Margot gasped almost soundlessly at the sound of Arran’s voice. She hadn’t expected him back until much later.

“Aye, now,” she heard him reaffirm to a distant voice.

She stared with horror at the knife in her hand. She sprang to her feet and looked around the small study.

But there was no place to hide.

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

ARRAN OPENED THE door to his chamber and barely had time to register Margot’s presence before he was knocked a step backward by the force of her leaping into his arms. “What the devil?” he asked, catching her.

“I’m so happy you’ve come back!”

“Did you think I’d deserted you?” He gave her a wry smile as he eased back from her strong hold on his neck.

Margot answered by taking his face between her hands and kissing him fiercely.

His blood began to stir, but then the events of the day nudged back into his consciousness. He pulled her arms free of his neck and set her down a few inches from him. “To what do I owe such an enthusiastic welcome?” he asked wryly. And what was she doing, skulking about his chamber at this time of day? She ought to have been in her sitting room or her dressing room. He was suspicious of her—even more so now, having heard what he had in Coigeach—and moved deeper into the room, looking around.

“I missed you,” she said earnestly. “How was your journey?”

“Tedious.” That was the most civil thing he could say for what he’d endured today. At a meeting of four Highland chieftains—all of them known Jacobites—Arran had been accused of colluding with the English.

It was as absurd as it was insulting. He’d been married to Margot for more than three years. As he pointed out to those men, if there was any colluding to be done, any betraying of his fellow Highlanders, would he not have done it when he was actually on speaking terms with her? Instead, he’d spent several years without his wife, working to make Balhaire prosperous so that it might sustain the many Mackenzies who lived there. “I’ve had quite a lot more to occupy me than one man’s claim to the throne, aye?”

“Aye,” Buchanan said. He was a mountain of a man whose unruly beard was a more fiery-looking ginger than that on his head. “But suppose a man who openly trades with France could earn even more money by keeping the English in his sporran? Would he no’ do so?”

“And betray his clan and his country?” Arran asked tightly. “I’m no’ a greedy man. I earn what I have—I donna need to betray my land and my people to line my coffers.”