Page 27 of Wild Wicked Scot
“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 tellme, 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. “Hewon’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 trustyourcunning...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.
