Page 27 of Sweet Home Highlander
The girl smiled. “Me mam made it fer the laird, but he’s at the tavern with the other lads from the mines.”
“Mines?”
“Aye, the work the men do at Tarbendale,” Caitlin explained. “I’m sure the laird willnae fash.”
Aisla wasn’t so sure about Niall not minding his dinner going missing, but wild horses couldn’t have stopped her from eating it. She sat on a stool and bit into the cold but still flaky pastry, sighing with delight. There was nothing to be said for a good, homemade Scottish pie.
“Mmm. Divine.”
“That good, is it?” The deep, amused voice nearly made her tumble off her seat.
She turned, discreetly wiping the crumbs from her lips with one hand, noticing that Caitlin had made herself scarce with the laird’s arrival. Aisla chewed and swallowed her mouthful. Niall’s face was flushed as he lounged on the inside of the doorway, one booted foot propped against the doorjamb, arms folded across his broad chest. His blue eyes sparkled with laughter and he looked so relaxed, so disarmingly boyish, that she almost had an attack of sentimental yearning.
Until he pushed off the wall to walk closer, and she smelled the ale on him.
She sniffed, nostalgia swamped by other, not so pleasant memories. Nights much like this one when he ignored her, or didn’t come home at all. Nights when bitter fighting over his drinking had ended in insults and tears.
“My dinner?” he asked. Before she could blink, he reached down to lift the pie to his mouth and took a bite. The bold intimacy of it made something awaken in her belly.
“That’s mine.”
“What’s yers is mine,leannan,” he said. “Isnae that why ye’re here in my castle?”
“Don’t call me that.”
He smiled, his thumb rising to graze her lower lip. “Ye have a crumb just here.” Aisla sucked in a gasp as he lifted the errant piece of pastry to his mouth, his tongue darting out to lick the flake from his finger. He didn’t take his eyes from hers.
“Ye’re right,” he rasped. “’Tis indeed divine.”
Aisla had to shake herself back to her senses.Hard. This was all part of the game and his way of striking back. The hungry look in his eyes that said he wanted nothing more than to devourherwas no more than a farce. A persuasive, chemise-incinerating sham, but one nonetheless.
She inhaled deeply, forcing herself to breathe in the smell of sour ale on his person, and wrinkled her nose. “You stink. Still drowning your woes, I see.”
Niall straightened in confusion and drew away, staring down at the damp, brown stain on his shirt. His expression was earnest. “One of the men at the tavern was over enthusiastic in his toast.”
She’d forgotten how clever he was, how convincing. She’d fallen for his excuses so many times before. But her eyes were open now, and she wasn’t the girl she’d left behind a lifetime ago it seemed. Aisla stood, pushing her plate to the side, her appetite gone.
“Forgive me if I don’t believe you. I’ve had the benefit of too much history, you see. If it smells like a wolf and acts like a wolf, then it is one. I would be a naive fool to believe otherwise.”
“Aisla, I—”
She cut him off with a hand. “Save your explanations and your oaths, Niall. If we’re going to continue this absurd pretense for the next six weeks, then at least do me the civility of not lying to my face. I know you, remember?”
“Yedunnaeken me,” he said softly. “No’ anymore.”
They stared at each other in combative silence, any pretense of affability gone. Aisla couldn’t quite read the expression in his eyes. If she didn’t trust him or herself where he was concerned so much, she would have thought that his eyes appeared quite lucid. But she’d believed his lies before, fell for them quite willingly because she’dwantedto believe his excuses. She’d let herself be convinced by his promises and his fervent declarations of love. She’d been gullible once, and had had her heart trampled for it.
Once a drunk, always a drunk. How many men had she known at Montgomery like him? And in Paris, too. The only loyalty they had was to the liquor in their cups. She glanced at Niall’s sodden chest. Or on his shirt, as the case may be. She might be blinded by a few bulging muscles, but she was not stupid.
“Find another fool,” she finally said, walking away.
Chapter Eight
The bruising ride to Edinburgh to meet with Mr. Stevenson hadn’t begun to take the edge off Niall’s agitation. His industrious wife had more than made her presence felt at Tarbendale over the last week. She’d even gone so far as to take over his chamber, and he’d been forced to sleep elsewhere. He’d settled for an uncomfortable chair in the library after Hamish, that ungrateful bastard, got wind of why he did not want to return to Tarben Castle after the first few nights.
“The lass is in yer chamber?” He’d guffawed, laughing until tears were running down his cheeks. “In yerbedat Tarbendale?”
“Aye.”
