Arran slowly turned to look at her for a long moment, his jaw clenched. “Because I donna chase after dogs or women. They come to me.”
Margot’s gut clenched. She could almost feel herself shrink and averted her gaze. “What a lovely sentiment.”
“I have my pride, woman.” He threw back the coverlet and got back in the bed.
“And I pierced it. So there you have it,” she said, drawing her knees up to her chest. “The only thing that ever truly existed between us was in this bed. It was the only place where we could agree.”
“The hell we agreed here,” he spat. “It is your duty to provide me an heir,” he said, bending his arm behind his head to pillow it. “And the last time I looked about, I have none.”
“I was to be your broodmare, is that it? Of course—I was bartered like one.”
“You came of your own free will!”
“My own free will! I had no choice, and well you know it.”
“Did I kidnap you and carry you off? We met twice before the nuptials, Margot. By God, if you’d had a doubt of it, you might have expressed it to me then.”
“We met two times!” She laughed at the absurdity of it. “Yes, of course, a sum total of two meetings is quite sufficient to determine compatibility for the rest of one’s life. Whatever made me think otherwise? I had to have reason to cry off, but I scarcely knew you at all.”
“What did you want, then, a bloody courtship?”
“Yes!”
Arran suddenly bolted up and over her, pinning her down with his body, his gaze dark and locked with hers. “If you found me and Balhaire so objectionable, why in hell have you now returned?”
Margot held his gaze just as fiercely. “I told you,” she said calmly. “Perhaps I’ve not given our marriage its due. I should like to try again.”
“Donna ever lie to me, Margot Mackenzie, do you hear me now?” he breathed hotly. “You will no’ like what will come of it if you do.” His eyes moved hungrily down her body. He bent his head and took her breast in his mouth, teasing it a moment before lifting his gaze to hers once more. “Never lie to me, aye? Am I clear?”
His blue eyes were two bits of hard ice, and Margot was terrified to feel her face coloring with her deceit. Could he see it? “Yes,” she said. She was lying to him now! Fate had made her a despicable liar.
Arran grunted. He kissed her belly, pushed aside the bed linens and moved down between her legs, his tongue and mouth on her sex, and Margot felt herself sinking once more. “Are you lying to me now, leannan?”
God help her, he’d seen the deceit in her. She knew it. But his tongue slid over her again, long and slow, and he looked up once more, expecting an answer. The gentle lover she’d first known was gone, and this wolf—this brazen, alluring, dangerous wolf—was in his place. “No,” she lied, and closed her eyes, giving herself up to the wolf’s attentions once more.
Balhaire
1706
ARRAN COULDN’T UNDERSTAND HER. She had everything she might possibly want, and yet she cried.
Jock, Griselda’s brother, said Arran should simply command her to stop crying. Jock’s father agreed.
“How am I to do that, then?” Arran asked impatiently. “You canna simply command a woman to cease her tears.”
“You take a strap to her, that’s how,” said Uncle Ivor.
Arran blanched. “Never,” he’d said thunderously, “and God help me if you’ve taken a strap to Aunt Lilleas!”
“’Course I’ve no’,” Uncle Ivor thundered right back, appalled. “She’d skin me like a hare if I had as much as a fleeting thought of it.”
Arran didn’t understand his uncle, either.
The three men fell silent, thinking about women.
Uncle Ivor suddenly surged forward and slapped the table. “Diah, why’d I no’ think of it before? It’s her courses!” he said, casting his arms wide as if all the mysteries of the world had just been solved. “Women are like beasties when they have their courses, aye? Put a child in her, Arran. That will put it to rights.”
Jock snorted. “Molly Mackenzie sobbed buckets of tears when she was with child. Putting a child in Lady Mackenzie will help nary a thing.”
“What do you know of it?” Uncle Ivor challenged his son. “You’ve no’ looked at a lass all summer.”
“I’ve looked!” Jock protested, his ruddy cheeks turning slightly ruddier. “I’ve been a wee bit occupied, have I no’, with the expansion of our trade.”
While Uncle Ivor and Jock argued about whether or not Jock had sufficiently perused the unmarried lasses of Balhaire, Arran brooded. The truth—which he would never admit aloud, certainly not to these men—was that he felt quite a failure for not knowing how to make his wife happy. It was a dilemma that he’d not given much thought before Norwood had presented an alliance through marriage to him.
He’d been surprised by the agent who had come on Norwood’s behalf, but then again, with the union of Scotland and England upon them, men on both sides of the border were scrambling to take advantage of opportunities. There was no doubt that a match with the heiress Margot Armstrong of Norwood Park was one of great advantage for Arran and his clan.
Even so, Arran had not been convinced of it until he’d laid eyes on her. He would never forget that moment—auburn hair, mossy-green eyes, and little paper birds, of all things, in her hair. Arran had traveled in his time, had seen women and their dressing—but he had not seen a beauty quite like Margot, and that was all he’d really needed. Lamentably, his cock had been so convinced of the efficacy of the match that his head had never imagined it would be such work to make her accept Balhaire as her home.
When it was clear Jock and Uncle Ivor would be no help to him, Arran later appealed to Griselda for help.
She was even less helpful. “Why do you ask me, then?” she’d snapped at him. “’Twas no’ my doing to bring a dainty English buttercup to Balhaire.”
Griselda did not care for buttercups, he surmised. “You might befriend her,” he pointed out. “You’ve no’ been particularly welcoming, aye?”
Griselda shrugged and picked at a loose thread in her sleeve. “Aye, perhaps no’. But I tried to make amends!” she added quickly. “I invited her to join in my falconry, and she acted as if I’d invited her to run bare through the woods!”
“Please, Zelda,” Arran pleaded.
Griselda moaned to the ceiling. “Aye, all right. For you, Arran, I will try again.”
True to her word, Griselda came back a day later, sat down beside him in the great hall and said, “Your wife wants society. Bloody English, that’s all they think of—society.”
Arran had no idea what the English thought about, but no matter—he was confused by it. “Here is our society,” he said, gesturing around them to his large extended family.
“Proper society, Arran. A celebration, a ball. Where she might display her jewels and whatno’,” Griselda said, gesturing to her chest uncertainly. Griselda had never been a fancy lass. Griselda liked to ride and hunt and wager on cards. She’d never thought of balls as far as Arran knew.
Moreover, he was quite certain there had never been a ball at