She had not even known she was holding herself so tight.
They returned through the eastern gate of the castle, hearing the lively noise of the inner courtyard before they actually saw it. Steel striking steel. The sharp, clear, ringing rhythm of practiced sparring, relaxed yet highly precise.
The gate boy hurried forward to take their reins, and Margaret and Isobel stepped through the stone archway together, their riding skirts rustling against the gravel.
Fergus and Alasdair were in the exact center of the courtyard.
They had removed their heavy outer plaids and their doublets, down to their linen shirts. They moved with the terrifying, fluid ease of men who had done this a thousand times before on bloody battlefields.
The heavy training blades moved between them in complex, lethal patterns that had absolutely nothing to do with performance and everything to do with deep-seated habit. It was not a performative fight. It was a profound conversation in a language that required no words. Call and response, pressure and release, the body's instinctive shorthand for twenty years of trusting the other man's blade to stop an inch from the throat.
Isobel stopped dead in her tracks, her boots anchoring to the stones.
"I could watch him all day," Isobel said, her voice dropping into a soft, heavy cadence of comfortable admiration, the tone of a woman who had absolutely no reason to hide her desire. "With a sword in his hand."
She turned her head toward Margaret, a smile spreading across her face that was warm, teasing, and absolutely deliberate. "Best we keep our chambers well clear of yers tonight, Margaret." A brief beat. "If either of ye gets any sleep at all."
Margaret kept her eyes locked on the two men in the yard, her spine stiffening. "Ye neednae worry about that, Isobel."
"Oh?"
"Fergus wouldnae touch me that easily." Margaret said, her voice perfectly even.
She said it casually, intending for the words to come out that way—a bit of easygoing banter. She delivered it the way she handled most things she desperately needed to be true, with the perfect, unwavering calm she had been building brick by brick since that first terrible morning in the hall at Dunalasdair.
It was the same composure that had carried her through nine months of abandonment, a freezing river crossing, a lockeddoor, and a single, devastating kiss in the rain that he had turned his back on.
It came out lightly.
But it landed in the air between them like a block of lead, and Margaret felt Isobel go completely, utterly still beside her.
"Margaret."
"It's fine, truly."
"It isnae fine." Isobel's voice was quiet. Not soft, quiet was entirely different from soft. Quiet meant her tone possessed an edge that refused to pretend or play along with a lie. "Ye thought he was comin' back for ye. When he finally rode south to Dunalasdair to fetch ye. Ye thought it meant the real marriage was finally beginnin'."
Margaret forced her eyes back to the dusty yard. Alasdair had just pressed Fergus back two swift steps, his blade flashing in the afternoon light, but Fergus had answered the pressure with a brilliant lateral move that Alasdair hadn't fully anticipated. Fergus's blade came up inside the parry. Controlled, dominant, and inevitable.
Margaret observed the fierce, stunning exchange without actually watching a single frame.
"I thought many foolish things," Margaret said, her fingers curling into her palms. "That was merely one of them."
"And now?"
"Now I ken better." She clasped her hands tightly in front of her apron. "He came back to Dunalasdair for Lilly. I came north to this castle for Lilly. We are..." She stopped, her throat tightening.
She chose her next word with agonizing care and put it down between them like a heavy stone. "Arrangin' ourselves. Around the bairn. It's workin' well enough for the clan."
"Workin' well enough," Isobel repeated, her tone flat with disbelief.
"Aye."
"Margaret." Isobel stepped directly in front of her, breaking her line of sight.
She wasn't blocking her view of the yard. There was no physical view to shield her from, and they both knew it, but she was simply standing where her honest face could not be ignored or avoided.
"Ye set yer terms. Ye went north. Ye have made yerself a place in this castle that would take them twenty years to fill if ye packed yer bags and left tomorrow. That is all real, Margaret. And it is also nae a single thing ye actually came here for."
