He tried to understand what concerned her, what she thought he might be about to do. “Why do you ask?”

Margot’s eyes seemed to seek something in him. He didn’t understand what it was she sought, what it was she needed from him. “When will you return?” she asked, her voice small, sounding, strangely, almost guilty.

He frowned down at her, trying to work out this sudden change in her at the same time he worried what Jock had to tell him or show him. “I donna know, Margot. An hour. Perhaps longer. But I must go.”

She drew a breath as if to ask more, but Arran didn’t want to hear more questions that would make his suspicions about her blossom any more than they’d already begun to do. So he suddenly reached for her, kissed her temple and said, “When I come back, you may ask what you want, aye? But now, I must go.”

He mounted his horse and rode away, leaving her and his growing suspicions in the bailey.

Chapter Fifteen

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THIS WAS THE only 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.