She spoke to the women first, directing the distribution of blankets, of what little food had been brought in their escort wagons. A child clung to her skirts and she bent to steady him, brushing soot from his cheek with ungloved fingers.
Domhnall watched her then, only for a moment, but it was long enough to see that she did not falter.
“More water here,” she was saying, and her voice was clear despite the wind. “And see that those with burns are brought forward, we will tend tae them first.”
There was no tremor in her command, though she held no formal authority among them. And yet, they obeyed.
He turned away again, though not before something unfamiliar pressed briefly at the edges of his chest. It was not any sort of softness, for he would not have named it so, but perhaps a sort of recognition.
She belongs in this,nae in the ruin but in the rebuilding.
“Me laird,” Cameron returned, his breath coming harder now from exertion. “Men are dispatched. Patrols will hold through the night.”
Domhnall inclined his head. “Good.”
His gaze swept once more over the shoreline. There was movement now, where there had been stillness before, and he could see the beginnings of order forming where there had been only damage.
“This was meant tae weaken us,” Cameron said quietly. “Tae draw ye out.”
Domhnall’s mouth curved, though there was no humor in it.
“They will find me difficult tae break.”
A cry rose from further down the shore. It was one of the smaller boats, newly righted, taking shape again under steady hands. Margaret stood near it, with her sleeves pushed back now, directing two boys no older than ten in fetching rope. When one faltered, she steadied him with a touch to his shoulder anda word too low for Domhnall to hear, but whatever she said, the boy straightened at once.
Domhnall exhaled, and that act seemed to steady his racing mind and heart.
“She was nae made fer court alone,” Cameron observed, following his gaze.
“Nay,” Domhnall agreed.
The tide crept higher along the shore, licking at the edges of broken wood and ash, but it no longer seemed to threaten.
“By dusk,” Domhnall’s voice carried once more over the labor, “this place stands again.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Margaret had never known a silence like the one that followed ruin.
It was not absence of sound, because even now, there were voices, there was the crack of shifting wood and the restless pull of the tide. It was not that. It was something heavier, something that settled over the village like ash itself. It clung to the people as much as to the burned beams and broken boats, a quiet disbelief that such loss had come so swiftly and without warning.
She felt it the moment she stepped from the path onto the shore.
For the briefest instant, she faltered. Only it was not from fear, though there was enough of that, but from the sheer weight of it. These were not distant reports whispered in courtly halls, not figures to be debated and dismissed. These were homes, families and lives interrupted and scattered like the wreckage at her feet.
Then a child began to cry. The sound cut through the stillness, sharp and human, and Margaret moved.
“Bring the blankets forward,” she said, already crossing the space between the escort wagons and the nearest cluster of villagers. “All of them. We will sort as we go.”
A guard hesitated only a heartbeat before obeying. Another followed. Soon the wagons were opened and their contents were brought down in armfuls, consisting of coarse wool blankets, sacks of grain and small bundles of dried meat and hard bread.
Margaret knelt beside the child, whose face was streaked with soot and tears. His mother hovered close, while her expression was caught somewhere between gratitude and disbelief.
“Ye are safe now,” Margaret said gently, though she knew safety was not so easily restored. She wrapped a blanket around the boy’s shoulders, tucking it close as though he were her own kin. “We will see tae the rest.”
The woman’s lips trembled. “Me lady… the boats?—”
“We will speak of the boats,” Margaret assured her, rising smoothly. “But first, we make certain nae one goes cold or hungry.”
