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 to her? 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.