A GENTLE SLAP to her bottom startled Margot awake; she rose up with a sleepy mewl of alarm to see Arran standing beside the bed, already dressed for the day. The dawn sky was pink, and yet she could hear voices drifting up to them from the bailey below. She pressed her fingertips to her eyes a moment before opening them again.

Arran grinned at her. “How does a woman go to bed looking as bonny as a woman has ever looked, and wake up the very next morning looking like this?” he asked, tousling her hair. “Come, then, it’s time to rise. Summon the lass who attends you.” He shrugged into a coat. “I’m to Coigeach for the day.”

“You’re leaving Balhaire again?” she asked plaintively.

“I’ll return by nightfall,” he said, and leaned over to kiss her forehead. “Mind you behave. Donna frighten my clan with a lot of wandering about, aye?”

“Oh, I think there is no danger of frightening them,” she said with a yawn. “You’ve always confused their dislike for fear.”

“On the contrary, I’ve known it to be both dislike and fear.” He winked, tossed her gown onto the bed and strode out of the chamber.

Margot fell back against the pillows and yawned again. She didn’t want to think of anything at the moment. She felt content lying in his bed with a cool morning breeze drifting in through the window. It had been quite nice sleeping with her husband last night. She had liked the warmth of him at her back. She’d liked the feeling of utter safety with his arm anchored firmly around her waist.

She rolled over and buried her face in Arran’s pillow, breathing in the musky scent of him. God, what a little cake-headed fool she’d been before. There was something so intimate about sleeping with him. She’d never realized how it adhered two people to each other. She couldn’t help but wonder what other things she’d been so desperately wrong about.

Her reasons for being here were becoming muddier and muddier to her. She wanted to know if she had ruined any chance of a marriage with him. But she also wanted to know where it was he was going, what he was doing. Was she feeling these intimate ties to a traitor?

She looked around her. She supposed she had the perfect opportunity now to have a look about, but she had no stomach for it. Last night, when she’d picked up this room, she’d made a halfhearted attempt to look for some clue as to what he was involved in by poking under the bed and into his chest of drawers.

She didn’t like it. It felt wrong, dishonest. Especially when she wasn’t certain what, exactly, she should be seeking. Especially when she was going to crawl into the man’s bed and kiss him.