MacLeary shrugged. “An argument could be made that you’d gain more lands in England if you were to betray anyone here. If, for example, you were to name anyone who might want to see James Stuart sit the throne.” He slowly brought his glass to his lips and watched Arran as he drank.

“By God, MacLeary, you willna come into these walls and accuse the laird,” Jock growled.

“I didna accuse him,” MacLeary said with a shrug. “I merely repeat words that already have been said.”

“If it’s reassurance you seek, I will give it to you,” Arran said evenly. “I no more conspire with England than I do with Jacobites.”

“And I believe you,” MacLeary said, clapping a hand on Arran’s shoulder. “But I think you’d best come to Coigeach on the morrow and say it again. No’ everyone is as sure of it as me, aye?”

Arran had been nothing but loyal to the Highlands and to Scotland. He was guilty of nothing more than seizing an opportunity to keep his lands and to save his people from hunger. “You may count on me to join you in Coigeach,” he said darkly. “If any man believes I have betrayed him, let him say it to my face.”

“It was always a wee bit of a gamble taking an Englishwoman to wife, was it no’?” MacLeary asked slyly, and tipped the glass back against his lips, draining the whisky from it.

Arran wanted to put his fist in MacLeary’s face for saying a single word against his wife. But he wasn’t sure what the landscape was between them now, especially with this swirl of rumors. “Aye, that it was,” he agreed. He moved for the door, his head spinning with questions. “We’ve a warm bed for you and your men,” he forced himself to say. “I’ll see you at Coigeach on the morrow.” He walked out of the room, leaving Jock to deal with the MacLearys.

He could well imagine what Jock was thinking just now—that he should never have married Margot Armstrong. That his warnings of the trouble it would cause were coming home to roost. Jock could very well be right, and yet there was something about it that didn’t ring true to Arran. No matter what had happened between him and his wife, he couldn’t believe Margot was involved in any attempt to make him a scapegoat. She might dislike him, and she might have been sent by Norwood for some purpose. But he didn’t believe she wanted to see him hanged.

If she did, she was the finest liar he’d ever met.

And yet, Arran had a gut-wrenching feeling as he walked back through Balhaire and up the staircase to his suite. Oh, the irony of having built a small empire here in part by marrying a woman who would, in the end, see him hanged.