Wild Wicked Scot

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 (#u02d575e6-7985-5db7-b9ff-abefb8a3b383)

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 celebration, 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.

“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.”