It was not jealousy. He was not a man who suffered from such things. He was, he told himself, simply observing a tactical change in the keep.
The change was that Margaret MacKenzie was sitting at his table, in his hall, and she was distracting him effortlessly. It was becoming a serious issue for his ability to think clearly.
He looked down at his plate, aware of her watching him before he finally lifted his eyes. It was like feeling the warmth of the sunbefore turning toward it. He hesitated for a moment, then finally looked up.
He held her gaze. His pulse was doing something he refused to acknowledge. Then, slowly, purposefully, with the faintest smirk at the corner of her mouth, she raised her cup toward him.
It wasn't a toast. It was too small for that, too personal. It was a fraction of an inch—the kind of gesture that only exists between two people who understand what is not being said.
I see you,it said.I have been seein' you all along.
Fergus kept his gaze focused. He didn't lift his cup. He looked across the table at her in the flickering firelight, and he thought,This woman is goin' to be the end of every quiet thing I have left.
Then Angus said something that called for a response. Fergus turned to reply. When he looked back, Margaret was already engrossed in conversation again, her cup down, looking perfectly composed. As if none of it had happened.
Which somehow made it worse.
He ate his dinner. He said the appropriate things. He sat at the head of his table and was the Laird he was supposed to be. But he was aware of her every second. Every shift of her weight. Every time she laughed. He was aware of her the way he was aware ofthe locked door between their rooms. A constant, physical fact that no amount of discipline could make ordinary.
He went to bed that night and stared at the dark ceiling. From the other side of the door, eventually, came the soft sound of her moving. Settling.
Then, the silence.
He closed his eyes.
Pain passes quicker when fear does.
He was beginning to understand that the healer had not been talking about the shepherd's shoulder at all. She had been talking about the fear of wanting something you had no right to keep.
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 rhythmicthudthat 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.
