Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
The seamstress arrived on a Tuesday. Fergus knew this because Tuesday was the day Angus compiled the week's accounting, leaving the ledger on his desk.
Fergus sat at his desk, dipping his quill. He found three figures requiring immediate attention. He was halfway through calculating the first when the noise began.
It wasn't a loud noise. It was the soft, persistent murmur of women's voices carrying down the stone corridor. They rose and fell in waves, punctuated by the crisp rustle of heavy fabric. Then came a sound that made his hand freeze entirely: the low, bright ring of Margaret's laughter.
He forced his gaze down. He turned the page.
Focus.
He managed three more lines before realizing he had read the exact same entry four times. The ink dried on his quill. He couldn't have stated a single sum on the parchment. He set the quill aside.
Mrs. O'Halloran had informed him the previous evening. A seamstress had been fetched from the village to see to the Lady's wardrobe.
Margaret had come north with only what she could pack in two days. It was sensible, but it didn't account for a bitter Highland winter or the demands of a working castle. Fergus had agreed simply to avoid further conversation.
He had not anticipated that the sound of his wife's voice would render his ledgers unreadable. He sat in the silence of his study for another minute. The numbers mocked him.
From the upper corridor, the voices continued their untroubled existence. He heard Margaret mention the weight of wool, followed by a lengthy reply from the seamstress. Then a sudden silence fell.
Fergus stood up so fast his heavy oak chair scraped sharply against the stone floor.
He told himself he was heading to the north yard. The fence posts along the west run needed checking after the recent rain. The storage shed roof required inspection. Both were urgent, legitimate tasks. Neither explained why his boots carried him straight toward the upper corridor.
He rounded the stone corner and stopped dead.
The door to Margaret's chamber stood wide open.
Fergus stopped. The broad frame of his shoulders nearly clipped the oak casing. He had walked into this corridor with a mental tally of tasks.
He could not have named a single one of them now.
Margaret stood in the middle of the room.
She was not wearing her usual high-necked, armored Lowland gown.
Instead, she wore an unfinished dress of deep forest green velvet, a shade that reflected the Highland hills in August before the heather bloomed.
The outer layer was pinned on only one side.
The afternoon candlelight highlighted the heavy, rich nap of the fabric, causing the color to shift and breathe even as she stood perfectly still.
Her arms were slightly extended. Her shoulders were braced back. Her chest rose and fell in slow, even measures.
Christ.
Her honey-colored hair was pinned half up. The stubborn curls she could never fully tame had escaped at her temples, clustering in damp rings against the long, elegant curve of her neck.
The seamstress, a small, compact woman of fifty with iron pins gripped between her teeth, crouched near the far wall, pinning a hem. She gave Fergus a brief, sharp glance, entirely unbothered by the sudden appearance of a laird in the doorway, and spat a pin into her palm.
Then Margaret's eyes lifted.
He knew his heavy tread could be heard across half the stone fortress, but she didn't flinch. She simply watched him.
"I need ye to stay," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Low. But it locked his boots to the floorboards.
Fergus tightened his jaw. The pulse in his throat gave a hard thud. "What?"
"Stay." She nodded toward a low wooden stool near the door. "Maisie was pulled to the kitchens. The seamstress needs someone to pass her things."
The seamstress held up a hand without looking up, two fingers extended. "Two more pins, if ye please," she muttered to the room.
Fergus glanced at the small stool, then back at his wife.
She kens exactly what she is doin'.
She stood there, her posture unyielding, her expression entirely unreadable save for the smallest, most dangerous curve at the corner of her lips. Defiance looked breathtaking on her. The green velvet swelled against her breasts every time she breathed.
He crossed the threshold. The room smelled of beeswax, iron, and the sharp, clean scent of her skin. His broad frame felt entirely too massive for the chamber, too raw for the sudden, suffocating warmth of it.
He picked up the wooden pin box and took it to the seamstress. He found a stool and sat down.
It was considerably lower than was comfortable for a man of his size. His knees bent sharply, his long legs awkward in the narrow space. She knew that, too.
"There's a stool," Margaret murmured, her hazel eyes tracking his movements. "To yer left."
"I found it," he rasped.
He fixed his gaze on the wall. There was a pale water stain near the upper corner of the ancient stone. He focused on it.
The fabric rustled. Margaret kept herself perfectly still. Even in his peripheral vision, the green velvet shifted with her chest, and he was quickly running out of stone wall to stare at.
"The green is heavy for early autumn," the seamstress murmured, her fingers tucked into the hem. "But for the evenin', it will do beautifully."
"I had thought the same," Margaret said. Her voice carried a smooth, silky weight. "For the hall. For when the clan gathers."
"Aye," the seamstress agreed. "And the Lady has the perfect colorin' for it. The freckles, and those eyes."
Aye. She damn well does.
He kept the thought clamped behind his teeth where it belonged.
"Turn, if ye please," the seamstress directed.
As she turned, the unpinned side of the gown loosened.
The heavy green velvet slipped away fully along her left side.
It revealed a stark, devastating gap from her ribs to the gentle, pale curve of her waist. Her white shift was thin beneath it.
The candlelight did little to hide the shadow of her skin.
It lasted perhaps five seconds.
The pin box tightened in Fergus's grip until the wood creaked. His knuckles went white against the bone.
Stop lookin'.
He looked anyway. His gaze traced the curve of her hip, following the exact spot where the fabric gave way and her bare skin emerged. A tight, hot ache erupted intensely in his gut, heavy and insistent. His blood heated into liquid fire.
The seamstress reached out, smoothing the velvet back into place and shattering the view.
Fergus snapped his eyes back to the water stain. His chest heaved.
"The neckline can come down another half inch," the seamstress noted, tapping the flat of her finger against Margaret's collarbone. "It will sit better with the shape of the bodice."
"Is it appropriate?" Margaret asked.
The seamstress shrugged. "For the Lady of the house? Modest enough. For a dinner gatherin', perfectly so." She paused, turning her head toward the doorway. "The Laird can say."
Fergus felt the weight of both women bearing down on him. He dragged his attention from the wall.
Margaret was watching him through lowered lashes. Her gaze was clear, patient, and entirely aware of the exact corner she had hemmed him into. She had kept him on a stool too small for him for ten minutes, and she had not smiled once. That was the most lethal part.
"It's fine," he said. His voice came out rougher, deeper than intended.
"Fine," she repeated, tasting the word.
"Aye."
"High praise," she murmured. She turned her back to him, but he caught the flare of her nostrils.
He stopped pretending to look at the wall. He looked at her.
She wasn't performing for him. That was what always pulled the ground from beneath his feet.
She stood in the fading afternoon light, the unfinished gown clinging to the heavy curve of her hips, completely unarranged for his benefit.
She was thinking, her eyes fixed on a point inward.
Then she blinked, returning to the room.
She told the seamstress she wanted shorter sleeves.
Sleeves that didn't interfere with her movement.
She wanted her hands to be useful, not decorative.
Of course she does.
He listened. He found, to his considerable irritation, that he understood her completely.
It was the same practical logic he applied to his claymores, his warhorses, his men.
He had not expected to find his own rugged nature reflected back at him in a conversation about a woman's sleeves.
Not while he sat on a tiny stool, drowning in the scent of her.
"Two more," the seamstress said, holding out a gnarled hand.
He passed the pins over. His fingers brushed the old woman's, his hand steady only by sheer force of will.
"The blue one next," Margaret said. "If there is time."
The seamstress began unfastening the green gown. Margaret walked to the edge of the bed and sat down. She folded her hands in her lap, her spine a straight, rigid line. She looked across the room at nothing.
Then her hazel eyes shifted.
He was already staring.
Neither of them looked away. Not quickly. Not with any pretense of accident. The space between the bed and the stool grew tense and froze completely.
Tell me to stop, his silence roared. Tell me to leave, and I will.
She didn't tell him to leave. Instead, she lowered her gaze to her own fingers, her breathing shallow.
"There is another matter," she said softly.
"Aye?" He was proud of how level his voice stayed.
"The blue gown needs a brooch at the collar." Her long lashes lifted just enough to snare him again. "I thought ye might ken if there is somethin' here. Somethin' belongin' to the castle. Clan silver, perhaps."
He thought of the heavy iron box locked in his solar. He stood up before he had fully decided to.
"There's a chest. In the solar. Old pieces from before me time." His voice was steady. "I'll look."
"Thank ye."
The seamstress shook out the blue gown, holding the fabric up against Margaret's front.
Fergus saw immediately that it was wrong. The pale, watery blue drained the warmth from her skin. The green had made her eyes brighter, her freckles more vivid. This blue was correct by every standard measure of a Lowland lady, and entirely wrong by the only one that mattered.
The seamstress frowned. Shifted the angle. Frowned again. "Hm," she grunted.
"Too pale?" Margaret asked, looking down at herself.
"The cut is fine. The color..." The seamstress rummaged in her wicker basket. "I brought another. I wasnae sure which ye'd prefer." She pulled out a deep navy, almost violet at the edges.
"Or ye could try red," Fergus said.
The words cut through the quiet room. Both women froze, looking at him.
He had not planned to speak. He had been looking at the wrong shade of blue near her throat, and the thought had just become definitive before he could weigh its cost.
Well. That's done.
"The red," the seamstress repeated slowly.
"Aye." He kept his tone flat, precise, the exact tone he used for land disputes and grain tallies. "If ye have it. For the evenin' gatherin'. The firelight will suit it."
The seamstress stared at him for a long, quiet moment. A deeply satisfied, knowing expression settled into the lines of her face.
"I have a red," she whispered, and reached deep into the basket.
Margaret was watching him. He felt her gaze the way he felt the peat fire on his skin—steady, pointed, hot enough to burn. He looked down at the pin box, pulled two pins free, and kept them ready between his thick fingers.
"Thank ye," Margaret said softly.
He didn't answer. He didn't trust his voice to stay where he needed it to hide.
The seamstress draped the red fabric across Margaret's chest.
He knew exactly what it would do. The crimson clung to her skin with a perfect, striking heat that took his next breath away entirely.
The contrast was starkly clear. It had nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with the fact that she was his wife, standing three feet away, and he had just picked the color that would make every man in the great hall look at her when the time to wear the dress comes.
He could not take it back. He found he did not want to.
"Aye," the seamstress murmured.
"Aye," Margaret breathed, her fingers tracing the edge of the scarlet cloth.
Then she lifted her eyes to his. He didn't look away. He had no reasons left to hide. He had spent the last hour on a stool in her chamber, watching the velvet against her waist and counting her freckles like a man building a case against his own sanity. He was beyond pretending.
He stood up, his towering height dominating the small space. He set the pin box on the table with a firm click.
"I'll find the brooch," he said.
"Of course," she replied. Her voice trembled, just a fraction.
He went straight to the solar, unkeyed the iron chest, and spent considerably longer than necessary working through the old clan silver. He turned each heavy piece in his calloused hands. He was in no hurry. He had nowhere he was needed that was more pressing than this.
At the very bottom of the chest, he found it. A heavy silver brooch, ancient and solid, with a small raw inset of dark river stone.
He set it on the dark wood table and stayed exactly where he was.
She will wear the red.
Fergus picked up the silver brooch, closed his fist around it until the metal bit into his palm, and went back to claim his wife.