In the time she’d been gone from Balhaire, Margot had never forgotten what her husband aroused in her. But the actual physical sensations, so powerful in the course of the act, had dimmed with time. The animal attraction and unbridled pleasure he’d shown her in this bed last night had staggered her.

Before, with few words between them, she’d always felt cherished and beautiful. But the man who showed her that depth of passion was never the same man who rode out with his men the next morning. The man who whispered his devotion to her in this bed was not the same man who seemed inconvenienced by her beyond this room.

And yet, last night, she’d felt such longing. Sweet Jesus, such undiluted yearning filling her veins and heart. For what, exactly, Margot didn’t know. But she’d realized, after they’d come together a second time, that something was missing in her, something vital, and the hunger felt fresh.

Margot didn’t hate Arran, had never hated Arran—but she had hated her situation with such intensity that it had eaten away at her and perhaps had clouded her judgment at times. The transition to Scotland had been difficult, to be sure. Her rage had simmered, then turned wild over the circumstances of her marriage, forced by a father who’d demanded her loyalty at the tender age of seventeen, who had allowed her to be carted off without any real knowledge of the world at all, much less the ruggedness of the Highlands—or marriage, for that matter—and there had left her to fend for herself while her husband carried on with his clan.

It had been all too much for her. That last argument with Arran had been explosive and jarring, both of them shouting. She’d tried to express her unhappiness to Arran, how she felt as if she were a single boat on a vast ocean, floating along with no oars and no hope of rescue.

“God help us,” he’d said. “For you’re no’ the only ship adrift in this marriage, Margot.”

She never asked him what he meant by that.

Oh, but there were so many hurtful things said between them. And she’d had no one to go to, no friends in Scotland. It seemed like the harder she tried, the less anyone wanted to befriend her.

Perhaps it hardly mattered, because in the end, she lost patience with the situation entirely.