The first note slid cleanly into the freezing night air.
Everything inside Fergus went completely, utterly still.
Her voice was initially low, dark, and resonant. It was soft enough that the nearest clansmen leaned forward unconsciously, tilting their chests toward the fire to feel the vibration. Then it gradually rose, drawing strength from the valley, carrying across the entire lower meadow with an almost impossible, bell-like clarity.
The song itself was ancient. Fergus recognized pieces of the melody from his own disjointed childhood, though he had not heard the Gaelic words in twenty years. It was an old air about a woman waiting beside a gray sea for a soldier who never returned to his valley.
But Margaret sang it differently. It wasn't mournful. It was hopeful.
That was the exact thing that reached under his heavy ribs like a cold blade and closed hard around his lungs.
The sound moved through his chest in ways he did not possess the language to describe. It wasn't gentle. Nothing about Margaret Mackenzie had ever been gentle where he was concerned. It slid across his bare skin like intense heat, like the press of fingers, like standing entirely too close to a dangerous cliff edge and wanting to take another step forward anyway.
The peat fire cracked sharply beside him, spitting a single ember into the dark. Margaret's voice climbed higher, hitting a clear, soaring note that echoed off the castle walls.
Christ.
Fergus dragged a thick, rough hand across his jaw, his teeth grinding together.
She did not look at him while she sang. That should have eased his defenses, but it did not. Every time her voice softened intothe lower register, he found himself imagining that exact sound pressed against his own throat. Against his mouth. In the dead dark of the night between their adjoining rooms, where he already slept poorly enough without having to picture this.
Across the meadow, an older clansman exhaled a shaky breath into his beard. Another man muttered a quick prayer under his breath. Fergus understood both reactions perfectly. She was unraveling the space.
Margaret reached the final, lingering verse of the air. The wind caught her green skirts, softly swirling them around her ankles. The orange firelight moved over the line of her throat. Then finally, her hazel eyes lifted from the dark hills. They searched the crowd, moving past Alasdair, and found him.
The last line of the song nearly destroyed him. Because she held his dark gaze across the distance of the fire pit while she sang it. The final note faded slowly, vibrating into the cold Highland night until it was nothing but breath.
A heavy silence followed. One heartbeat. Two.
Then the entire meadow erupted into a madness of noise. Cheers broke across the festival grounds so loudly that little Lilly startled awake in Maisie's arms, her small fists flailing. Men pounded their heavy fists against the oak tables until the horn cups rattled onto the grass. Women shouted for another song immediately, their voices rising in a deafening chorus.
Margaret laughed breathlessly, her shoulders dropping as she was startled by the sheer force of their approval. A bright, dark blush spread high across her cheeks, visible even in the firelight. She quickly stepped back from the open circle, tucking her hands into her apron as if she already regretted letting them see that much of her.
But Fergus could still feel the lingering sound of her voice vibrating inside his ribs, a physical hum that refused to leave his blood.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The castle smelled of bitter woodsmoke and spilled ale by the time they finally breached the heavy timber doors of the inner keep.
The festival still roared beyond the perimeter walls. The wild, soaring music of the pipes drifted faintly through the narrow, unglazed arrow-slits, the high notes thoroughly softened now by the vast distance and the thickness of the stone masonry.
Yet, bursts of raucous laughter continued to echo through the drafty corridors as weary clansmen stumbled their way back toward their straw sleeping pallets, and exhausted kitchen servants carried empty pine casks back down toward the lower larders.
Margaret loosened the heavy silver clasp of her wool cloak as she climbed the winding stone stairs beside him.
Her cheeks still burned with warmth, flushed from the intense heat of the peat fire, the unexpected exertion of the reel, and the hefty amount of strong ale Isobel had pressed into her hands afterward, all with a suspiciously wide-eyed innocence.
"Ye were magnificent," Isobel had whispered directly against her ear in the press of the crowd, her breath smelling of sweet mead, before she disappeared entirely back into the swirling mass of tartan.
Now, the alcohol had taken effect, making Margaret's head feel pleasantly light. It wasn't enough to completely dull her sharp thoughts, but it was certainly enough to loosen the tight coils of restraint that usually governed them.
Beside her, Fergus climbed the steep rise of the stairs in absolute silence.
It wasn't his usual, methodical silence. This one felt far tighter, like the tension of a crossbow string. She noticed the sharp tensing of his jaw whenever a distant burst of drunken laughter echoed from the lower hall below them. She saw how he rolled his broad shoulders under his linen shirt, as if he were trying to force himself back into his own skin.
It was an interesting shift. Margaret hid her small smile behind the collar of her cloak.
When they finally reached the landing of their adjoining chambers, Fergus pushed the heavy oak door open. He stoodaside, his back pressed against the stone frame to allow her to enter the room first.
