by Julia London
Margot blinked at her departing back. “I don’t... Did she understand me? Does she speak English?”
“Aye,” Mackenzie said, his countenance stormy. “She speaks English quite well.”
That was the moment Margot was certain her situation could not possibly get any worse.
But then Mackenzie led her inside that looming castle.
It was dark and close, the corridors lit by candles stuck in old wall sconces. It smelled musty, as if it had never been aired. Moreover, Margot heard a moaning sound that made her blood run cold. It sounded as if someone was dying—until she realized it was the wind whistling down the ancient flues, creating drafts at every doorway.
She wearily followed Arran about those winding, dark corridors for what seemed several minutes before they emerged into what he proudly announced was the old great hall. There were several people milling about, making merry, all of them dressed in what looked like various layers of wool clothing, not a hint of silk or satin among them. None of them had donned wigs or dressed their hair. Worse, there were dogs. Not the small parlor dogs that Margot was accustomed to seeing in a house, the sort that might nestle in a lady’s lap—but big dogs. Big hunting dogs that wandered around the great hall as if they were quite at home here. Two of them even ventured forward to sniff at her clothing as Arran led her toward a raised platform on which sat a long wooden table.
He made his way to a pair of upholstered seats in the very middle of the table, facing the hall. He sat.
Margot stood uncertainly, wondering if a butler or footman would seat her. Arran glanced up at her, then looked meaningfully at the seat beside him.
She sat.
“Are you hungry?” he asked when she had seated herself on the very edge of the chair covered in a dingy fabric.
“A little.”
He lifted his hand, signaled to someone—there were so many people milling about, it was impossible to know—and a boy soon appeared and set two tankards of ale before them, his eyes as big as moons when he looked at Margot. She pitied him—he’d probably never seen a woman with hair properly powdered. And she, in turn, was staring wide-eyed at the tankard he’d set before her. “Will we not have wine?” she asked of no one in particular.
“Ale,” Arran said, and lifted his tankard and drank thirstily, as if he was sitting in a tavern with a group of men instead of at a table with his wife. She stared at him, appalled by his manners and the fact that she would be expected to drink like a sailor, but was interrupted by a woman who approached the table. She had graying hair and a swath of plaid that she wore draped over one shoulder. She held the end of it bunched in her hands.
“You’re the new Lady Mackenzie, aye?” she asked, and held up the bunched end of the plaid. “Fàilte!” She opened the plaid. Nestled in it was a small chick.
Margot didn’t understand if the woman meant to give her the chick or if she was simply mad—but she shrank back against her chair in horrified surprise. Arran said something to the woman, flicking his wrist at her, and the woman frowned, covered the chick and moved away.
“Who are these people?” Margot asked testily as a couple approached the dais and Arran waved them away, as well.
“My clan,” Arran said. The boy appeared again. He was carrying a bowl in each hand, and tucked under his arm were two spoons. The boy, who was not wearing gloves, placed the bowls before them, and then the spoons.
“They are your clan now, aye?” Arran said. He picked up his spoon and began to eat.
“Pardon?”
He paused to look at her. “These people are your clan now, Lady Mackenzie.”
She hadn’t really thought of it like that before now. She looked out at the people milling about, laughing and talking with each other, casting curious looks at her. She looked at the thick soup before her, the spoon the boy had carried tucked up against his side under his arm.
“Do you no’ care for the soup?” Arran asked.
The soup? She didn’t care for this place, these people! “I’m not hungry after all.” She folded her hands tightly in her lap. “I should like a bath now.”
“A bath,” he repeated slowly.
Good God, surely they bathed here! “Yes. A bath.” She looked at him pointedly.
Arran fit another spoonful of soup into his mouth and shrugged. He lifted his hand once more, and this time, an older man with a pate of thinning ginger hair appeared at his side. Arran consulted with the man about her bath...at length. It seemed a long stretch of minutes passed before the man walked away and Arran turned back to his meal. He took three quick bites in succession, wiped his mouth with the napkin and stood, his chair scraping loudly behind him. With a sigh, he held out his hand to her, palm up. “Aye, then. A bath for milady. I’ll bring you round to our chambers.”
“What do you mean, our chambers?”
“The master’s chambers,” he clarified.
She was beginning to feel ill. “I don’t understand. You haven’t private rooms for me?” she asked disbelievingly.
Arran looked so baffled that Margot’s belly began to roil. She could not—would not—share a room with this man. It was unheard of! It was egregious, a complete lack of decorum! She couldn’t imagine it, all that leather and wool and—
She swallowed, and her fingers curled into fists. “A great house generally has rooms for the master and the mistress,” she said as calmly as she could, hoping that he might set this entire wretched ordeal to rights if he only understood how things were done properly.
But he showed no sign of understanding anything. He said, “I’ll show you to the master’s chambers for your bath, madam. We will discuss whatever it is you think a lady must have on morrow, aye? But tonight, I am too weary for it.”
Margot had no choice but to follow him out of the great hall. She averted her gaze each time he paused to speak to someone in his clan—she didn’t know what to say, to be quite honest, particularly when she was not properly introduced—and she did not look up until she was pressed by him.
Arran’s expression grew darker as he led into the twisting corridors, returning to what she assumed was the foyer, then up a staircase that was twice the width of any she’d seen in even the finest of homes. They walked down another dark corridor, this one lit even more poorly, as only every other wall sconce held a candle.
At the end of the hall was a pair of thick wooden doors. Arran slid the latch and pushed it open, then turned back to Margot.
She stepped hesitantly across the threshold into a masculine room. The furnishings were trimmed in leather. Thick woolen draperies had been pulled across three separate windows. And oddly, a quiver of arrows was propped against a very large chest of drawers.
But there was a bath before a roaring fire, and two young men were busy pouring hot water into it. Margot stood patiently to one side as they continued to tromp in and out of the room, each of them with two buckets, until Arran deemed the small tub sufficiently full. One of them laid a towel and a cake of soap on a stool, and then they went out.
Arran closed the door behind them. His gaze flicked over her. “There you are, then. A bath. I’ll leave you to it.” He walked out of the room through what appeared to be a dressing room. She heard another door open, heard it close.
Margot remained standing in the same spot a long moment after he’d gone. He hadn’t even offered her the assistance of a maid. Well, no matter—there was a hot bath waiting for her and she was going to avail herself. She managed to discard her clothing and then sank into the tub, closed her eyes and, for a few moments, allowed herself to pretend she was back at Norwood Park, in a proper bathing room, with towels and perfumed soaps and scented candles.
When she’d finished bathing, she dressed in the nightgown from the small portmanteau someone had thought to bring up from the coach. She didn’t know what she was t
o do now, but she was exhausted, and she crawled into the massive four-poster bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. The wind was howling again, bringing the scent of the sea with it. A storm was brewing off the coast.
Margot had no idea what time it was when Arran at last came into the room, but the fire had turned to embers and the wind seemed even harsher. She could hear him moving about the room, the clank of a belt being undone, the slide of fabric over skin. The bed sank with his weight as he put himself in it. She flinched when his hand slid across her abdomen. “Relax, leannan,” he murmured.
She had no idea what that meant, leannan, but she tried her best to relax. Arran moved his hand down her leg and slipped in beneath her nightgown, his fingers trailing up her thigh. His touch was so soft, so feathery, that it almost tickled her. Margot was shivering again. But not from cold. From anticipation.
Arran propped himself up beside her, then picked up her hand and placed it on his shoulder. “Be at ease, leannan,” he said. “I donna mean to hurt you—I mean to please you.” He kissed her neck, and Margot shivered again. As he continued to move his mouth delicately across her lips and her skin, she found the courage to move her hands over his body, her fingers skating over the hard planes of his muscles, the breadth of his back.
As she moved her hands down to his hips, he groaned softly. She abruptly removed her hands. Arran caught them and put them back. “Aye,” he said. “Touch me.” He kissed her lips so gently that Margot felt herself begin to float.
He was tender with her, asked if his touch was to her liking, if he hurt her when he entered her. Margot could scarcely mutter her answers—she was too deeply submerged in the sensations of what he was doing to her to think clearly. With his hands and his mouth he aroused her and then coaxed her to float like a feather over the edge of a waterfall of her pleasure.
And then he fell, too.
He lay partially on her, his breath hot on her bare shoulder. After several moments, he moved off her body and lay on his stomach, his face turned from her, his breath heavy. Was he asleep? Was she to sleep now? Margot burrowed down into the bed linens, pulling them up to her neck again.
Arran’s breathing grew steadier.
She stared up at the canopy overhead. Does this please you? he’d asked her. Yes, it had pleased her. She was thinking of it, how tender he was with her, when she was given quite a fright by the sudden pounce of something onto the bed. Margot came up with a shriek and stared right into the eyes of a dog. He was enormous, with one ear that flopped backward and a wiry coat. He wagged his tail excitedly as he sniffed first at Arran, who very lazily tried to swat him away, then at Margot.
“Get off,” she said, pushing at the dog. The dog’s tail wagged harder.
“He willna bite you,” Arran muttered through a yawn.
“I don’t care—what’s he doing on the bed?” she demanded.
Arran shrugged. “He fancies you, aye?” He yawned again and stuffed the pillow up under his head. Meanwhile, the beast of a dog turned in one or two circles at the foot of the bed, then plopped down with a loud sigh.
She was to sleep with a dog? Arran’s tenderness forgotten, tears welled, and Margot lay back down, turning on her side, away from him and the dog, silently cursing her father for having bartered her to this hell.
CHAPTER THREE
The Scottish Highlands
1710
HE WATCHED EVERY bite she took. Margot was uncertain if he was counting the minutes until he could take her to his bed, or the minutes until she succumbed to the poison he could very well have instructed be put in her stew.
She was counting the minutes until he demanded her duty to him. The prospect of being in that massive bed again excited and frightened her at once. In the few short months they’d existed in their conjugal state, Arran had introduced her to the intimate pleasures husbands and wives shared. She had enjoyed it...but she hadn’t realized just how much she had enjoyed it until she’d gone and was without it.
She could honestly say that in the privacy of their marital bed, there had been no discord. It was the other twenty-three hours of the day that had undone her.
Margot had quickly discovered that Arran was a man with many passions—there were no degrees with him. It was all or nothing, all brawn, all daring, all lust. There had not been room for a wife.
And while she did like the brawn in him, his passions and appetites could be too intense. Memories had come flooding back to her the closer she and her party had drawn to Balhaire: his passion for hunting. For sailing the sea. For drinking and gambling and training his men to be the best soldiers in the kingdom. She had never experienced a gaze as intent as his, and she’d never seen a look as blackly angry as his the day she’d left.
The matter of her leaving him for England had not been resolved, and quite honestly, Margot didn’t know if it could ever be resolved. She hadn’t the slightest idea what he thought or wanted, especially after all this time. She couldn’t even say what she wanted...but she did not want this, to be a pawn in a dangerous game.
For the moment, her husband remained slouched in his chair, his powerful legs sprawled before him, one hand firmly gripping his cup of ale, the other dangling lazily from the arm of his chair. His intent gaze made fear curl around her spine—he reminded her of the hawks he was so fond of training. She could feel his contempt rolling off him and covering her.
Margot did her best to put some stew in her belly. She was truly famished—but the nerves in her were building, making it difficult to swallow, making the food sit sourly in her belly. She could only guess what was coming, how incomprehensibly convincing she had to be now. She had begged and cajoled her father that this scheme would never work, that Arran would never believe she had missed him and wanted to reunite. How could she want something like that after three years without a word? How could he? And besides, the man had an uncanny way of seeing right through her.
But her father had taken her hands in his and said, “My darling girl, a man can be convinced of anything if his wife is as pleasing as she ought to be. Do you take my meaning?”
She took his meaning, all right. Lord Norwood thought he could order her to return to her husband and her husband would overlook his wounded pride and welcome her with open arms. He thought that Margot would politely inquire if it were true that Arran colluded with the French and the Jacobites and intended to give them entry into Scotland through Balhaire. And that Arran would happily tell her if it were true that he and his highly regarded Highland soldiers would join the French troops and invade England to remove Queen Anne from the throne and put James Stuart on it.
Her father apparently believed this so completely and thought it so important that he clearly felt himself justified in threatening Margot to do what she did not want to do once again. She had tried to convey to her father how irretrievably broken-down was her marriage to Mackenzie, how he must despise her now, how she had despised him. Not that she believed for a moment that he was involved in treason, for God’s sake, but she was in no position to ascertain the truth.
Her father would hear none of it.
This was ridiculous. If, by some small chance, Arran was involved in something so deplorable and indefensible, he would hide any evidence of it. He’d not amassed power and wealth with loose lips and carelessness. He certainly would not talk freely of it to her, especially not when he reviled her so. He would hold her at arm’s length no matter what he thought of her. Women existed to be bedded and impregnated. They were not included in important discussions. They were told what to do; they were not allowed to choose.
“It is time to finish your meal,” Arran said. “You dawdle now, aye? You and I have much to discuss.” He stood up.
Margot looked up as she fit the spoon in her mouth. More than six feet of man towered over her. She chewed slowly as she regarded him. He’d always had a phys
ique honed by his training of soldiers, as big and as strong as an ox. Three years hadn’t softened him in the least. Quite the contrary—he looked even leaner and harder now, his hair in need of a cut, his ice-blue eyes as shrewd as ever.
“Be quick about it,” he added, and stepped off the dais, to where her father’s men sat. He spoke to them, gesturing to two of his men who had instantly come forward. Moments later, Pepper and Worthing stood up, glanced uneasily at Margot, then followed the Scots out of the great hall. Arran went in another direction.
Margot panicked slightly, but then again, Worthing had warned her they’d not be allowed to stay. He was her father’s confidant—in fact, it was Worthing and two other gentlemen who had brought from London the rumors and accusations against Arran to her father.
“He’ll not want any Englishmen in his hall,” Worthing had warned Margot. “You must be prepared to see us depart.”
“No,” Margot had said. “I’ll ask him—”
“He will instantly suspect you if you speak for us, madam. You must play the part of a disobedient wife who means to make amends.”
Disobedient wife. Is that what they thought of her? As if she were a child who had disobeyed all the men in her life? As if she’d been expected to stay in an untenable position merely because men had put her there? Frankly, it would have helped tremendously if she knew just how a disobedient wife behaved when she wanted to make amends. Margot did not.
She watched Arran walk through the hall, pausing to speak to one or two people, glancing meaningfully back at her once or twice. His long, dark hair was a tangled queue, and his buckskins, lawn shirt and waistcoat were soiled, his boots scuffed. Who knew what the man had done all day? Margot bowed her head and recalled the sensation of his body in hers, carrying her away to that sensual place.
She missed that, anyway. She hadn’t realized how much she would miss it, how empty her life would become. She missed knowing that someone could be gentle with her, careful of her.
