Arran stared at her, his expression wild with hope. “You’ve never said it,” he said roughly.

“Yes, well, that’s another mistake in my very long list of them,” she said apologetically. “But in this, you must trust me. Arran, for heaven’s sake, you must, at last, trust me. I love you, and not because our fortunes were aligned. Because in this little lodge, you taught me what is important. You taught me what it meant to care for someone. I don’t care about balls and society. I care about how many potatoes the earth will yield, and how I might mend the hole I put in your shirt, and if you will love your child as much as you love those wretched dogs at Balhaire.”

He bowed his head, sighing with relief. “Margot... Diah—”

She took his face in her hands and made him look up at her. “You became the beginning and the end of my world here, and I choose you. I will always choose you.” She kissed him tenderly.

Arran pulled her hands from his face and peered at her, his eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, then, you hope I love my child as much as my dogs?”

Margot smiled. “Just that you are unnaturally attached to those dogs, aren’t you? The child will need your attention, too.”

Arran’s frown deepened. He cupped her face. “Diah, Margot, you must speak plainer than this. Do you carry my child?”

Margot laughed. “I think so,” she said hopefully. “Yes, I think I am.”

Arran lurched forward, reaching for her waist and tumbling back into the bed with her. “Woman, you canna be rid of me now,” he said gruffly. “A child!”

He began to kiss her, every inch of her, muttering how happy she’d made him, and Margot thought, as she smiled up at the rough, wood-planked ceiling above them, that this was just the beginning of her new world.

Epilogue

EPILOGUE

Balhaire
1713

THE LAD WAS nearing his second birthday, and already the old dogs waddled after him as if he was leading them into battle. Naturally they would think so, because the boy wielded his wooden sword everywhere he went.

They’d named him Cailean after Arran’s father. He had the look of the Mackenzies of Balhaire—big for his age, a crop of auburn hair like his mother and the stark blue eyes of his father.

“He’ll break hearts across Scotland one day,” Margot predicted.

“He’ll break noggins,” Arran said with gruff pride as they watched him terrorize Fergus with his little sword.

Arran helped ease Margot into a chair—she was heavy with child again, and he could scarcely contain his excitement. The midwives said she would deliver him a girl, and secretly, Arran hoped it was so. He had in mind to give his daughter the sort of life Margot had been given, with balls and ponies and pretty gowns.