Diah, but he’d failed her in so many ways. How could she not know? “From the moment I saw you standing on the balcony at Norwood Park.”

Her lips parted with surprise. “Even then?”

“There’s no logic to how love arrives.”

“And yet you never once said—”

“No, because I was bloody naive, and I foolishly believed that my love would never get away from me. I tried to make you happy, Margot, in all the ways that I knew how. I tried, but I couldna set it all to rights for you. But it was no’ from a lack of devotion. It was from a lack of understanding.”

“I had no idea,” she whispered.

“I know.” He hadn’t known it himself until after she was gone.

“Do you... Do you still feel the same?” she asked uncertainly.

Arran glanced at the chessboard. She could move her queen to his king now and hold him at checkmate. She could knock him from his throne, could send him sprawling off the board that was his life. He looked up again. “No, I donna feel the same. I donna trust you, leannan. Tell me, how can I trust you?”

He desperately wanted her to tell him that he could trust her. Tell him anything, tell him she had nothing to hide. But Margot didn’t say that. She sighed and rubbed her forehead as if she had a pain there. “I wouldn’t trust me, either,” she quietly admitted.

His heart sank, tumbling deeper into that abyss, carried on a storm of uncertainty and mistrust.

She suddenly stood up from the table, leaving her queen within striking distance of his king. “Only you can say if you will trust me,” she said as she moved around the table to him.

“And only you can say if you mean to leave me again,” he said curtly.

She sighed and ran her hand over the top of his head. She lifted her skirts, revealing her long, slender legs, and straddled his lap. Once more, Arran didn’t stop her—but he was keenly aware that she was trying to change the course of the conversation, using the only means at her disposal to best him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and said, “I don’t want to leave you again.” And she began to move on him.

He grabbed her hips in his hands to steady her. “That is no answer. Do you think I donna see what you are about, how you use your body to avoid answering me?”