by Julia London
“What do you think of this?” she asked, holding up a scarlet gown to her.
“Aye, it’s bonny,” he said. He was far more interested in her skin. It was glowing.
“Do you like it more or less than this one?” she asked, and held up a gown of pale blue silk with tiny seed pearls sewed along the hem and sleeves.
“Bonny, the both of them, aye,” he agreed.
Margot’s brow creased. She stood studying the wardrobe. She pulled out another gown that, quite honestly, looked like the others. The only difference was that it was a forest green. She looked at Arran, then at the gown. “What do you think?”
He thought she ought to choose a color and be done with it. They were all the same to his undiscerning eye. He shrugged. “Bonny,” he said again.
Margot sighed with irritation. “Will you not help me? I haven’t the least idea which to wear. Which one suits? And please, for God’s sake, don’t say bonny.”
“What will you have me say, then?” he asked, confused. “All of them are...boidheach.”
Big green eyes blinked back at him. “I don’t know what that means!”
“It means...bonny,” he said helplessly.
Margot groaned to the ceiling. “Will you please choose one?”
“All right. I choose the red one,” he said, pointing to the first one she had discarded across her daybed.
Margot looked at the scarlet one. She frowned. She looked at the forest green one she held. “Not this one?”
“Ach, I canna help you,” Arran said, and stood up, striding across her dressing room. “Wear what you like, Margot. They’re all bloody well bonny!” He strode out the door, frustrated that he’d walked all the way here to be tormented in such a way. He was a laird, for God’s sake. He had no business choosing gowns.
But the excitement in and around Balhaire was infectious, all the same. Mackenzies were suddenly taking airs, concerned about ghillie brogues and sporrans and the like. On the night of the ball, Arran dressed in the tradition of plaids and formal coats. He went to Margot’s dressing room and entered without knocking. She’d complained of that, too, by the by, and thought he ought to be announced in his own bloody house before he entered. He maintained if he would be made to march halfway across the Highlands to see her, he’d enter as he pleased.
This time, though, he was instantly brought to a halt. His wife, his beautiful wife, was dressed in the dark green silk gown with seed pearls interspersed between red crystals in a display of spirals and curls across the stomacher. Her hair was styled in a towering pile of auburn, with more seed pearls threaded into her hair. She looked regal and beautiful, and he was overwhelmed with a rush of prideful affection that made him feel warm in his coat. “Margot,” he said. “Diah, but you are bonny, aye? You bring to mind a noble queen.”
She beamed with delight at him, and her smile filled him up with pleasurable warmth. “A queen. That’s very kind of you to say,” she said, blushing, and curtsied grandly. “Thank you. What do you think of this?” she asked, and laid her fingers across a strand of pearls that looped twice around her throat, and from which hung a ruby that brushed the swell of her breasts above her stays. “I’m not certain of it. Nell said it was perfect, but I thought it might be too ornate.”
“Lass...you’re a vision. You are perfect.” He bowed formally and held out his hand to her. She smiled and put her hand in his. She was happy. Quite happy. Arran thought that perhaps things would turn now, that this was what was needed to make her feel at home here.
He was, at last, giving her what she wanted.
The walked down to the great hall together, Arran assuring her the champagne had come. A hush fell over the great hall when they entered. Arran was proud—his clansmen seemed as taken with Margot and her attire as she was with the changes in this room. He could see them all studying her, could see women glance down at their best gowns and could imagine them finding the garments wanting. Was that not the way it should be? Should not the lady of the house be dressed in the finest? Nevertheless, he was proud of his people, too—they’d all dressed for the occasion. Plaids were cleaned and pressed, and the ladies’ gowns a sea of color.
But none of them had styled their hair as Margot had. None of them wore jewels glittering at their throats. None of them had seed pearls embroidered into their stomachers.
Margot’s grip of his arm tightened. “They’re wearing the plaid,” she whispered.
“Aye.”
“But...” She glanced up at iron candle rings above the hall.
“The candles are beeswax,” he bragged.
Her gaze moved to the tartan draperies he’d ordered hung over the windows so her view was not that of the bailey. He’d even had the dogs taken down to the kitchens tonight so they’d not be underfoot for the dancing.
“Come,” Arran said. He had to tug her a little, but Margot came with him across the great hall. She smiled at the Mackenzies and politely thanked them for attending. When they reached the dais, Arran seated her in an upholstered chair and motioned Fergus to come forward. “Champagne for milady,” he said. “Whisky for me.” Then he sat beside her, took her hand in his and asked warmly, “What do you think, then, wife? Here is your society,” he said proudly, sweeping his arm to the many souls gathered in the hall.
“My society?”
“Aye. It’s what you’ve wanted, it is no’? Society.”
She looked at him as if he were speaking Gaelic. “Yes, but...where are your neighbors?”
“My neighbors?” He laughed. “These are my neighbors.”
She seemed oddly disappointed by that. But she smiled again when Fergus served her champagne in a crystal flute, and asked excitedly, “When will the dancing begin?”
“Now.” He signaled the musicians, and they began with a familiar jig.
Griselda, he noticed, was the first one to stand up with her current suitor.
“Would you like—”
“No, no...let them begin. We’ll dance the next set, shall we?” She smiled and sipped her champagne.
The floor was quickly full of dancers, and they began in earnest, kicking up their heels in true Scots fashion, the voices around them rising with the gaiety of the occasion. They’d gone down the line once, and Arran looked to Margot to see her enjoyment.
But Margot didn’t look as if she was enjoying it at all. She looked dismayed. “What is wrong?” he asked.
She turned her gaze to him, and he was surprised by the terror in her eyes. “Nell and I practiced all week.”
Arran laughed. “You donna need a lot of practice for this,” he said, and stood up. “Lady Mackenzie, will you dance with me, then?”
“No,” she said immediately. “No, I can’t.”
“Margot—”
“Please don’t ask me again, Arran. I won’t dance.”
She stood up and hurried off the dais, disappearing into the crowd.
Arran slowly resumed his seat, bewildered. What had just happened?
It was a quarter of an hour before she came back, coming up the dais steps as if she were trudging to her doom. She took her seat and stared straight ahead, her hands curled tightly on the arms.
All around them, Mackenzies were dancing and shouting in their tongue, drinking ale—they did not seem to care for the champagne he’d had brought in from England for a dear price—and calling up to the laird and lady their felicitations on their marriage. Margot said nothing. She did not smile, did not nod, did nothing to acknowledge them.
Arran grew angry with her. He didn’t understand her sullen behavior, her refusal to dance when she’d seemed so excited by the prospect. When he could bear it no more, he stood up and walked off the dais, and asked a lass to dance with him.
He didn’t know how many sets he spun through, but he drank and laughed
and enjoyed himself. He would not sit on the dais with his sullen bride.
When he at last looked to the dais, he was not surprised to see she’d gone.
Fueled by whisky and humiliation, he went in search of her. He found her in her bed. Margot’s beautiful dress was lying in a heap on the floor, and the pieces of hair she’d used to arrange her coif were thrown onto her dressing table. He sent the maid scurrying.
“What is the matter with you, then?” he demanded.
She sat up and stared at him. “Is it not obvious?”
“Obvious?” he exclaimed hotly. “There is no’ a bloody thing obvious about you, Margot. I gave a ball for you, and here you are, crying into your pillow like a child!”
“I’m not crying into my pillow. I am plotting my escape!”
“You want to escape?” He threw open the door and gestured to it. “Go. Escape.” When she did not move, he slammed the door shut and heard the sound of it reverberating down the stairs.
“You canna imagine the effort it has taken to give you this ball—”
“That wasn’t a ball!” she cried, and suddenly swung out of the bed, stalking to her vanity. “That was just another night in your great hall!”
“Diah, but you are a petulant child, are you no’? Those people came to celebrate your marriage, and what do you do, then? You sulk and mope and then flee like a rabbit instead of welcoming them as you ought as lady of this house and clan!”
She slammed down the hairbrush she’d just picked up. “I tried to greet them, but they speak in that awful language! Not one of them wore a ball gown or a proper evening coat. It was all plaid! They wouldn’t drink the champagne, and dear God, the dancing!” she exclaimed, shaking her hands to the ceiling.
“You wanted dancing!”
“Not that sort of dancing! I’ve never seen anything like it!”
“You hate it all, is that it?”
She gasped and looked at him. “No, that’s not—I never said that.”
“You didna say it, Margot, but it is in your every move, your every glance, your every look! You are—”
He caught himself. He ran both hands over his head and sighed.
“What? What am I?” she demanded, folding her arms tightly. Defensively.
“Bloody impossible, aye?”
“So are you. And this place.”
“Diah, what is wrong?” he roared to the rafters. “I canna put it to rights if you willna tell me what it is.”
Margot stared at him. She seemed to be debating what she would say. She rubbed her nape and said, “Frankly, I’m a poor dancer and I don’t know—”
He snorted.
Her face darkened. “You asked, didn’t you?”
“For all that is holy, I donna know how to please you,” he said coldly.
“And I don’t know how to please you,” she snapped.
Her tone undid Arran—he strode forward, caught her by the arm and whirled her around. “Enough of playing the wounded lass, Margot. We are married, we are, and you may as well learn to live with it as fight it, aye? You are a Scot now.”
“Never,” she said defiantly.
Her eyes were glittering in the low light. Her hair fell wildly about her shoulders. It was funny in a strange way—Arran had always thought himself full of might, capable of anything. But he was a very weak man when it came to Margot. She was wretched and haughty, and yet he could see her youth and the abject vulnerability in her eyes.
He cupped her face with his hand, stroked her cheek. “I’m asking...no, I’m begging you. Donna make this harder than it is, aye?”
There it was, a single tear sliding from the corner of her eye. “I can’t possibly make it any harder than it is,” she muttered, and closed her eyes and lifted her face to him.
Arran, confused as he always was by her, kissed her. He drew her to the bed, removed her clothes, covered her body in kisses. And as he sank between her thighs and she drew up her knees and curled her fists in his hair, gasping with pleasure at what his tongue was doing to her, he thought that at least they had this. If nothing else, they had this.
CHAPTER FIVE
Balhaire
1710
IF THERE WAS one thing Arran held as irrefutable fact, it was that the English and women could never be completely trusted. So when he heard a rustling about sometime in the night, long after the fire had turned to embers, he was not surprised to see Margot standing at his chest of drawers, one of the bed linens wrapped loosely about her.
He admired her for a moment as she rose up on her toes and examined the articles on top of the chest. One long, shapely leg was visible. Waves of auburn hair fell almost to her waist, ending a few inches above the curve of her hip. She touched his things, and her delicate, manicured fingers fluttered over the folded vellum that Jock had brought to Arran, an urgent message from the chieftain of the MacLearys of Mallaig.
He silently rose up on one elbow, watching her as she picked up the vellum between finger and thumb and seemed to debate opening it.
God, but she was beautiful, he thought, as he carefully and soundlessly removed himself from the bed. It had been her eyes that had captured Arran’s fancy when he first saw her. Wide, deep-set eyes, the color of them reminding him of the moss that grew on the trees at Balhaire, and her gaze discerning. He’d known right away, before even hearing her speak, that she was a perceptive lass.
He’d also known, by the way those eyes had looked at him, that she’d been a wee bit beguiled by him, too.
He made his way to stand behind her and folded his arms across his chest. “What are you doing there?”
With a gasp, she dropped the vellum and groped around the top of the chest as she whirled around to face him. “I couldn’t sleep.”
“Could you no’?”
She suddenly thrust a gold chain into his face. “Who is this for?”
“For you, leannan,” he said smoothly, and reached around her, pushing the vellum under a pair of gloves.
“That’s absurd.”
“Who else?” he asked easily, and pried the necklace from her hand. He’d actually taken it in trade for a pistol.
“Maybe the girl who was sitting in your lap when I arrived,” she said curtly, her brows dipping into a vee.
He frowned at her attempt to appear jealous and casually laid his hand across her throat. “Would I have loved you as I did tonight if this gold was for that wee strumpet?” He turned Margot about, pushed her mane of hair out of his way and draped the necklace around her throat. He bent his head to kiss her neck. He was aroused again and pushed his erection into her hips. “It’s yours now.”
“I don’t want it,” she said, but made no move to remove it.
Arran reached around her abdomen, grabbed the linen and yanked it free of her body. Margot didn’t resist; she leaned back against him, her hands sliding down his thighs. She was different than before. Now she seemed to understand the power she wielded over him.
He took her by the wrist and pulled her back to the bed with him, falling onto it and dragging her along to straddle him.
Margot sighed and dug her fingers into his chest. “You’re insatiable,” she said, and began to move on him, sliding against his erection.
“Mmm.” He’d not argue. He had strong appetites for life. He stroked her cheek with his knuckle.
Margot gave him a cool, sultry smile and turned her head, kissing his hand. That was the sort of smile that could inflame a man’s blood. Pleasant, Jock had said. What a ridiculous word. Ah, but it hurt him to look at her now, Arran thought, as he lifted her hips and guided her onto him.
She sighed, closed her eyes and let her head fall back as she sank down onto him.
This beauty was a liar and was here for some reason he would have to ferret o
ut. But in his heart, fool that he was, he wished she had come back for him. He wished it was true that she wanted to rekindle their marriage. In spite of their differences, he was a loyal man, a man of his word, and he had come to care for his timid, naive wife, in spite of their rocky beginning.
But she hadn’t come back for him. She did not want to rekindle their marriage and likely never would. Worse, it was up to him to discover what she was about.
At present, however, she had begun to move on his cock, her eyes the color of a warm summer sea now. She leaned over him and said, “Do you find me haughty now?”
“Uist,” he said, silencing her, and began to move more earnestly inside her. He watched her face this time. She’d seen the naked truth in him the first time they’d come together tonight, and this time, he was looking for something, anything, to inform him. But Arran was soon swept under by the ecstasy of her body, of the pleasure of a woman’s touch, of the desire that had been buried for three years. In the midst of it, when her hair formed a curtain around them, in the low light of the hearth, he saw an unexpected glimmer in her eyes.
He saw sorrow. Sorrow.
For him? For their marriage? For herself?
Their lovemaking had at last exhausted them both, and he fell asleep, wondering.
Early in the morning, Arran had to extract himself from her limbs—she’d rolled into him, tangling herself around him.
It was not yet dawn, so he washed with the cold water of the basin in an adjoining room and dressed. When he returned to the bedchamber, Margot hadn’t moved. She was sound asleep, her face deceivingly angelic. He glanced around the clutter of his chamber. Margot had brought nothing other than her clothes last night. He’d send her maid to dress her.
He walked to his chest, retrieved the vellum from beneath his gloves, tucked it into his waistcoat and then stepped out of the room.
There was a sleeping, slack-jawed lad sprawled just outside his door on a cloak. Jock had put him there, probably fearing Margot intended to cut his laird’s throat. Arran couldn’t help but smile at that—Jock trusted the English and women even less than he. He nudged the lad with his boot, and the young man came up like a shot, his eyes wide with sleep and fear.