From the upper corridor, the voices continued their untroubled existence. He heard Margaret mention the weight of wool, followed by a lengthy reply from the seamstress. Then a sudden silence fell.
Fergus stood up so fast his heavy oak chair scraped sharply against the stone floor.
He told himself he was heading to the north yard. The fence posts along the west run needed checking after the recent rain. The storage shed roof required inspection. Both were urgent, legitimate tasks. Neither explained why his boots carried him straight toward the upper corridor.
He rounded the stone corner and stopped dead.
The door to Margaret's chamber stood wide open.
Fergus stopped. The broad frame of his shoulders nearly clipped the oak casing. He had walked into this corridor with a mental tally of tasks.
He could not have named a single one of them now.
Margaret stood in the middle of the room. She was not wearing her usual high-necked, armored Lowland gown. Instead, she wore an unfinished dress of deep forest green velvet, a shade that reflected the Highland hills in August before the heather bloomed. The outer layer was pinned on only one side. The afternoon candlelight highlighted the heavy, rich nap of the fabric, causing the color to shift and breathe even as she stood perfectly still.
Her arms were slightly extended. Her shoulders were braced back. Her chest rose and fell in slow, even measures.
Christ.
Her honey-colored hair was pinned half up. The stubborn curls she could never fully tame had escaped at her temples, clustering in damp rings against the long, elegant curve of her neck.
The seamstress, a small, compact woman of fifty with iron pins gripped between her teeth, crouched near the far wall, pinning ahem. She gave Fergus a brief, sharp glance, entirely unbothered by the sudden appearance of a laird in the doorway, and spat a pin into her palm.
Then Margaret's eyes lifted.
He knew his heavy tread could be heard across half the stone fortress, but she didn't flinch. She simply watched him.
"I need ye to stay," she said.
Her voice was quiet. Low. But it locked his boots to the floorboards.
Fergus tightened his jaw. The pulse in his throat gave a hard thud. "What?"
"Stay." She nodded toward a low wooden stool near the door. "Maisie was pulled to the kitchens. The seamstress needs someone to pass her things."
The seamstress held up a hand without looking up, two fingers extended. "Two more pins, if ye please," she muttered to the room.
Fergus glanced at the small stool, then back at his wife.
She kens exactly what she is doin'.
She stood there, her posture unyielding, her expression entirely unreadable save for the smallest, most dangerous curve at the corner of her lips. Defiance looked breathtaking on her. The green velvet swelled against her breasts every time she breathed.
He crossed the threshold. The room smelled of beeswax, iron, and the sharp, clean scent of her skin. His broad frame felt entirely too massive for the chamber, too raw for the sudden, suffocating warmth of it.
He picked up the wooden pin box and took it to the seamstress. He found a stool and sat down.
It was considerably lower than was comfortable for a man of his size. His knees bent sharply, his long legs awkward in the narrow space. She knew that, too.
"There's a stool," Margaret murmured, her hazel eyes tracking his movements. "To yer left."
"I found it," he rasped.
He fixed his gaze on the wall. There was a pale water stain near the upper corner of the ancient stone. He focused on it.
The fabric rustled. Margaret kept herself perfectly still. Even in his peripheral vision, the green velvet shifted with her chest, and he was quickly running out of stone wall to stare at.
"The green is heavy for early autumn," the seamstress murmured, her fingers tucked into the hem. "But for the evenin', it will do beautifully."
