He turned away from that smile to signal the serving boy to pour wine and noticed that half of his men were still gaping at her. “All right, all right,” he said irritably, gesturing for them to do something other than stare. “Can you no’ play something a bit livelier, Geordie?” he demanded of his musician.
Geordie put down his flute, picked up his fiddle and began to play again.
As Margot lifted the cup to her lips, he said, “Now that you’ve had your grand entrance, I’ll know what has brought you to Balhaire. Has someone died, then? Has your da lost his fortune? Are you hiding from the queen?”
She laughed. “My family is in good health, thank you. Our fortune is quite intact, and the queen is generally not aware of me at all.”
He sprawled back in his chair, studying her.
She smiled pertly. “You seem skeptical. I had forgotten what a suspicious nature you have, but I did always quite like that about you, I must say.”
“Should I not be suspicious of you? When you appear as you have without a bloody word?”
“Can you tell me a better way to return to you?” she asked. “If I’d sent word, you would have denied me. Is that not so? I thought that perhaps if you saw me before you heard my name...” She shrugged.
“You thought what?”
“I thought that maybe you would realize you’d missed me, too.” She smiled softly. Hopefully.
There it was, that stir of blood in him again, accompanied by another rash of images of his wife’s long legs on either side of him, her silky hair pooling on his chest. He swallowed that image down. The truth was that he couldn’t bear the sight of her. “I donna miss you, Margot. I loathe you.”
Her cheeks turned crimson, and she glanced down at her lap.
“Aye, and how long has it been, precisely, since you began to miss me, then, leannan? Did I no’ send enough money?”
“You’ve been entirely too generous, my lord.”
“Aye, that I have,” he said with an adamant nod.
“As to when I began to miss you so ardently?” She pretended to ponder that as she fidgeted with the necklace at her throat. “I can’t say precisely when. But it’s a notion that’s taken root and continues to grow.”
“Like a bloody cancer,” he scoffed.
“Something like that. I always thought you’d come to assure yourself of my welfare instead of sending Dermid as you did.”
“You thought I’d come all the way to England, chasing after you like a fox after a hen?”
“Chase is a strong word. I rather prefer visit.”
“I didna receive an invitation to visit, aye?”
“You never needed an invitation! You’re my husband! You might have come to me whenever you liked. Didn’t you always before?” she asked with a salacious look. “Didn’t you miss me, Arran? Perhaps only a little?”
“I’ve missed you in my bed,” he said, holding her gaze. “It’s been a damn long time.”
Color crept into Margot’s cheeks again, but she steadily held his gaze. “Has it really been so long?”
His gaze drifted to her mouth. An eternity. He sat up, leaning in. “A verra long time, lass. It’s been three years, three months and a handful of days.”
Margot’s smile faded. Her lips parted slightly and her lashes fluttered as she looked at him with surprise.
“Aye, leannan, I know how long I’ve been free of the burden of you. Does that surprise you?”
Something in her eyes dimmed. “A little,” she admitted softly.
Arran smiled wolfishly. His pulse was thrumming now, beating the familiar rhythm of want. He pushed hair from her temple and said, “Pity that I donna care to reacquaint.”
There it was again, a flicker of some emotion in her eyes. Had he struck a blow? He didn’t care if he had—it would never equal the blow she’d struck him.
Balhaire, the Scottish Highlands
1706
BATTERED AND BRUISED, tossed about the inside of a chaise for days upon days now, making an arduous journey north, Margot was utterly exhausted. But at last they had arrived at the place she was to call home.
She could not have been more despondent.
Balhaire was a dark, bleak castle that rose up out of the ground and was shrouded in mist, just like the hills around it. It was a tremendous structure erected in some long-ago time, anchored by two towers and surrounded by a castle wall. Outside the wall there was a small village of humble thatch-roofed cottages with smoke curling up from the chimneys to a leaden sky.
As the chaise slowed, Margot could hear dogs barking, children shouting. She heard the driver cursing a cow that would not move from the road. The coach slowed to a stop, then jerked forward again.
She moved across to see out the other coach window and saw people coming out of their cottages, lining the road, calling up to Mackenzie, who rode somewhere in front of the chaise. She heard his response, too—one word or two, all in a language she did not know.
Margot shrank back from the window. This place frightened her.
She was still in shock that she was here at all. She’d never once thought it was even remotely possible that she would be forced into a marriage against her will, but that was precisely what had happened to her. She’d begged her father, pleaded with him, but he’d been doggedly determined. He’d been adamant that this marriage was her duty to her family and to England, and that the union between her and Mackenzie would safeguard the Armstrong fortune for generations to come. “You’re the only daughter I have, Margot,” he’d said. “You have a duty to do as I deem best, and you will obey me in this.”
Margot had fought back, but her father had threatened her. He swore he would never provide a dowry for any other suitor. He wouldn’t allow her to see Lynetta, knowing full well that the two girls would conspire. She would have no society; she would be locked away at Norwood Park and turned into a spinster with no hope of happiness.
At only seventeen years old, Margot hadn’t known what to do or how to escape her father’s tyranny. In the end, her father had bartered against her confusion and uncertainty and fear and had worn her down.
A fortnight before her eighteenth birthday, Mackenzie was granted a barony. That night, he arrived at Norwood Park to dine with Margot and her family. She scarcely looked at him. At least he wore proper clothes and had shaved his dreadful beard. But when he attempted to make conversation, she responded as blandly as she could in a desperate hope he would find her tedious and vapid and would want to cry off.
Apparently he was quite at ease with the picture she presented. Two days after her eighteenth birthday, Margot took her marriage vows in the Norwood Park chapel before her father and two brothers. Mackenzie had a giant of a man stand up with him.
On her wedding night, her new husband had bedded her quickly, as if the task displeased him, and then had disappeared. Two days later, they departed for Scotland. On the first day of the journey, Margot cried until she made herself ill. When there were no more tears to cry, she felt numb. Her husband asked her more than once if there was anything he could do to help ease her, and she shook her head and looked