by Julia London
Arran let go of her hands and slipped one arm around her waist. Lost in the moment between them, Margot let her hands fall to his shoulders as he kissed her and, lifting her off her feet, twirled her away from the wall and stalked across the room to his bed with her. He tossed her down, rolled her over and yanked at the laces of her gown at her back.
She wanted to feel him inside her once more. It felt to Margot as if their estrangement was shedding away from them and an unholy, improbable passion was rising up in its place. He roughly pulled her dress from her, then her stays, then slipped his arm under her belly and effortlessly flipped her onto her back. He pinned her there with his body as his hands freely roamed her, slipping under the silk of her chemise, rough and warm and searching.
His weight was familiar, but his manner was not one she’d ever known. He was wild with lust, wild with anger, and even though he was touching her, he was grunting as if it pained him. His coarse behavior with her was so arousing that Margot was disappearing into nothing but sensation as his hands and mouth moved over her. Her hands sought his flesh. Her mouth sought his. She forgot why she’d come. She forgot everything but the need to have him inside her.
When he pushed her chemise over her head and put his mouth to her breast, to her abdomen and between her legs, Margot groaned with desire, dragging her fingers over his buttocks and his back as he kicked free of his boots and buckskins. He incited a fire the moment he thrust into her, thick and hard, and carried her away on a cloud of physical pleasure so intense that it clawed at her throat, releasing in a soft growl of delight.
They were moving together, his breath hot in her hair. They were each of them desperate to have that primal release of ecstasy...
But then Arran did something Margot did not anticipate in that frenetic coupling—he stroked her face. It was a clumsy stroke at that, as one might try to caress a moving child. But she knew instantly it was a caress of true affection. It startled her; she opened her eyes and looked up at him, wide-eyed.
Arran stopped moving. He gritted his teeth as if he was holding himself back. “Turn your head.”
“Pardon?”
“Turn your head,” he said, and pushed her face away from him, so that she was looking now at the windows. She felt his scorching gaze on her as he began to move in her again.
Margot’s heart was racing dangerously hard. She was confused and inflamed, suspended between wild desire and the realization that he did not want to see her face. Something in her womb fluttered. A rush of breath escaped her. Her body simmered with the touch of his hands and the stroke of his body, her heart racing too far ahead of her thoughts. She was losing the game already; she was no match for him. He knew how to make her mewl, cry out, laugh. He could ask her anything now and, with a stroke of his tongue, force the answer from her.
And all he wanted from her was that she turn her head. Don’t look at him, she commanded herself. Don’t show him your face.
His arousal pressed hard and long into her, and the prurient sensations unfurling in her body numbed her to her misgivings. She tangled her fingers in his hair, scraped her hands across his shoulders and the muscles in his back, moving with him. She burned everywhere he touched and slid deeper into that fog of pleasure.
When he slipped his hand between them and began to stroke her in time to his body sliding inside her, Margot arched into him. She groped for an anchor, her hand hitting a bedside table. She heard something clatter to the ground as she surged up on that pitch to the release of intolerable pleasure.
Arran growled, thrusting hard into her as his own release came.
For several moments afterward, neither of them moved. Both of them sucked air into their lungs until Arran slowly rolled off her and onto the bed beside her.
Margot was stunned. She swallowed hard, then pushed herself up and gathered the bedclothes around her naked body.
Arran had no such bashfulness. He lay sprawled on his belly, one arm hanging off the bed, his face turned away from her. She admired his physique, made hard and lean by his youthful thirty years and his lust for life. She had long appreciated his good looks and his strength, and had felt that flame of attraction from their first meeting when he appeared at Norwood Park with hair that was too long and muddied boots.
Yes, the spark had always been there. But the marriage had been wrong. Surely, in his heart of hearts, he knew that was true.
Margot leaned over him now. His hair had come undone from its queue. She could see a nick or two in his skin, as well. Fresh scars, undoubtedly earned in training his men for war. That was part of their marriage bargain—he would provide the renowned Highland soldiers for the British army. He would have lands in England, and she would have lands in Scotland, belonging to each of them outright. He was made a baron, too, and she...she was made the chattel by which two men had feathered their nests. She was the shiny bauble that had brought Mackenzie to the bargaining table.
How could such a glorious specimen of a man be a traitor? She touched one of the scars.
Arran instantly pushed himself up, coming off the bed. He ignored her and walked to the hearth, squatting down to build a fire. When he finished, he refilled his goblet and drank thirstily. He glanced at her over his shoulder, quite at ease with his nudity. But his hand, she noticed, was gripping the goblet. “Why?” he asked gruffly.
It was curious how two people, separated longer than they’d been together, could still understand one another. Margot knew very well that he was asking why she’d left. “You know why.”
“Was I unkind, then?” he asked impatiently. “Did I mistreat you?”
Margot sighed wearily. Her reasons had felt so sharp and urgent at the time, but had dulled with the years. “Not unkind. Indifferent. We were so different, you and I.”
He stared down at her for a moment, then looked away. “Aye. We still are.”
“You had no use for me, Arran.”
“No use for you? Was it no’ enough that you were mistress of all this?” he asked, gesturing around him.
“In name only,” she said. “I had no society, no friends.”
“Only because you’d not allow it,” he countered. “There are women in my clan who would have befriended you with the slightest bit of encouragement, aye?”
“That’s not true,” she said. “I tried to make Balhaire what I thought it ought to be, but they resisted me at every turn.”
“You wanted to do things in an English way.”
“What other way could I possibly have done them? I am English.”
He looked away, to the windows. “My own cousin Griselda was your friend.”
“Griselda!” Griselda Mackenzie was quite possibly the most unpleasant person Margot had ever met in her life. “She could scarcely tolerate me! She hated me for being English—you know that is true. Can you not see that you had what you wanted from our marriage, but I had nothing? I was miserable, Arran.”
“What I wanted,” he repeated. “Pray tell me, what the bloody hell did I want?”
Margot snorted and pushed her hair from her face. “The barony. Entry into England. Power, like every man before you and after you and around you now.”
Arran merely shrugged. “Aye, it’s what every man wants. But did you no’ want the same? Did you no’ want your own lands and a title, and all the trappings that come with it?”
“No,” she said, appalled. “I wanted a good match. A companion. I wanted a husband who wasn’t gone all day every day. I wanted someone who cared for finer things, who would take tea with me, perhaps bring me to Edinburgh—”
“This is the Highlands of Scotland, aye? No’ a bloody London or Paris salon.”
Margot could feel her hackles rising and checked herself. “You’re right. But that was the crux of it—I needed a more civilized existence.”
“Mind your mout
h, woman,” he said, looking genuinely offended.
“You came to my chamber fresh from the hunt with blood on your shirt!”
“Aye, and I took it off!” he shouted. “Do you think it was easy to be wed to you?”
“Me!”
“Oh, aye, little lamb, you,” he said, pointing a finger at her. “You were so timid and disdainful of everything. Haughty! Aye, you were a haughty one,” he said, flicking his wrist at her. “Nothing was good enough for milady, was it?”
Margot looked away. There was some truth to that, she couldn’t deny it. She’d been angry she’d been forced to marry him, so determined to find fault with him and Balhaire. “I was so young, Arran. So inexperienced.”
“You were definitely that,” he curtly agreed.
She glanced at him sidelong. He was pacing now, dragging his hand through his long, unruly hair. “Why didn’t you come after me?” she asked softly.
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.
CHAPTER FOUR
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 celeb
ration, 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 Balhaire. But if that’s what would make Margot happy, he was more than happy to oblige her. He decreed that a ball would be held to welcome Lady Mackenzie to Balhaire and the Mackenzie clan, and frankly, the idea was so grand that he wondered why he’d not thought of it before.
Margot seemed rather excited about it. “A ball? For me?” she’d asked him excitedly, her eyes sparkling with delight.
“Aye, for you,” he said proudly. They were seated in the morning room, she with some sort of needlepoint, and he lacing spurs to his boots.
“Arran...thank you,” she said, putting down her work. “That is precisely what I need! A ball,” she said dreamily. “We might invite your neighbors, won’t we? And we’ll have marzipan cakes.”
“Marzipan,” he repeated uncertainly. He wondered if Aunt Lilleas knew how to make them.
“No matter. We can do without the cakes. But we must have champagne and ices, of course.”
Arran had no idea where he would get either champagne or ices, and he had almost said so. But Margot leaped to her feet, threw her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek, surprising the life out of him. “Thank you!”
He decided then and there he would find champagne and ices.
Great preparations were made for the ball. The rush torches were changed out. Carpets were beaten. The tables where his clan took their meals were pushed back against the wall, and proper musicians were hired from Inverness. The clan was instructed to wear their finest clothing.
Margot surprised Arran again one afternoon by inviting him into the rooms she’d taken at the top of the old tower—as far from the newer master’s chambers as she could possibly be. He’d trekked across the breadth of Balhaire to sit in her dressing room to help her select the gown she would wear to the ball.
