The cold hit him immediately, climbing his horse's legs and reaching his stirrups within the first four strides. The current pressed against them from the left, a steady, muscular push that needed constant correction. His stallion understood the work. He felt the horse's body adjusting beneath him, the careful, planted steps of an animal that knew how to move through water.
He heard her horse three strides behind him. Then two. She was keeping pace, closer than he had told her to, because she was that kind of woman. He did not turn his head. He kept his eyes fixed on the far bank and kept moving.
The riverbed shifted.
He heard it more than felt it. A deep, underwater sound, the grind of stone against stone, and then her horse made a noise that no horse made when it was in control of the situation. He turned.
The horse had lost its footing. One foreleg struck nothing, caught in the current's grip mid-step, and the animal was scrambling, its haunches dropping, its head rising in the white-eyed manner of a horse deciding whether to panic completely or just partly.
Margaret had stopped fighting the saddle and was already shifting her weight to compensate, but the horse was past the point of being able to be balanced for.
Fergus drove his stallion across the current in two strides. His hand found her arm, then her waist, and he pulled.
She came free cleanly. She did not grab or struggle, and then she was against him. Her arm was braced across his chest. His own arm was locked at her back. The river pressed at them from both sides, and beneath it was nothing but the steady, deliberate planting of his horse's feet on the riverbed, one step and then another.
Neither of them spoke. He was fully aware of her: the weight of her, the warmth through the soaked wool, and the specific, unmanageable detail of her face being level with his jaw. The river roared around them, the mist pressed close, and the world shrank to the width of a horse's back and the distance to the far bank.
Her hand gripped his plaid at the chest. He felt her fingers find the fold of it and hold.
He looked at the bank. He kept looking at the bank.
"Fergus," she said. Her voice was different, quieter, not the voice she used when she was making a point.
"Hold on," he said.
The stallion emerged from the water. The ground felt solid beneath them, and Fergus felt his horse settle into it with the relief of an animal that knew its work was done. He gently set her down. He did it quickly, more quickly than was entirely necessary, and she found her footing, stepped back, and they both stood on the riverbank, breathing heavily.
Her horse had made the far bank twenty yards downstream and was standing in the shallows shaking itself with the expression of an animal that had strong opinions about the afternoon it had just had.
"Yer horse is fine," Fergus said.
"Good," she said.
"I told ye to ride with me."
She pushed a wet curl off her forehead. "Aye." A beat. "But I didnae."
He went to retrieve her horse. He did not say anything else. He did not know what he would have said.
* * *
The inn emerged from the mist an hour later, low and solid, with firelight casting an orange glow through the shutters and the smell of peat smoke drifting off like a greeting. Fergus didn't hesitate to consider his options. From here, he could see Margaret's skirts, heavy with river water, and the light was fading, while the mist had sealed the road behind them as firmly as a door.
He got them inside.
The innkeeper was a broad man with the unhurried demeanor of someone who had seen everything a Highland road could throw at him and had long ceased to be surprised by it. He looked at the two of them, waterlogged and crackling with the particular, contained energy of people who were not speaking but were very aware of each other, and asked no unnecessary questions.
"One room," the man said. "Fire's lit and there's a plaid."
Fergus did not look at Margaret. He did not need to because he could feel her arriving at the same realization he had.
"Have it warmed," he said. "And bring somethin' hot for the Lady."
"Aye, me Laird."
The man disappeared. The common room was empty at this hour, the benches bare, the fire doing the patient work of warming a space too large for it. Fergus set his hands on the mantle and looked into the flame.
"One room," Margaret said. "Ye could sleep in the stables."
