What game was this now? She would flirt with him, hint at bad behavior? It made no sense, and it stank of trickery. Who was this woman? The woman who had left him would have been appalled by the mere suggestion that her chastity was not practically virginal. But this woman was toying with him, making suggestions and smiling in a way that could make a man’s knees give way.

He turned away from that smile to signal the serving boy to pour wine and noticed that half of his men were still gaping at her. “All right, all right,” he said irritably, gesturing for them to do something other than stare. “Can you no’ play something a bit livelier, Geordie?” he demanded of his musician.

Geordie put down his flute, picked up his fiddle and began to play again.

As Margot lifted the cup to her lips, he said, “Now that you’ve had your grand entrance, I’ll know what has brought you to Balhaire. Has someone died, then? Has your da lost his fortune? Are you hiding from the queen?”

She laughed. “My family is in good health, thank you. Our fortune is quite intact, and the queen is generally not aware of me at all.”

He sprawled back in his chair, studying her.

She smiled pertly. “You seem skeptical. I had forgotten what a suspicious nature you have, but I did always quite like that about you, I must say.”

“Should I not be suspicious of you? When you appear as you have without a bloody word?”

“Can you tell me a better way to return to you?” she asked. “If I’d sent word, you would have denied me. Is that not so? I thought that perhaps if you saw me before you heard my name...” She shrugged.

“You thought what?”

“I thought that maybe you would realize you’d missed me, too.” She smiled softly. Hopefully.

There it was, that stir of blood in him again, accompanied by another rash of images of his wife’s long legs on either side of him, her silky hair pooling on his chest. He swallowed that image down. The truth was that he couldn’t bear the sight of her. “I donna miss you, Margot. I loathe you.”

Her cheeks turned crimson, and she glanced down at her lap.

“Aye, and how long has it been, precisely, since you began to miss me, then, leannan? Did I no’ send enough money?”

“You’ve been entirely too generous, my lord.”

“Aye, that I have,” he said with an adamant nod.

“As to when I began to miss you so ardently?” She pretended to ponder that as she fidgeted with the necklace at her throat. “I can’t say precisely when. But it’s a notion that’s taken root and continues to grow.”

“Like a bloody cancer,” he scoffed.