Chapter Twenty
"Ye look different here," Isobel said.
They were barely past the eastern gate, the horses still adjusting to the uneven lower track. She spoke plainly and without warning, as if she had been holding it in since she stepped out of the carriage.
Margaret kept her eyes on the path ahead. "Do I?"
"Aye." Isobel let her mare pick her way over a loose scatter of stones. "I couldnae place it at first. But it's the way ye move through the castle. Like ye ken where everythin' is."
"I do ken where everythin' is."
"That's nae what I mean." Isobel glanced at her. "Ye move through it like it's yers."
Margaret said nothing. She pressed her heels softly into the bay's sides and let him find his own rhythm up the first steep hill, feeling the muscles bunch and stretch beneath her saddle.
Margaret had not been on horseback in open land since the grueling ride north from Dunalasdair, which had been a completely different experience. Forward movement driven by fear, a destination she dreaded, and a husband who had barely spoken three words to her for two solid days.
This afternoon was nothing like that. Instead, it was the Glen MacKenzie spreading wide and magnificent beneath a high, clear summer sky, with Isobel on the gray mare at her left shoulder.
She let her bay horse find its own pace up the first steep slope, feeling the muscles bunch and stretch beneath her saddle, then encouraged the beast to lengthen into a glorious canter where the ground flattened into green turf.
For a long, unthinking stretch, Margaret ceased managing her posture, her thoughts, and anything else at all. She simply flew.
They pulled up their mounts at the far ridge, where the land sharply dropped off to the south. From this spot, on a clear afternoon, you could see all the way to the distant, silver gleam of a loch she had not yet found on any map. The wind came off the ridge crisp and cold, pulling a thick, loose curl from her hair and whipping it across her face. She pushed it back with a gloved hand, gazed out over the vast green landscape, and took a deep, steady breath.
"This is yers," Isobel said, her horse shifting slightly beside Margaret's.
Margaret turned her head to look at her friend.
"All of this." Isobel gestured with her chin. Not dramatically, for she was never a woman for grand, empty gestures, but specifically, the way a person points at a solid, indisputable fact. "The glen, the hills, the people in that castle. Yers by the marriage decree, aye, but also yers now by the sheer amount of work ye've put into the soil." She paused, her eyes searching Margaret's face. "Can you feel that yet?"
Margaret turned back to the view, her fingers tightening on the leather reins. Below them, the wind moved through the tall summer grass on the slope, flowing toward the distant gray towers of the castle in a visible, rolling wave.
"Sometimes," she whispered.
They rode back down the valley path at a slow pace, which was Isobel's silent, graceful way of indicating that there was much more to say and she planned to say it at a pace that allowed for proper, uninterrupted conversation.
Margaret had forgotten this particular quality about herself. She had forgotten many things during the long months of isolation. She had forgotten that Isobel's silences meant something entirely different from those of others—namely, the way she observed a situation unfolding.
They talked about small, safe things first.
Little Lilly back at the keep. The winter festival preparations and the garlands for the great hall. The treacherous state of the high road from Dunalasdair, which was significantly worse than last year, and apparently nobody's responsibility in particular. Finally, they laughed over the gray mare's persistent tendency to drift left on downhill ground.
"She is nae driftin'," Margaret said, a small smile breaking through her reserve. "Ye're sittin' on the right, Isobel."
"I am sittin' exactly as I always sit in a saddle."
"Aye, and ye've always sat right." Margaret glanced at her companion sideways. "It's a long, rocky road north. The beast is simply tired."
Isobel looked down at the mare's ears, then back up at Margaret, her gaze sharpening. "When did you learn so much about horses, Margaret?"
"I always kent horses."
"You were absolutely terrified of them when you were fifteen."
"I was fifteen," Margaret defended, her cheeks flushing slightly as she kept her eyes on the rocky path ahead. "And they were very large, unpredictable things."
Isobel laughed, a bright, clear sound that echoed off the stone banks of the trail. The sound was so intensely familiar, so deeply tied to her old life, that something inside Margaret's chest did something it hadn't done in months. It let go without being asked, opening up quietly and unexpectedly.
