She sat up and stared at him. “Is it not obvious?”

“Obvious?” he exclaimed hotly. “There is no’ a bloody thing obvious about you, Margot. I gave a ball for you, and here you are, crying into your pillow like a child!”

“I’m not crying into my pillow. I am plotting my escape!”

“You want to escape?” He threw open the door and gestured to it. “Go. Escape.” When she did not move, he slammed the door shut and heard the sound of it reverberating down the stairs.

“You canna imagine the effort it has taken to give you this ball—”

“That wasn’t a ball!” she cried, and suddenly swung out of the bed, stalking to her vanity. “That was just another night in your great hall!”

“Diah, but you are a petulant child, are you no’? Those people came to celebrate your marriage, and what do you do, then? You sulk and mope and then flee like a rabbit instead of welcoming them as you ought as lady of this house and clan!”

She slammed down the hairbrush she’d just picked up. “I tried to greet them, but they speak in that awful language! Not one of them wore a ball gown or a proper evening coat. It was all plaid! They wouldn’t drink the champagne, and dear God, the dancing!” she exclaimed, shaking her hands to the ceiling.

“You wanted dancing!”

“Not that sort of dancing! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“You hate it all, is that it?”

She gasped and looked at him. “No, that’s not—I never said that.”

“You didna say it, Margot, but it is in your every move, your every glance, your every look! You are—”

He caught himself. He ran both hands over his head and sighed.

“What? What am I?” she demanded, folding her arms tightly. Defensively.

“Bloody impossible, aye?”

“So are you. And this place.”

“Diah, what is wrong?” he roared to the rafters. “I canna put it to rights if you willna tell me what it is.”

Margot stared at him. She seemed to be debating what she would say. She rubbed her nape and said, “Frankly, I’m a poor dancer and I don’t know—”

He snorted.

Her face darkened. “You asked, didn’t you?”

“For all that is holy, I donna know how to please you,” he said coldly.

“And I don’t know how to please you,” she snapped.

Her tone undid Arran—he strode forward, caught her by the arm and whirled her around. “Enough of playing the wounded lass, Margot. We are married, we are, and you may as well learn to live with it as fight it, aye? You are a Scot now.”

“Never,” she said defiantly.