Page 67 of Wild Wicked Scot
Margot didn’t know where to go—Arran had yet to turn around and acknowledge her—so she stood awkwardly in the middle of the room as Griselda circled her like a hawk lazily circling its prey from above. “Arran?”
He slowly turned. His ice-blue eyes startled her—they were so deeply wounded and full of fury that she was confused. She hadn’t told him anything yet.
“Has something happened?”
Griselda snorted from somewhere behind Arran now.
Arran’s gaze didn’t waver. He stared at Margot, his jaw clenched so tightly shut that the muscles bulged slightly beneath a shadow of his beard. He folded his arms across his chest. “Aye. Word has reached us that there is a spy among us,” he said calmly.
Margot’s heart began to race. “Oh, I... A what?” she said, shaking her head, as if she hadn’t heard him or understood him. As if she didn’t know what the dreadful wordspymeant.
“A spy, Margot. Someone who would see me hanged. And then Jock found this in my study,” he said, and held out his hand and opened his palm. He was holding the figurine the man in the cove had given her.
She’d put it in her pocket, had quite forgotten it. She stared at it now.
“Is it yours?”
Her heart was pounding so hard she was certain Arran could hear it. Her stomach roiled with dread, and she couldn’t form any truly coherent thought. She could not tear her gaze away from Arran’s—his eyes reflected such pain.
“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible to anyone but him.
Arran’s shoulders sagged. He let the figurine drop from his hand to the floor and turned away.
“I...” Words utterly failed her right now. Nothing could convey the depth of her betrayal or her sorrow. Nothing she could ever say that would convince him that her intentions were to save her father. She was certain of that. She saw very clearly how this would all seem to him, and the fear of hurting him even more than she already had made her practically mute. “I can explain,” she forced herself to say. “In fact, I came here to explain.” Her small voice sounded almost disembodied to her, as if it had come from somewhere above her.
Arran’s expression melted into stone, and behind him, she heard Griselda mutter something in Gaelic. “Did you come tospyon me?” he suddenly roared to the ceiling, his face ravaged with raw torment, terrifying her. “All the promises you made to me, all the excuses you gave me? Were they lies so that you mightspyon me?”
“Yes,”she said, breathless. She gripped her hands together and held them at her waist, needing something to hold on to. She closed her eyes, swaying a moment before forging ahead with the unvarnished truth. “That is, at first. They were lies, all of them lies in the beginning.”
Arran said something in his native tongue that sounded as if it would burn her if he said it in English. And Jock, loyal Jock, put his hand on Arran’s shoulder.
Margot tried again. “Arran, please listen to—”
“Get out,” Arran spat. “Now!Go at once, Margot. I donna care where you go, I donna care what you do, but get out of my sight. I never want to lay eyes on you again.”
His words, spoken so acidly, scorched her. She had known this would happen.
“Jock—remove her from my sight,” Arran spat.
Miraculously, Jock did not move instantly to do what Arran bid him.
Arran swung around to stare at him with fury.
Jock spoke quickly but softly in Gaelic. Whatever he said made Griselda snort with derision, and Arran tried to move away from him, but Jock clasped his shoulder and forced him to hold still and listen to him. He spoke earnestly, and as he did, Arran’s gaze drifted to Margot, then quickly away again, as if he could not bear the sight of her.
And then the three Mackenzies looked at her at once, their gazes blistering. Arran folded his arms and said stiffly, “My cousin believes we must first hear what it is you know before I turn you out.”
“Oh God,”Margot whispered. Her mind was whirling, her thoughts going back to the meeting in her father’s study. She shifted slightly to her left and grabbed the back of a chair to steady herself. Her legs felt like river reeds beneath her, swaying unsteadily in the current of her fear.
“Speak, woman,” Arran harshly commanded her.
“I don’t know anything, really,” she started, and Griselda muttered beneath her breath. “But I vow to tell you all that I do know, my lord.”
“I’m waiting!” he shouted at her.
Words began to rush out of her. Unpracticed, jumbled, but truthful words. “My father bade me come. He said that there were rumors in London that you meant to bring in French troops—”
More snorting and muttering from Griselda.
