Prologue
"Ye're nae what I expected."
Margaret had been preparing for this moment for four months. She had prepared in the way she prepared for everything that frightened her—by imagining it so many times, in such precise detail, that the reality could not surprise her.
She had imagined a man of duty, and she had prepared for duty. She had not prepared for the specific, flat quality of contempt.
She looked up at him. He was taller than she had imagined, and she had envisioned him tall. The hall made most men appear small, with its vaulted ceiling and long shadows, but not Fergus MacKenzie. He stood in the circle of firelight with the stillness of a man who had never needed to fill a room with noise because his presence did it without his permission. His face was unreadable.
She had spent four months picturing his face. She had not expected that look.
"Ye're nae what I expected either," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she had any right to expect. "Though I confess I kept me expectations modest."
Something shifted across his face. Not warmth, but recognition—perhaps that she had teeth.
He did not respond to it.
"This marriage..." he began. He stopped, then looked toward the far window where the wind pressed against the shutters with a low, persistent moan. He looked back. "It was decreed. I want ye to understand that. I didnae choose this."
"I'm aware," Margaret said. "Neither did I."
"Aye." He clasped his hands behind his back. "Then we understand each other."
"I'm nae certain we do," she said carefully. "Ye've said what this marriage isnae. I'd find it useful to hear what ye think it is."
He studied her. She maintained eye contact without looking away. She had learned from her mother that the first person to look away in these exchanges had already lost something, and she was not yet ready to start losing things.
"It's a contract," he said. "Bindin'. Necessary. Signed under pressure from men who've never set foot on MacKenzie land and have nay understandin' of what I'm tryin' to build there." He exhaled, sharp and controlled. "I have a clan newly settled. Men who daenae trust me yet because I came to the title late and by a road they'd have preferred to travel themselves. I have borders that are nae yet secure and stores that will barely last the winter if we're nae careful. I have a hundred problems that require every hour I have." He looked at her with eyes that were, she realized, not cold so much as exhausted. "I daenae have room for a wife."
The word landed exactly as he had intended. She felt it in her chest, a small, hard impact.
She thought of her mother's voice, low and practical, the morning before she'd left.‘Ye cannae control what a man offers ye, Margaret. Ye can only control what ye decide to do with it.'She had rolled her eyes at the time. She understood it now.
"I see," she said.
"I daenae say it to wound ye."
"Ye say it to be clear."
"Aye."
"Then I'll be equally clear." She took one step forward. Not enough to crowd him, but enough to make it plain that she wasnot retreating. "I didnae ask for this either, Fergus MacKenzie. I left me home and me family and every person I've kent since I was a child, and I came north to a castle full of strangers to marry a man I'd never met because the elders decreed it and me father believed in the peace it would help secure. I did that without complaint. I prepared for a man I might nae love."
She kept her voice even. She was proud of how even it stayed. "What I didnae prepare for was bein' told, before the vows are cold, that I am a distraction."
He had the grace not to speak immediately. Around them, the great hall moved on without them. A low tide of voices, the scrape of benches, the smell of food and tallow smoke hanging in the raftered air. No one was watching. Or if they were, they had the sense not to show it.
The fire settled in the grate with a soft collapse of ash, and the silence between Margaret and Fergus stretched.
"Yer safety is nae in question," he said finally. "Ye'll have everythin' ye need here. Isobel is yer friend, and this castle is her home. Ye'll be well cared for."
"I am nae askin' to be cared for," Margaret said. "I am askin' to be a wife."
"I cannae."
"I ken what ye cannae. I'm askin' what ye will."
He stopped. She watched him look at her again, and this time something in his eyes was different. She was not sure if that was better or worse.
