“I donna know how it is where you come from, milady, but here, when you wrong a Mackenzie, you wrong all the Mackenzies. And I’m a Mackenzie through and through. My son was schooled alongside the laird, he was.”

“Ma, please, no’ another word,” the girl begged her.

“I’ll say what I will,” Mrs. Gowan said. “I’m no’ afeared of her, I’m no’.”

“I’m not afraid of you, either,” Margot said. “You may be surprised to know that I rather believe the wrong was done to me. And yet it should hardly matter to you, because whoever has been wronged is a private matter between me and my husband.”

“I would that you’d never come back, aye?”

Margot and Mrs. Gowan’s daughter gasped at the same moment. Margot had never been addressed so bluntly. She opened her mouth to warn the woman she’d best not ever speak to her again in that fashion, but Mrs. Gowan said, “I donna know why you did. I hope to never see the laird so pained again, no.”

Margot stilled. Her retort flew out of her head as she stared at the woman. “Pained?” she echoed incredulously.

“Aye, pained, that he certainly was,” Mrs. Gowan said angrily. “Moping about like a cow lost its calf.”

“Ma!” the girl cried.

Margot swallowed down her shock. She glanced around the room, uncertain what to say. Uncertain if she even understood what the woman meant, or if she should even believe something so outlandish. Arran had been angry, very angry. But he’d not been pained.

She looked sidelong at Mrs. Gowan again, whose round cheeks had turned slightly pink. “Do you mean to imply that the laird was pained by his marriage to me?” she asked uncertainly.

“No,” the woman said, her gaze raking over Margot. “He was pained by your leaving us! Everyone could see it, aye? He’d no’ speak of it, but it was mighty plain to me that ye right broke his heart!”

A chill went up Margot’s back. “No, I didn’t,” she said defensively.

“Completely dispirited, he was,” she said emphatically. “And I’ve no use for a woman who can do that to our Mackenzie, no, I donna.”

Her daughter spoke sternly in Gaelic to her mother.

Her mother glanced reluctantly at her girl, then at Margot once more. “I’ve said what I will. I’ll have the soaps sent up to you, then,” she said, and turned away.

Margot was speechless, reeling from the idea that Arran could have been brokenhearted. She backed up, her hand groping behind her for the door, and stepped out of the shop.