"I said I ken, Angus."
Angus fell quiet. A door somewhere below creaked and settled. They turned the corner toward the nursery passage, and Fergus slowed his pace without meaning to.
The sound came through the gap at the bottom of the door. Low and soft, barely there, the tune Margaret hummed to Lilly when she was trying to bring her down from a cry. He recognized it the way he recognized the sound from when he had stood at the threshold of the small library, listening to her talk and sing to Lilly.
He kept walking.
"She's good with the wee bairn," Angus said, behind him. There was something in his voice that was trying very hard not to be a smile.
"Aye."
"More than good." The smile was losing the fight. "Things will be different now. With her here. With the bairn."
"Things are already different."
"That's nae what I mean, and ye ken it, me Laird."
Fergus walked on without answering. The passage opened out toward the south wall, and the night air came in cold through the arrow slit, sharp enough to clear the head. He stood in it for a moment, looking out over the dark grounds below.
He kens.
That was the problem with Angus. They had grown up at Dunalasdair together. Two boys who did not entirely belong there and had found, without discussion, that this was easier to carry in company than alone. When Fergus rode north to claim a Lairdship he had not asked for, Angus had saddled his horse before Fergus had finished saying where he was going.
Twenty years at each other's sides, and the man had developed an inconvenient accuracy.
"Get some sleep," Fergus said. "I'll finish the watch."
"Aye." Angus moved past him toward the stairs, then stopped. "For what it's worth," he said, quieter now, the ease gone out of his voice and something more honest in its place. "I think she's exactly what this place needed." A beat. "And I'm nae only talking about the bairn."
He went down the stairs before Fergus could answer.
Which was, Fergus reflected, exactly like him.
He walked the rest of the night watch with Angus's words ringing in his head.
‘I think she is exactly what this place needs.'
* * *
On the appointed day, the council gathered.
The hall was full before the hour, voices layered on top of voices, benches scraping, the specific tension of people who had been waiting longer than was comfortable and had opinions about it. Fergus stood at the head of it and waited for the noise to settle.
The boundary dispute came first. Two men, both carrying years of grievance on their shoulders. He heard them both fully before he spoke, then split the contested land down the center. Neitherman got everything. Both got something real. MacNair started to argue. Fergus looked at him once. He stopped.
The debt case next. A widow, a lender, four years of interest on a sum already repaid twice over. He asked for the accounting. The lender could not produce it.
"The debt is cleared," Fergus said. "And if I hear of another arrangement like this one on my land, the next conversation willnae be in this hall."
A murmur spread through the room. Not dissent, but something closer to relief.
They want to trust me,he thought. The thought sat uneasily, the way responsibility always sat, not unwelcome but weighted. He moved on.
The third case arrived near the end, and he felt the change before he understood why. A man and a woman came forward, and they were not standing together. The man's eyes were on the floor. The woman's were on Fergus, steady and burning with the particular focus of someone holding themselves together by force of will.
"Speak," he said.
The man spoke about a place on a trading vessel. A good one, he said, the kind that did not come twice. He intended to take it, he also wanted his son with him. The boy was twelve.
