Page 55 of Wild Wicked Scot

“Well...your displeasure was not entirely of your own doing,” he admitted. “I might have made a greater effort.”

“Perhaps,” she said with an indifferent shrug.

Arran moved a knight and caught her gaze. “What turned so wrong between us, Margot? I canna say what it was that went so terribly wrong.”

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding morose. “I know only that I was naive and I felt abandoned. I had no friends or family here—only you.”

“You might have made friends.”

She snorted. “I didn’t have many opportunities, did I?”

“No,” he said truthfully. “And it didna help that you were English. That made your conceit a wee bit worse, aye?”

Margot blinked at his blunt assessment. And then she laughed, the sound of it warm. “I shall never accuse you of being anything less than unfailingly honest, my lord. Do you mean to say that I was condescending?” she asked, pressing a palm to her chest and feigning offense.

“A wee bit, aye,” he said, smiling.

“Well, I didn’t mean to be,” she said, and moved one of her pieces. “I behaved as I thought was appropriate for the lady of a castle.” She sank back into her chair. “My God, but I was so violently afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing,” she said thoughtfully, and worried the end of a curl. “Yet that’s all I seemed to do. You are beloved here, Arran. It felt impossible to live up to that, and I was quite intimidated by it.”

“And now?” he asked curiously.

Her smiled turned playful. “No.”

God save him, he could not keep a smile from his face. “I didna abandon you,” he said amicably.

“Youdid,” she insisted. “You left every day to hunt or to train men, or what have you.”

“Aye, all right, perhaps I was a wee bit intimidated by you as well,leannan.”

“Of me?” She laughed and gave a shake of her head as if he amused her.

“Aye, of you. You’re bloody well bonny, Margot, how many times have I said so? We were both of us naive.”

She smiled indulgently. “Lord in heaven,yes. I’d never been truly courted. I’d never even had a first love. Can you imagine?”

“Aye, that I can imagine.”

“Arran!” she said, laughing. “I was far too young for it. No doubt you’ve had a first love, and many more since.” She reached for her queen.

“I’ve had a first love,” he agreed. “It was you.”

Margot’s hand froze on her queen. “Don’t tease me like that,” she said, the light gone from her voice. “Don’t say that if it’s not true.”

Arran slowly reached for her hand. “I would never say it were it no’ true.” To his thinking, there was nothing truer about them. Even now, he had that strange feeling of being tossed into an abyss of empty longing.

Her gaze searched his face. “When did you love me?” she asked softly. “I never knew it.”

Diah, but he’d failed her in so many ways. How could she not know? “From the moment I saw you standing on the balcony at Norwood Park.”

Her lips parted with surprise. “Even then?”

“There’s no logic to how love arrives.”

“And yet you never once said—”

“No, because I was bloody naive, and I foolishly believed that my love would never get away from me. I tried to make you happy, Margot, in all the ways that I knew how. I tried, but I couldna set it all to rights for you. But it was no’ from a lack of devotion. It was from a lack of understanding.”

“I had no idea,” she whispered.