and how the water had caressed her.
It intertwined with the heat of the work and a week of locked doors and raised cups.
It all combined with the torture of lying awake, knowing she was only twelve inches of timber away.
He reached for her. His large hands gripped her upper arms tightly. He pulled her toward him with almost violent force and then kissed her.
There was nothing careful about it. No tactical calculation. No controlled approach. It was immediate and hard. It tasted of salt and rain and ancient, repressed fire. For one suspended heartbeat, she was still. Just a breath, just a shock, and then she broke.
Her hands came up to his shoulders, gripping the wet wool of his plaid.
She kissed him back with a fierceness that knocked every remaining thought from his head.
It made the storm irrelevant. It made the shed and the sheep and the mud and the whole relentless weight of the MacKenzie name entirely, completely irrelevant.
He had one hand crushed at her waist and one buried in the wet silk of her hair. He could feel her, all of her, through the soaked linen. She was warm despite the rain. She was fire in the dark.
A cry split the night.
Fergus stopped. He pulled back, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
Margaret was breathing just as hard. Her face was very close. Her eyes were dark in the storm-dark, her lips swollen and wet.
He released her. He stepped back into the cold.
"The sheep," he said. His voice was wrecked. A ghost of its usual command.
Another cry echoed from the shed, caused by one of the animals, startled by the thunder. Fergus turned toward the sound but didn't look at her. He couldn't. If he looked at her now, he knew he wouldn't be able to stop.
He was breathing hard. He was walking away.
He was doing the only thing he could do, putting distance between himself and the disaster of his own desire.
He needed a problem that could be solved with rope and timber.
He did not know how to solve the one he had just made a thousand times more complicated.
He should not have done that. He had terms to keep. He had a clan to lead. He had a child sleeping upstairs who needed them to be sensible. And he had just…
He had just kissed his wife in the rain, and she had kissed him back.
He pressed one hand against a rough cedar post, the splinters biting into his palm.
Get yerself together, man.
Behind him, through the rain, he heard nothing.
She did not call after him. She did not storm past him back to the castle. He could feel her still standing there. He could always feel her. The fact that she had not moved was somehow worse than anything else.
He stood in the shed with the sheep shifting nervously around his boots and the storm pressing on the roof. He understood then, with the cold clarity of a man who has run out of places to hide, that locking a door had never been enough.
It had never been about the door.