"At the time." His jaw shifted, the muscle hardening. "Then one night I rode south huntin' Jacobites and returned to find out I was someone else entirely."
The old, cold feeling returned as he said the words. Not grief. Displacement. As if the ground itself had split open beneath his boots and never settled back again. He looked down at Margaret. The moonlight silvered her eyes, turning them to glass.
"I learned me parents had been murdered. That me clan had been stolen. That I'd spent me entire life servin' another house while me own lands belonged to men who had no right to them."
Margaret's hand stilled against his skin. Fergus felt it instantly. Every small reaction from her reached him now.
"It should have felt like justice," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "Like reclaimin' somethin'." Instead, it had felt like being torn in two. He swallowed once. "I didnae ken how to be that man. A laird." The word came out rough, like gravel. "Men looked at me, waitin' for certainty. Waitin' for leadership. Waitin' for me to become someone I hadnae been raised to become." He gave a short, bitter breath. "And all I could think was that they had the wrong man."
Margaret frowned immediately, her brow furrowing in the silver light. "They didnae."
"Aye?"
"Aye." Her voice sharpened softly with an intense, unyielding conviction. "Ye think because ye were afraid of it that ye were unsuited to it. But fear and unworthiness are nae the same thing, Fergus."
Fergus looked at her.
Christ.
She spoke to him as if she expected him to listen, as if she saw a strength in him he had never fully trusted himself to have. It made him desire things—dangerous, forbidden things.
He shifted slightly above her, his thigh sliding between hers.
Margaret inhaled sharply, her nostrils flaring. Her fingers tightened on his shoulders, her knuckles turning white. That small movement brought their bare bodies flush again. Too close. Not close enough.
Heat surged through his groin like a sudden, violent fever. He closed his eyes briefly, fighting the urge to pin her wrists and take her again.
"Ye do that deliberately," he muttered.
"What?"
"Breathe like that."
A slow, dark flush spread across her face and down her neck. "I wasnae aware I was breathin' incorrectly."
Despite himself, despite the ancient burden inside him, the corner of his mouth tugged briefly upward. Margaret watched it happen. Her expression shifted instantly—wondering, soft—like she had uncovered something rare and precious in the mud.
Fergus felt unexpectedly exposed beneath that gaze. He looked away again, his voice dropping into the shadows.
"The decree arrived nae long after. Marriage. Responsibility. One more thing expected of me before I'd even learned how to carry the first." His hand drifted unconsciously down her waist, his palm tracing the heavy curve of her hip.
Margaret shivered beneath his touch. His thoughts nearly broke apart at the sound. He steadied himself against the black tide of his own desire.
"When I met ye at Dunalasdair," he admitted, the words cutting his throat as they left him, "I looked at ye and saw one more obligation." He paused. "Beautiful," he added roughly, his eyes dropping to her mouth. "Too beautiful. Too soft. Everythin' I didnae ken how to hold without ruinin'."
Margaret's breath caught, a small, choked sound against his neck.
"So I left." The shame of it sat ugly and bitter in his mouth now. "I told meself I was protectin' ye. And part of me was. The clan was unsettled. The castle was barely standin'. But another part..."
Margaret waited. God, she always waited.
"Another part kent that once I allowed meself to want anythin'," he said slowly, each word heavy as stone, "I wouldnae ken how to stop."
Margaret stared at him. Not startled. Not frightened by the darkness in him. Only deeply, painfully attentive.
"And Lilly?" she asked softly.
Something loosened unexpectedly inside his chest at the mention of the child. He lowered his head slightly, his forehead brushing her curls. "She was left at me door screamin' before sunrise."
