His dark gaze slowly moved from her face to Isobel's and then back to hers. Whatever he read in the line of her jaw or the tension in her shoulders caused something to shift behind his stoic expression. A brief, sharp recalibration, there and gone before it could be named.
He held her hazel gaze for the exact length of one long, slow breath across the distance of the courtyard. Then Alasdair spoke again, clapping him on the back, and Fergus turned away. The brief moment closed over them like dark water over a dropped stone.
Margaret looked at the empty space where his eyes had been.
The old silver brooch was still not pinning her gown. He had not sought her out to give it to her, and she had not asked about it.
"Come," Isobel said gently, touching her elbow to steer her away. "Let's go find the bairn."
Margaret let herself be led toward the heavy timber hall doors, away from the cold gravel in the yard, away from the cooling training steel, and away from the massive man at the far wall who had looked at her with that sudden, burning intensity before turning away.
She walked with her shoulders back and her hands swinging easy at her sides, and she thought, not for the first time and certainly not for the last,I am nae leavin' this castle. I am nae goin' back to the Lowlands. I am nae goin' anywhere at all. But somethin' in this house is goin' to have to change.
She pushed the heavy hall door open, stepping into the warmth of the hearth.
Maisie stood at the top of the stone stairs, with little Lilly securely balanced on her hip. As soon as the baby saw Margaret across the room, she squealed and reached out with both tiny arms.
Margaret walked up the steps and took her into her arms.
The solid, sweet weight of the child rested against Margaret's chest. Warm, immediate, and completely certain. Margaretpressed her lips to the soft, fine hair atop Lilly's head, standing straight in the stone doorway with bright afternoon light streaming in behind her.
Something would change. She would make sure of it.
Chapter Twenty-One
Margaret noticed something was different about Maisie on a Tuesday.
Not all at once, it never announced itself that plainly. It came in pieces too small to name on their own, but impossible to dismiss when they began to add up.
First, the stairs. Maisie had always taken the stone steps at a brisk, efficient clip, her skirts tucked with one hand, her basket on the opposite arm. That Tuesday morning, Margaret watched her stop at the top of the staircase, one hand reaching for the carved oak newel post, her fingers curling around it, her body going briefly, carefully still. A single breath. Then she straightened her shoulders and continued downward as though the moment had never occurred.
Then the kitchen, at breakfast. The morning oats had come out thick and steaming, and Maisie had turned her face sharply away from the smell. A controlled, defensive jerk of the chin shecaught and corrected almost before it finished happening. Not fast enough.
Then the laughter. Maisie's laughter was one of the most reliable sounds in the castle, bright, quick, arriving before the joke had even landed. For three days now it had come a half-beat late, as though she were listening to something else just beneath it.
Margaret said nothing.
She had learned, through the long, quiet months since her arrival in the north, that Maisie possessed her own rigid timing for things and that pressing her for a confession before she was ready produced nothing useful. She simply watched, and she waited.
On Thursday afternoon, she went to the dark linen room in the east wing to retrieve fresh, bleached sheeting for Lilly's wicker cot. She found Maisie already there.
She was standing by the low pine shelf beneath the narrow, unglazed window, her back to the door, folding.
The willow basket beside her boots held the usual heavy winter linens. The thick, coarse sheets that required sorting by weight and a good airing before the mountain season arrived. But Maisie wasn't touching those. She was carefully working through a smaller, hidden pile, dealing with items Margaret did not immediately recognize. They were soft, fine-spun, and incredibly tiny. Maisie's hands moved over the fabric.
Maisie startled as Margaret's soft shoes crunched on the threshold. She forced a quick, defensive smile onto her face.
"Me Lady." Her hands stilled instantly over the pale cloth, hiding it beneath her palms.
Margaret crossed into the room, the scent of lavender and dried cedar surrounding her. She lowered her gaze to the folded pile without saying a word, noting the tiny size and the incredibly soft weave, then lifted her eyes back to Maisie's face.
"Ye've been unwell," Margaret said softly.
"I'm well enough." The words came out too fast, too sharp.
Maisie knew it the very instant they left her lips. Margaret saw the slight shift in her eyes, the desperate, internal recalibration of her defenses.
Margaret tilted her head, her spine settling against the doorframe, and said nothing more. She simply looked at her, her hazel eyes entirely devoid of unkindness or urgency.
