Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Domhnall found Margaret in the gardens, just past the southern wall, where the stone paths softened into clipped grass and late-summer roses bent beneath their own weight.
The loch lay beyond, dark and deceptively calm, while its surface seemed to be broken only by the wind and the distant call of birds.
She was walking beside her maid, with her hands clasped behind her back like a woman accustomed to being observed and to enduring it.
Her head was bare and her hair caught neatly at her nape.
She wore a gown of subdued blue that marked her as neither guest nor servant, but something newly claimed and not yet settled.
Domhnall slowed before he reached them.
He had learned long ago that announcing oneself too loudly gave people time to brace, to rehearse, and most importantly, to lie. Margaret did none of those things. She sensed him before she saw him, the way she had done before, which was far too attuned for a woman raised on courtesies alone.
She turned. Annabel dipped into a hasty curtsy. Margaret did not.
“Leave us,” Domhnall said to the maid.
Annabel hesitated, glancing once at Margaret. At her nod, she withdrew a few paces, lingering close enough to see but far enough to pretend she could not hear.
Margaret’s gaze sharpened.
He stepped closer, stopping at a distance that would have been proper, if propriety had not already been stretched thin between them.
“I have something I need tae talk tae ye about. Ye are nae tae leave the castle grounds,” he told her in words that once again, sounded like an order. He gritted his teeth at the thought.
The silence that followed was brief and lethal.
“I beg yer pardon?” Margaret gasped.
“It is nae a request.”
Her eyes flashed. “Ye dinnae get tae decide where I may or may nae walk.”
“I dae, lass,” he corrected. “Until the danger passes.”
Her hands clenched at her sides. “This is Inveraray, nae a battlefield.”
“Nae yet.”
She laughed once, sharply. “So ye intend tae keep me locked behind stone and men with blades, is that it?”
“I intend tae keep ye alive.”
“There it is,” she snapped. “The noble justification. How generous of ye.”
Domhnall did not rise to the bait. He had seen anger before, but it was men’s anger, hot and clumsy, which had a tendency to spill into violence. Hers was colder, honed, and far more dangerous for it.
“Kenneth MacGregor daes nae forget,” he told her something he was certain she already knew. “Nor daes he forgive. He has already lost what he believed was his by right. He will seek tae reclaim it.”
“I am nae land,” she shot back.
“Nay,” Domhnall agreed. “But ye are leverage.”
The word struck her like a blow.
Her chin lifted. “Ye speak as though I am a thing tae be guarded, nae a person with will.”
“Ye are both, Margaret,” he told her. “And until ye understand that, ye will continue tae place yerself in danger.”
She took a step toward him, her fury clear and uncontained now. “Ye think this is protection? This is imprisonment.”
“I have nae confined ye tea yer chambers.”
“Ye have confined me tae permission,” she retorted. “That is merely a prettier cage.”
Domhnall’s jaw tightened. He had expected resistance. He had not expected how deeply it would test his restraint. Yet, she did not step back from him. That, more than the words, struck hardest.
“Why?” she demanded unexpectedly. “Why are ye so afraid?”
The question landed cleanly. There was no accusation in it.
Domhnall drew a slow breath through his nose.
He had faced men across battlefields without flinching.
He had watched tides turn red beneath his ships and he had stood before the Crown and refused what others would have bent to accept.
Yet this quiet, relentless demand to be answered unsettled him far more than open challenge.
“I am nae afraid,” he retorted.
She shook her head once. “Ye are,” she replied. “And ye are clever enough tae ken it. So tell me why.”
The garden seemed to still around them. Even the loch lay quiet, its dark surface reflecting nothing but broken torchlight.
Domhnall looked at her, but this time he didn’t see a responsibility, nor a liability.
He did not even his future wife, but a woman who refused to be managed without understanding the terms.
“Ye think this pleases me?” he asked quietly. “That I enjoy telling ye where ye may walk?”
“I think that ye are accustomed tae command. And that men often confuse habit with necessity.”
The truth of it struck close enough to sting. He turned away from her then, because the words he needed were not ones he was used to speaking while being watched.
“This is nae a whim,” he tried to assure her. “Nor a test of obedience.”
She waited. He could feel it behind him. Her stillness and her attention were enshrouding him on all sides. She would not let this pass.
“Seven years ago,” he continued after a sigh, “I was already laird. Powerful but already cautious.”
He paused, feeling his hand closing briefly at his side.
“Me wife was called Fiona. She was nae foolish, nor weak. She knew the risks of me name as well as any man in me hall.” His voice remained steady, but something beneath it tightened. “MacGregor had reason tae hate me house long before that night. Old blood… older grievances.”
Margaret did not speak.
“He did nae declare feud,” Domhnall went on. “He sent men in the dark… quiet men. Men who kent how tae kill without waking the household.”
He turned back to her then.
“I was nae there,” he revealed, feeling a stone pressing on his chest. “I returned tae a house already burning.”
The words settled between them. Now, there was no taking them back.
“Fiona. She was dead before dawn,” he continued. “And every lesson I learned that night was written in blood.”
She still didn’t say anything, but her eyes were not so angry any longer.
“I hunted him,” Domhnall said. “I broke his men. I ended the rebellion. But I didnae undae what was taken.”
Silence stretched. He did not rush to fill it.
“At Falkland,” he finished, “when I saw him look at ye, when I understood what he believed he had lost, and I kent exactly what would follow.”
Margaret’s voice, when she spoke, was quieter. “So this is punishment… fer him.”
“Nay,” Domhnall replied at once. “This is prevention, fer ye.”
She searched his face, as though weighing whether the truth he had given was complete.
“I am really sorry fer what happened tae ye. But what if I tell ye,” she cautiously spoke then, “that I will nae live as a ghost behind yer walls?”
He met her gaze without flinching. “Then I will find another way tae keep ye safe.”
She studied him for a long moment, the wind lifting a loose strand of her hair before letting it fall again.
“Dinnae mistake me anger fer ignorance,” she urged. “I understand danger. I simply refuse tae be treated as though I cannae judge it.”
“I dinnae think ye incapable,” Domhnall replied. “I think ye are brave enough tae risk yerself for others.”
Her mouth curved into a sharp and knowing smile. “And that frightens ye.”
“Yes,” he admitted after a moment’s pause.
The word cost him. He did not soften it.
At last, she inclined her head, but it was not an act of obedience. She merely offered acknowledgment.
“Very well. I will remain within the grounds, fer now.”
“Fer now,” he echoed.
She turned away then, Annabel already moving to her side. Before she passed beneath the archway, she paused.
“Ye should ken,” she said without turning back, “that cages, be they pretty or otherwise, have a way of teaching those inside them how tae break locks.”
Then she was gone, but her words lingered with him much longer. He had told her the truth. Whether it would be enough, he didn’t yet know.
Domhnall lay awake long after the castle had settled into its nightly stillness, listening to the familiar sounds of Inveraray breathing around him.
The distant shift of guards on the walls, the low sigh of wind along stone, the muted lap of the loch far below, they were sounds he had trusted for years.
But that night, they did not bring peace. Margaret’s voice returned to him instead.
Why are ye so afraid?
He turned onto his side, staring into darkness. He had given her the truth, which was more than he had offered anyone in years. Yet the admission had not quieted his thoughts. If anything, it had sharpened them.
After a time he rose, moving without summoning a servant. He left his chamber, and took the inner passageways toward the oldest wing of the castle. The library lay there, thick-walled and insulated from drafts. It was a place of maps, records, and long nights spent alone with strategy and memory.
Upon arriving there, he noticed that light was glimmering beneath the door. It made him slow down.
No one should have been there. The hour was too late and the castle too quiet.
His hand settled instinctively near the knife at his belt as he reached for the latch.
The door resisted him at first, then gave way with a long, protesting groan.
The sound tore through the silence like a blade dragged across bone.
“Damn—”
The word was still in his mouth when he saw her.
Margaret was standing halfway up a narrow ladder, with one foot braced on a rung that had seen better centuries.
Her body was angled toward the shelves as she reached for a book set just beyond comfortable grasp.
Candlelight pooled around her, gilding the edges of her hair and the pale line of her throat.
The door’s cry startled her.
She gasped, her foot slipping as the ladder shifted beneath her weight. The book came loose in her hand and she did, too.
Domhnall moved without thought. He crossed the space in two strides and caught her as she fell, the impact driving her hard against his chest. One arm locked around her back, and the other braced her shoulders as they staggered together before regaining balance.
For a moment, the world narrowed to weight and heat and breath.
She fit against him with an ease that struck like a blow.
Her body curved into his instinctively, her fingers clutching at his coat as though he were the only fixed thing left in a shifting room.
He felt the tremor run through her before she mastered it.
He felt her breath break against his collarbone.
It was worse than the horse… far worse.
There had been motion then, the press of necessity, the excuse of terrain and danger.
This was stillness. This was choice held in suspension.
Her scent rose around him, in an intoxicating fragrance of clean skin and candle smoke, crushed herbs, something unmistakably hers beneath it all.
It settled into him deeply, a reminder far more intimate than touch.
His body reacted before his mind could stop it.
He tightened his hold without meaning to, his hand splaying across her back as if to anchor her there, as if letting go would cost him something he could not name.
The urge to lower his mouth to hers was sudden and violent, a sharp pull that startled him with its force.
He could already imagine the warmth, the way she would stiffen and then, perhaps, yield. The thought was dangerously vivid.
He shut it down with brutal discipline.
This was not desire alone. This was hunger born of proximity, sharpened by restraint and by the knowledge that she did not belong to him in the way his body insisted she should.
He forced himself to breathe evenly, to loosen his grip by degrees rather than all at once. He was acutely aware of how easily the moment could tip, how little stood between control and catastrophe.
She shifted then, just enough to break the spell.
He released her fully, stepping back as though the space between them were a necessary defense rather than an absence that immediately made itself felt. For an instant longer, her warmth lingered against him.
Domhnall turned away before it could undo him.