Page 10 of Sweet Home Highlander
“Next time,bràthair, I’ll go easy on ye,” Ronan said.
Niall scowled. “Next time, ye’ll no’ have the advantage with news of that damned letter.”
“Letter?” Hamish asked, curiosity lacing his tone.
Niall sighed and turned to explain to his friend. Hamish would find out sooner or later. But the man was not focused on him. His mouth had dropped open, his question currently forgotten, his eyes fastened on something in the distance.
“Who the bloody hell isthat?”
Following his stare, Niall turned and froze. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him atop the small hill heading back toward Tarben Castle. Two people approached on horseback, a man and a woman. But it was the smaller figure who captured his attention. A stunning woman who made his heart drum out of time.
Every muscle in his body tightened to the point of pain.
She sat like a queen, back ramrod straight, her expensive silk skirts carefully arranged over the side of the horse she rode. Her flaxen hair was styled to within an inch of its life, a cluster of shining curls artfully falling at her temples. Her face, though older, was exquisitely beautiful and haughty.
She murmured something to the stranger at her side, her chin turning regally in his direction as they guided the horses down the encampment. Glacial eyes the color of iced sherry fell to Niall and the woman beside him, her mouth tightening and that proud chin of hers jutting higher. Despite the wild conjecture of his pulse, Niall pushed a mocking smile to his lips.
“Hell, Hamish, after all yer chatter the other day,” he drawled, his voice belying all of the emotion churning inside of him, “dunnae ye recognize my lady wife?”
Chapter Three
Aisla darted a glance at the brooding man sitting opposite her at the head of the dining table at the Maclaren keep and tried to quell the sudden hammering of her heart. Good Lord but her husband had put on a stone of muscle since she’d last seen him, and the Scottish sun had baked his skin a glowing bronze. He radiated good health and virility. Her traitorous pulse ratcheted up a notch.
The elaborate dinner was nearing its end and had been unexpectedly pleasant, though tension had reared its head several times. Mostly when her husband’s searching blue gaze met hers. She’d hardly recognized him in the fields near Tarben Castle, where she and Julien had been directed upon their arrival at Maclaren. Aisla had caught the tail end of his fight with his older brother, Ronan. For a big man, Niall had moved with unearthly grace and unerring lethal force.
Before they’d approached, she remembered laughing and telling Julien that a trip to the Highlands wasn’t complete without a brawl of some sort. Only when her gaze had swung back to the ring had she taken in the details of Ronan’s opponent’s appearance. And his missing left hand.
She had not been prepared.
Aisla had known it would be a shock seeing Niall again. But the visceral bolt of desire at seeing him stripped to the waist, his damp, muscled chest heaving with exertion and leashed energy, had taken her completely unawares. Her heart might have bent to her will in matters of estrangement, but her body had not. His boyish beauty had been whittled into something raw. Something primal and devastatingly masculine. Something that made her body respond with emotions she’d thought long dead.
Aisla could not reconcile the imposing man who now dominated the hall with the boy she’d married. Certainly, the facial resemblance was there, in his Maclaren blue eyes and the square slant of his jaw. But apart from the startling physical changes, his full mouth no longer held a curve of secretive mischief, and his reddish-brown hair was longer than he’d ever worn it, glinting with strands of gold and copper. A sense of danger enveloped him now, a cold, cynical glint in those eyes. She sensed that he was not a man one would want to cross, not unless one wanted to provoke the very devil.
A soft sound escaped her as her heart squeezed painfully, and Julien’s hand reached over to press hers in a reassuring gesture beneath the table. “Are you well,chérie?” he whispered.
“Yes, of course.” She took comfort from his familiar presence and dragged herself back to the present, and the situation at hand. She was there for a purpose. She had to secure her freedom…her future.
Julien grinned, his voice low even though the others in the great hall would easily drown his words. “You failed to mention that my competition was a brute the size of a house who looks like he wants to tear me in half.” He chuckled. “Not, of course, that I couldn’t give him enough of a challenge. I still intend to wipe the floor with him.”
Aisla shook her head at the declaration. Julien was not a small man, but he was not a brawler. He’d avoided several duels caused by his sly humor for years. Though she knew he boxed and fenced in Paris to stay as fit as he was, that was a far cry from the brutal sport they’d witnessed in the field at Tarben Castle earlier.
“It won’t come to that,” she said. “Niall hasn’t wanted me in six years. I doubt he’ll put up much of a fight now.”
“Then he’s a fool,” he replied, lifting her knuckles to his lips.
Aisla didn’t hear the snarl, shefeltit. And then the force of her soon-to-be former husband’s stare bore down on her with the heft of a battering ram, along with several other pairs of eyes at the table. She had to force herself to keep from cringing, and instead, straightened her spine. But for a registry of a hasty marriage, Niall Maclaren no longer had any claim on her. Nor did she owe the Dunrannoch heir, Ronan, whose scowl matched his brother’s in intensity, anything. He’d assumed his father’s place for the evening since the duke was bedridden, but he’d hardly said more than two words of greeting to her.
Aisla did recoil at the wounded look on the duchess’s face, however. During Aisla’s few months at Maclaren, Lady Dunrannoch had been nothing but kind to her, when she hadn’t been busy with her charitable duties at the nearby convent. Then, Aisla had been left to fend for herself. It wasn’t the duchess’s fault. It was herson’s. He’d abandoned her to the wolves in favor of drink and tomfoolery when she’d needed him the most.
She met Niall’s glower with cool hauteur, a look she’d practiced in Paris, and one she wielded as effectively as any weapon to deter even the most ardent of admirers. Niall simply stared back, his hard mouth curling into a blade of a smile.
“So, my lady, to what do we owe the honor of yer visit? Yer letter did no’ say,” he finally asked, lifting his goblet, and Aisla’s eyes narrowed on the jeweled cup. Hers contained wine, his would be filled with whisky or ale. Some things hadn’t changed then. His voice, though, was the same, its husky timbre doing unwelcome things to her senses. “Surely, ye’re no’ bored of Paris or the fat purse I send to yer aunt every year.”
Aisla flushed and then gritted her teeth. Any money he sent was part of her generous dowry from her brother, the Duke of Glenross. But she refused to argue the fact with him here, in front of everyone. “No, it’s a personal matter. I did not wish to write about it, and I had hoped for a response from you before making the journey here, in case you were not in residence.”
“Where else would I be? This is my home.”
It was a jab aimed at her, she knew. That she had abandoned it and him. Aisla squared her shoulders, keeping the past and its memories firmly locked away. She wasn’t there to reminisce or revisit old hurts. “I stand corrected.”
