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 to 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.
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
