Page 65 of Wild Wicked Scot
He mounted his horse and rode away, leaving her and his growing suspicions in the bailey.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
THISWASTHEonly chance she would have, Margot knew. She was beginning to feel things for Arran she’d never felt before, had never even believed were possible...so if she was going to eliminate all doubts, she had to take this opportunity.
She had to know what was locked in that cabinet.
Margot watched Arran until he’d left the bailey. Her confidence in her emerging beliefs about him had been tested by Jock’s arrival and her sense that this meeting was a serious matter. When he’d disappeared through the gates, she walked as casually as she might into the castle, smiling at Fergus, responding politely that, no, she did not require anything and, yes, she meant to retire to her rooms. She moved up the curving staircase as any lady might having just come back from a long ride, as if there were no urgency about her day.
She stuck her head into her sitting room—Nell was nowhere to be seen. For once, Margot was grateful for Nell’s penchant for wandering about and gossiping.
Margot slipped into her rooms and quietly shut the door behind her. She paused at the small dressing table and ran her hands over the various items until she found precisely what she was looking for—a hat pin. She stuck it into the fold of her skirt and went through a door to the master’s chambers.
There was no one about, and moreover, with Mrs. Abernathy away, it looked as if no one had come in since Margot had left the room this morning. The hearth was cold, the water at the basin unemptied from this morning’s toilette.
What if someone came? What would stop anyone from finding her in his study? Margot tossed her hat onto a chair, plainly visible from the door, then removed her coat and laid it across the foot of the bed. People who entered this room would see her things and hopefully assume she was within and seek Nell. Margot didn’t know what she’d do if Nell should come looking for her—she had to make haste.
She moved as silently as she might to Arran’s dressing room, wincing when the door squeaked as she opened it. She squeezed in through the partially opened door and quickly shut it behind her, then ran to the other end and carefully opened the door to the study.
Empty.
Her hands were shaking now, but she bolted to the small cabinet and fell onto her knees. She retrieved the knife she had dropped and kicked beneath it in her terror yesterday, then jammed the hat pin into the lock and jiggled, trying to find the catch that would turn it. The latch would not spring. She tried again, but no matter what she did, she couldn’t get the hat pin to catch the lock. Margot began to panic—surely everyone could hear her trying to open the locked door. Surely men would fall on her at any moment and drag her away to stand before the laird and confess her crime. Surely Jock was watching her now, his eyes gleaming with the satisfaction that he’d finally caught her in an act of perfidy.
This wasn’t going to work. The door would not come open, and just as Margot was giving up, it suddenly sprang free and swung open.
She gasped with surprise and jerked around to look behind her for reassurance that no one had come. Hearing nothing, she reached inside the dark interior, groping about for whatever secrets it held. Her fingers brushed against what felt like paper, tied together with a bit of twine. She withdrew the bundle and stared at the stack of neatly folded vellums. The one on top had the unbroken wax seal of the Mackenzie signet ring. What were these, letters? Correspondence with the French? With Jacobites? Had Arran written them? If he’d written them, why hadn’t they been delivered? And why was her heart sinking like a stone? She could almost feel his guilt burning through the thick parchment.
Her hands shaking, she untied the twine and turned the folded missives over.
“Lady Mackenzie, Norwood Park” was scrawled in Arran’s familiar handwriting across the front. Margot gasped, shocked to see her name, and fumbled with the stack. This was a letter toher? Why hadn’t he sent it? Perhaps this was his last will and testament, not to be sent unless in the event of his death.
She turned another letter over. It was also addressed to her. So was the next. And the next. She was scarcely breathing as she turned over nine folded vellums, all of them addressed to her. All of them sealed. All of them unsent.
She slowly slid off her knees and onto her bottom, the letters in her lap. What could they possibly say? She couldn’t break the seal! What an obscene violation of trust! It was the very thing he suspected of her.
If he’d meant her to see these letters, he would have sent them. She couldn’t stoop so low as to trample on this bit of faith between them. She couldn’t steal them out of a locked cabinet that she’d broken into and read them now.
But neither could she leave them untouched. She glanced at the mantel clock—she guessed she had a half hour before someone arrived to light candles and hearths. She looked again at the letters.
No.No, no, don’t do it. Better you admit you intruded on his privacy than break the seal.Margot tied the twine around the bundle and returned the stack to the cabinet. She shut the door, reinserted the hat pin to turn the lock...but then suddenly changed her mind and opened the door once more. Her curiosity was too strong.
“Just one,” she whispered. She took the first one from the stack, broke the seal and unfolded it. It was dated more than a year ago, in the winter.
It has been six months since last I wrote you, and the winter winds and ice have come to Balhaire. The storm came on us so quickly that we lost a few sheep in the glen, found them frozen together, their wool not thick enough to save them from the worst cold. I would that you were here to warm my bed. I despise myself for wanting it. I wish I’d never heard your name.
She stared at the letter, the words seeming to move on the page in her trembling hand. What had compelled him to write this nearly two years after she’d left him? Why hadn’t he sent it?
There was no going back now—Margot took another one and broke the seal. This one was written a month after she’d fled Balhaire, and she cringed, certain she would read a diatribe against her.
I’ve tried to understand why you left. We had our differences, but none that I would have guessed would lead to your flight. Had I not been so befuddled by your continued unhappiness, perhaps I might have put it to rights. I would that I knew what I did to harm you so, Margot...
He catalogued events—many she’d forgotten—that had led to her tears.
You can be the worst sort of woman, tearful and shrew, secretive and fragile. And yet I miss you here.
Another letter, written a year after she’d left.
Mary Grady was delivered of a son this morning. A happier man than John Grady you’ve not seen. The boy is healthy and has a full cry, and he took to suckling straightaway. The midwife says he will be a healthy lad. I am pleased for Grady, but may I confess to you that my heart is leaden. My hope for my own son is now in England...
