There. That is what I am lookin' for.
Not the grand gestures. Not the moments of obvious softness, like the bairn against his chest or the step forward into the courtyard. Those were important, but they were the visible surface of something much deeper. What she was searching forwere the small ones. The question he had not intended to ask. The almost-laugh. The moment when his guard accidentally came down.
She moved further into the glen, unhurried, her basket filling slowly. He stayed close without needing to be told. She asked him questions as they came to her, not the big ones she actually wanted answers to, not yet. Small ones. What was on the eastern boundary she and Angus had been discussing. Whether the storm had damaged the lower wall or just the shed. Whether the MacAlister steward had written again.
He answered these readily. This was safe territory, the language of the castle and the clan, and he moved through it with the ease of a man on solid ground.
She listened, watched, and noted the exact moment when his shoulders dropped slightly, when his hands emerged from behind his back and hung loosely at his sides, and when he ceased walking like someone headed somewhere and instead began walking like someone simply walking.
There it is.
"Did ye always want to be a laird?" she asked.
The shoulders went back instantly. She had pushed too far. She watched him recalculate, the ease fading, the careful neutrality sliding back into place.
"It wasnae a matter of wantin'," he said.
"I ken that." She kept her voice even, her attention on the flowers. "But before ye kent. When ye were still at Alasdair's side. Did ye ever think about it? A place of yer own?"
A long pause. The river below filled it, steady and unhurried.
"I thought about..." He stopped. "There was land. Near the western coast. I rode through it once on patrol. It was..." Another stop. She could feel him searching for the word and not quite finding it, or finding it and not quite trusting it. "Good land," he said finally.
It was not what he had been going to say. She was certain of it.
"Good land," she repeated quietly, and let it rest there, and did not push further.
She crouched for a stem of white clover, and he stood beside her in the open glen, and the hills held them on every side.
He has never talked about himself to anyone. Nae like this. Nae even in these small, unfinished sentences.This is goin' to take longer than flowers and one mornin' in the glen.
It was noon across the hills when Margaret sat down in the grass and did not get up.
Fergus looked at her, then at the path back to the castle, and then at her again.
"It's late," he said.
"It is." She set the basket beside her and tilted her face toward the fading sky. "Maisie has Lilly. Sit down, Fergus."
He did not sit down right away. He stood for a moment with his hands at his sides, acting like a man who had not yet made up his mind. Then he sat.
The fire he built was small and efficient, just like everything else he did. No wasted flame. The space between them was narrower than it had been all day, with the dark pressing in from the edges of the glen, and the warmth of the fire drawing them closer without either of them acknowledging it.
Margaret watched the sky change from gold to gray to the deep, specific blue that appeared just before the stars came out. She was aware of him watching her. She had known about it for most of the afternoon, how his gaze kept returning to her when he thought she wasn't looking. She let him look. She said nothing about it.
The first stars came out.
Then one that stopped her entirely. She was on her feet before she thought about it, her hand out, pointing. "There," she said. "Look at that one."
It sat low on the horizon, brighter than anything nearby, and it did something she had never seen a star do: shifting between white, amber, and something almost red, pulsing faintly.
She heard him rise behind her. He moved closer than she expected, close enough that his warmth reached her before he spoke, his breath softly brushing the curve of her ear, with his presence enveloping her without actually touching her.
Her breath caught, and she stayed perfectly still.
"‘Tis the Ghoul Star," he said, his voice lower than usual. The certainty in it was different from the certainty he used for land disputes and council decisions, something that belonged to a different part of him entirely. "The severed head of the Gorgon Medusa. Held in the hand of Perseus." A pause. "They say ‘tis unlucky to see it."
Margaret looked at the star. "I've been unlucky for quite some time," she said softly. "I think I'll be the one to decide me fate."
