by Julia London
Margot sighed and used both hands to push her hair from her face. Her heart was pounding with the memories of last night. Was it possible that she and her husband, both of them older and wiser now, could actually resume their broken marriage? Was it possible that the rumors about him were true? Could this man, this fiercely independent, hardworking man, honestly plot against the queen—her queen? No, Margot couldn’t believe it, no matter what her father said.
But then again, what did she know of Arran Mackenzie, really? Especially not now, especially after so much time. She didn’t know him. She didn’t know much of anything anymore.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t bear to think what might happen to him if he were truly committing treason. Part of her wanted to warn him. Another part of her wanted to catch him in the act. Part of her wanted to rewind the clock, to go back to that night of Lynetta’s birthday ball, so that she could refuse to meet him at all. Unfortunately, it was far too late for that. She was quite mired in this marriage.
Everything about this so-called reunion had happened so quickly, Margot still wasn’t certain how it had come to pass. It had begun when her oldest brother, Bryce, had accosted her one evening when she’d arrived home after dining with friends at the home of Sir Ian Andrews. It had been a lively evening—Lynetta was newly engaged to Mr. Fitzgerald, and Margot had passed the time by shamelessly teasing poor Mr. Partridge, who was smitten with her.
She’d come home feeling jocular and a bit tipsy. Bryce was waiting. He was dressed in riding clothes and was not wearing a wig. He looked as if he’d only just arrived home. His jaw was set implacably, his demeanor grim. “Where have you been?”
“Dining at the home of Sir Andrews. Why?”
“Father needs to speak with you,” he said, and clasped her elbow and escorted her into the library.
Her father was seated at the hearth with a book in his hand, a blanket draped over his lap. At his elbow, a glass of port. He smiled kindly when Bryce escorted her into the room. Margot’s beloved half brother, Knox, was standing at the window. He was dressed impeccably in a gold coat and dark brown pantaloons. He tried to smile at Margot, too, but he couldn’t seem to muster it and looked away.
In that moment, Margot knew something unpleasant was about to occur.
“Ah, Margot, my love,” her father said. “Come.” He beckoned her to his side. Margot pulled free of Bryce’s grip and went to her father, leaning down to kiss his cheek. “You should be abed, Pappa.”
“As should you, darling. It is unbecoming of a married woman to be so late in the company of gentlemen who are not her husband.”
He rarely mentioned Arran, and Margot thought it odd that he should mention him now.
“Which is why it now seems a good time for you to return to your husband.”
Margot’s heart fluttered with sudden anxiety. She glanced at her brothers. “I beg your pardon?”
“You are to Scotland,” her father said.
Margot gaped at him. “Why? Because I have dined at the home of Sir Andrews? I can’t go back to Scotland, Pappa!”
“Calm yourself,” her father said sternly. “You are needed.”
“Needed! How could I possibly—”
“Your husband is a traitor.” He said it suddenly and acidly, as if she’d brought him a diseased piece of meat, in spite of his having brought Arran to her.
“What? That’s not possible. There has obviously been some mistake—”
“The mistake is that you fled your marriage bed like a child and came crying home,” Bryce said angrily.
“Bryce,” her father said quietly. He stood up, walked to the sideboard. He poured a glass of port and held it out to Margot.
She shook her head, but he still held it out. “Drink it. Calm yourself.”
Margot refused to take it. She would not calm herself. “Who has said it?” she asked. “Who has made you believe such a foul thing?”
“I have heard it from a reliable source. Don’t look so shocked—I warned you there would be consequences for fleeing your husband.”
She blinked at him in disbelief. He’d never warned her of anything! “You told me he was a barbarian,” she reminded him.
“I did not make your match lightly,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “I staked my reputation on that match, vouching for the honor of all of Scotland for the sake of your children and my heirs.”
For her children! He had vouched for it to line his own pockets. Margot looked at her brothers. Bryce was watching, but Knox was staring down at his feet. “What has happened?” she demanded.
“I swore to the queen that a union with Scotland would bring her wealth and power. That every bloody man in that godforsaken land would be her loyal subject,” her father said sharply, pointing north. He sounded like the vicar now, preaching from a pulpit. “I believed it so wholeheartedly that I gave my consent to the marriage of my only daughter to a Scottish chieftain. Do you know that it was my word that helped tip the balance to uniting Scotland and England? I made your match to make this nation strong and invincible. I was indispensable to the agreement. Now your husband seeks to make me quite dispensable!”
But that was not at all how it had gone. Her father was speaking as if Margot were completely ignorant of what had happened before. “You told me the match was meant to increase our holdings and provide for our future heirs. You said it was imperative that I do it for our family, Pappa. You never said anything about England and Scotland.”
“There were many advantages to your marriage, which is why I agreed to it. That’s why you agreed to it, if you’ve forgotten. It was your duty to this family.”
“But I didn’t agree to it! You forced me. You said, ‘A woman’s place is to bear sons to whomever her family decrees, and nothing else,’ as I recall!”
“That is a woman’s place! But then you disobeyed me and came home,” he said. “I was too lenient with you. I could hardly blame you, I suppose, knowing how the Scots are. But it has caused quite a lot of trouble for us all, and now you must repair it.”
Margot began to feel ill. “What trouble?”
“What trouble, what trouble,” Bryce mimicked her. “Men who have been made a fool will take their revenge, Margot. The husband you have left is in bed with the French. They are plotting to invade England and put James Stuart on the throne. Do you understand, Margot? They mean to take the throne from Queen Anne and install a Catholic with the help of England’s mortal enemy.”
That made no sense. Why would Arran involve himself in that? “But...he trains soldiers for the queen,” she said uncertainly. “What proof is there?”
“You’re a fool,” Bryce snapped.
“Bryce,” Knox said. “Be gentle.”
Bryce turned away from Margot.
Her father took Margot’s hand, much like he’d done the night he had introduced her to Arran, his plan already in place. “There is quite a lot you can’t possibly understand, darling,” he said, gentle once more. “When you left, you relieved him of any loyalty to our agreement. An Englishman would not go back on his word, but a Scot?” He shrugged. “Now, who do you think will be made to pay for the sins of your husband?”
Margot’s head was spinning. “Me?”
“You?” Bryce exploded, and then laughed. “Who the bloody hell are you?”
“No, Margot,” her father said calmly. “I will be held accountable. I am the one who brought that bastard into England and into this family, and if he is a traitor, the queen and her men will look to me, as well. We will lose everything. We will be accused of conspiring with the rebels and the French and—” he squeezed her hand so tightly that it hurt “—and I might very well hang.”
Margot’s breath lodged in her lungs.
Her father was suddenly looming over her. He cupped her face, forcing her to look
up at him. His eyes were bloodshot, as if he’d been drinking. “There is only one way to know if he plots against us without drawing attention to ourselves. And that is for you, his precious wife, to go and discover what he’s about before anyone else. You must go with all due haste, Margot. You must make him tell you what he is about and then come back to me.”
Margot stepped away from her father. She needed to breathe, to think. “If it is true, he won’t tell me, Pappa. He despises me. I’ve not had a word from him in three years.”
“And whose fault is that?” Bryce said snidely.
“You’d best hope that he tells you,” her father said. “You cannot imagine the tragedy that will befall this family if you fail.” He caught her arm, made her turn around to face him once more. “You are our only hope. Do you understand?”
“I don’t understand any of it!” Margot exclaimed. “I cannot believe that Arran would do such a thing. And even if he has, he won’t tell me, I assure you—”
Bryce suddenly grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her around to face him, squeezing hard. “Then you’d best determine how to extract it from him. Spy if you must, lie if you must—we’ve got everything riding on this. Everything! So you’d best go and please your husband, Margot. Keep your mouth shut, do what you are wed to do, and open your legs and give the man what is his right.”
“Bryce! That’s enough!” Knox said, and pushed Bryce off Margot as she tried to expel the breath caught in her throat.
Now Margot shuddered at that memory. Her father and Bryce didn’t care at all about her feelings in this, no more than when they’d arranged her marriage to Mackenzie. Once again she argued and pleaded, but her father wouldn’t even look at her.
Knox was the only one to soothe her. He’d come to her after that wretched arguing had depleted her and filled her with despair. “You know that I will miss you desperately,” he said fondly.
Knox Armstrong, her bastard brother, the son of a woman whose identity Knox claimed never to have known. He was the same age as she, both of them twenty-one now, and both of them seven years younger than Bryce. They had grown up in the nursery together, had been as close to one another as twins. When they were thirteen, Knox was sent to apprentice with a duke. He’d come back a grown man with gold hair and dancing blue eyes.
Margot loved Knox above all others.
“You won’t miss me. I don’t intend to go. Who has said this about Mackenzie, Knox?” she asked him plaintively. “How can it be true?”
Knox shrugged. “I know only as much as you, dear heart. I know only that Father met Sir Richard Worthing, who had been in the company of Thomas Dunn from London. He was quite agitated after speaking with them. That’s all I know, really, other than that Sir Worthing will accompany you to Balhaire.”
“No. I won’t go.”
Knox put his arm around her. “Listen to me, love. If there is even an ounce of truth, we must know it, or all will be lost. There is no one else who can do this, is there? Think if I or Bryce were to appear at Balhaire—he’d never give us entry.”
Dear God, he was right.
“Look, I have a gift for you.” He handed her a box.
Margot opened it; it was lined with silver paper, and beneath the folds of the paper was a pair of goatskin riding gloves. “Knox...they’re beautiful,” she said, pressing them to her face.
“Let Mackenzie know that you’ve been well-cared-for here.” He drew her to him, and as tears came to Margot’s eyes, he held her. “It’s not as difficult as you think,” he assured her.
“You don’t know him,” she said of her husband. “He’s very clever. He will not be happy to see me, Knox.”
“You do your beauty a disservice, darling. Men are simple creatures. He might be angry at first, but like all men, he wants to feel as if he is the master of his world and there is a woman to notice and adore him for it. Do that, and he will give you whatever you want.”
“He won’t tell me about the French,” she said plaintively. “He won’t. I know this man. He will suspect my motives for coming back, and especially if I ask him any questions.”
“Then don’t ask,” Knox said simply.
“There is no one else I may speak to!” she said. “Pappa said I must not tell anyone why I’ve come back, not even Nell. How am I to discover what he’s about if I can’t ask him?”
“Observe, love. Look through his things. Listen.” He smiled and touched her cheek. “You must trust your cunning...and your allure. Believe me when I tell you that he will eventually confess all to you. He will give you whatever your heart desires, and you will be home in time for Lynetta’s nuptials.”
Margot groaned now as she recalled that conversation with Knox. She couldn’t imagine Arran confessing anything to her after all that had happened.
She looked to the chest of drawers, to where she’d seen the folded letter last night. She had no idea what she was looking for, really. Would a man of Arran’s stature and cunning outline his plans in writing, then leave them on his chest of drawers? That seemed ridiculous. So what, then, was she supposed to find?
Maybe she at least ought to have a look at that letter. Maybe it was from someone in France, someone sending word of when the French would arrive. Could it be so simple?
She wrapped part of the bed linens around her, stood up and looked around the room. In the morning light, she saw the undignified mess of his chambers, something she hadn’t noticed last night in those anxious moments after he’d escorted her up. His clothes and boots and a sword or two were scattered about the chairs and floor as if a cyclone had torn through the room. A table near the cold hearth was stacked high with papers and gloves and a pistol.
She glanced down and realized that she’d walked across his buckskins last night, thinking they were carpet. A whisky bottle was on the edge of the rug underneath the buckskins, its contents apparently having spilled out at some point. “Goodness,” she said to herself. “Whatever has become of Mrs. Abernathy?”
The room smelled of smoke and intercourse; Margot moved to a window and cranked it open, breathing in the cool morning air. She could see outside the walls here, to the hills beyond, shrouded in the morning mists. The country here had seemed bleak to her when she’d first arrived, but she had come to appreciate its beauty. Balhaire stood a half mile from the sea and what felt like millions of miles from any proper civilization.
Margot turned from the vista and padded across the carpet to the chest of drawers in search of the grimy, folded bit of vellum she’d seen last night. She lifted up the things on top of his bureau, looking for it—but it seemed the vellum was gone.
She absently fingered the gold necklace he’d put around her neck as she thought about it. He’d obviously taken the letter with him this morning. Had he taken it to keep her from reading it? Or had he simply taken it to respond to whoever had written it?
She turned away from the chest and leaned against it. What was she to do now? How did one spy on one’s estranged husband?
The door swung open and the dour-faced woman appeared once again. “Your maid is no’ to be found, then,” she announced, sounding vexed. “I’ll help you to dress, then, aye?”
God, please no. But Margot smiled. “Thank you,” she said, and mentally prepared herself to face her first full day back at Balhaire as a pariah.
CHAPTER SEVEN
MARGOT’S MAID, NELL, was hotter than the bathwater that had been drawn for her.
“How crude it was, milady,” she said angrily as she stalked around the old rooms Margot had once occupied, laying out gowns from which Margot would choose. “That man as big as a tree come in here as if he owned this pile of rocks and demanded to be shown your things!”
Jock, she meant. Margot stepped into the bath and sank down into the hot water.
“I says, ‘You can’t go lo
oking through my lady’s things,’ and he says, ‘Stand aside, you wee nymph. I’ve no bloody time for it.’ Beggin’ your pardon,” she added hastily in apology for her language, and dipped a curtsy.
“It’s all right,” Margot said. The hot water felt good on her body, particularly those spots that had not been so well used in a very long time. She leaned back and closed her eyes as Nell stomped about, listening to the sweep of her gown on the carpet as she ranted about her encounter with Jock.
“I don’t like it here,” Nell said, tossing her blond head. “Never did. It’s not right that a man can come into a lady’s chamber and put his big paws into her things and stir them about like a mutton stew. And with no regard for costly lace and silk! My father always said Scots were hard-hearted and the only redeeming thing about them was the road they built to England.”
Margot laughed at that. “They’re not as bad as that.” She sat up in the bath, water pouring off her shoulders and breasts. “Come and help me wash my hair.”
When she’d dressed and Nell had put her wet hair up, Margot ventured out of her rooms. She went down the curving stairs to the main floor. She heard voices in the great hall, Jock’s rising above the others. Margot walked in the opposite direction of all those Mackenzies and out the front door.
The mists had lifted and left in their wake a blindingly bright day, and she stood a moment to let her eyes adjust, her gaze landing on Sweeney Mackenzie in the company of three men. At least Sweeney had been kind to her before. She’d never been able to determine exactly where Sweeney fell on the chain of command at Balhaire, but he was always about. She strode forward.
“Good day, Sweeney.”
He looked surprised to see her. “G-good day, m-m-milady,” he stammered.
She’d always found his stuttering curious, as it seemed to affect him only when he was very anxious. And he did seem quite anxious—he glanced at the young man beside him as he tugged so anxiously at his wig that it began to tilt to the left.
