Arran dropped the last bit of bread and put his hand to his abdomen. He was suddenly filled with foreboding. “Send her back to England,” he said. “Find four of our best men to accompany her and the fops she rode in with. I’ll give her the news myself.”

Jock stood to go.

“Did you have a look through her things?” Arran asked as Jock walked across the room.

“Aye,” Jock said with a sigh. He looked back at Arran. “We had to subdue her maid, we did. The lass bloody well bit me,” he added, holding out his hand to show Arran. He gave a curious shake of his head. Poor Jock would always be confounded by women. “I found nothing but gowns and shoes and the like,” Jock continued. “Quite a lot of it, too—I’ve never understood why a woman needs so many bloody shoes. A lot of bother if you ask me.”

Jock quit the study, leaving Arran alone.

He looked to the small window. Why, Margot? Have you no’ harmed me enough?

The memory of her flight from him had dulled with time, certainly, but there were still moments that the pain still felt raw, an open wound exposed to bitter wind.

He hadn’t been surprised by her departure, not really. They had argued several days before, at an impasse once more about the course of their marriage. She couldn’t seem to find her bearings at Balhaire. She had expectations that did not fit their clan and, Arran could admit, his clan had expectations of Margot that she’d been too young and inexperienced to meet.

He’d thought long and hard about this over the years, and he realized now what he didn’t really understand then—Margot Armstrong had been pampered and served from the day she was born. She knew no other way. But at Balhaire, the clan was family—everyone contributed to the greater good. Arran had expected, had assumed, that she would adopt this way of life. Unfortunately, the very few attempts Margot made had been badly done, from a place of superiority. And his clan... Diah, but they would give no quarter.

It had been a fractious four months of trial and error, and yet Arran had seen a side to Margot that he’d come to adore.

He heard the door of his study swing open and turned his head; Old Roy had followed his scent and ambled over to Arran to have his head scratched.

Arran smiled down at the dog, suddenly reminded of a cold winter morning he’d coaxed Margot out of her rooms and down to the kennels, where a litter of weaned pups were frolicking in a box of straw. They would be herding dogs, but that morning they were just black-and-white balls of soft cotton, tumbling over each other and onto the straw that had been lain down for them.