She saw him before he saw her. He was standing near the arch, one hand still loosely holding the reins of his horse, looking at the courtyard the way he had looked at everything she had ever watched him look at. Assessing it. Taking inventory. The children, the laundry lines, the worn stones. The posture of a man who walked into every room already calculating what would need to be defended and what could be left.
She had nine months of practice to draw on. She drew on it.
She stopped six feet away and waited.
He saw her. She watched something flicker through him. It was brief, controlled, and he buried it before it could be named, but it was there.
"Margaret," he said.
"Fergus." She kept her hands easy at her sides. "Ye made good time."
"I sent word."
"Ye did." She tilted her head. "Three days ago. The word and the man arrived at nearly the same time. It didnae leave much room for preparation."
"I needed to move quickly."
"Aye." The space between them was full of everything that had happened at their wedding and in the nine months that came after, and neither of them addressed any of it, because they were not going to do this in front of the miller's daughters. "Come inside then."
She turned and walked back toward the hall without waiting to see if he followed. He did. She heard his boots on the stone behind her, unhurried and deliberate.
Isobel had vanished from the courtyard with the discretion of a woman who knew when not to be present. Margaret was grateful for it.
She led him into the smaller receiving room off the hall, the one with the window overlooking the herb garden, because it was the right place for a difficult conversation. Big enough to breathe. Small enough that you could not avoid what was being said.
She closed the door and turned.
"There is a child," he said.
He had not waited for her to speak. She had not expected him to. He would have practiced this in the saddle, shaping it into the most efficient form. She understood this about him now, through observation, just as she had learned everything else. He prepared. He strategized. He determined the purpose of a conversation beforehand and acted accordingly.
"Tell me," she said.
He told her. He did it plainly, which she appreciated. About the pox in the lower glens that caused his advisor and his wife to die. About the child who was left at his door with just a note. He told it without any performance or attempt to win her sympathy, and that made it hit harder than it might have otherwise.
She was quiet for a moment.
"How old is the bairn?" she asked.
"Six months. Perhaps seven."
"And how long has she been in yer care?"
Something crossed his jaw. "Three weeks."
"Three weeks," Margaret said. "And how is she?"
"Alive," he said. Then, to his credit, he stopped. He briefly looked at the floor and then back. "Strugglin'. The housekeeper is capable, but the castle is short-staffed, and the bairn needs more than someone capable. She needs..." He stopped again.
"She needs a woman," Margaret said. "She needs someone who willnae treat her as a problem to be managed."
"Aye."
The room held the word between them.
"And ye thought of me," Margaret said.
"Ye are me wife."
