Page 3 of Sweet Home Highlander
Perhaps this time, he might be able to exorcise his wife’s memory for good. Exchange images of small round breasts for enormous ones that would overflow in abundance. Or long, slender thighs that wrapped around his for plush ones that would cushion his every thrust. He would eradicate coppery eyes for blue ones, a wide sensuous mouth for the lips of a cherub, fair hair for dark.
Niall felt his desire wane at the throaty giggle of his companion. It was useless. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how beautiful or willing the woman, he could not bring himself to touch another. Towantanother.
Perhaps that made him pitiable to someone like Hamish. But sex made a man soft. It made him beholden.
And he would be neither of those things ever again.
…
Paris, France, May 1828
The soiree should have been just like any other. The same music, the same champagne, the same guest list, and the same explosion of soft pastels and shimmering golds that Aisla had encountered at every society function so far that season. Lady Eugenie Montpierre, the Duchess of Marchand, had gone to great lengths to make sure her annual ball not only met the Paris standard, but exceeded it. Aisla was certain the two jesters that had been greeting the guests in the front hall, one juggling apples and oranges, while the other balanced upon stilts, were evidence of Lady Montpierre’s desperation to be fashionably different.
However, it had not been the jesters who had cast significant change over the party.
It had been Lord Julien Leclerc.
Aisla stopped moving halfway through a quadrille and stared, jaw unhinged, at her friend.
“Marryye?” she gasped. Julien released her hand and waist, and gave her a small push toward Mademoiselle Cotille, whose gloved hand was already extended and waiting to grasp Aisla’s.
“Don’t sound so revolted,” he said in a low, amused voice as Aisla stumbled forward. She took the young lady’s hand and made the requisite half turn, straight into the arms of Mademoiselle Cotille’s paunchy dance partner, a general in the French army.
Good Lord, how she hated group dances.
The general spun her and passed her back to Julien. “I’m no’ revolted, ye dolt,” she hissed.
“You’re speaking with a brogue again.”
“Becauseyou’ve caught me off guard,” she replied, rounding out her vowels this time.
Julien chuckled as he passed her off to Mademoiselle Cotille again, but in another few moments, the two of them were standing to the side of the dance floor, waiting as the other two couples made their turns.
“Why would you ask me to marry you?” she asked, careful to keep her voice low. As one of Paris’s most coveted bachelors, Julien had the eyes and ears of a fair number of women—debutantes, widows, and mothers looking to make a match for their daughters—pinned onto him at the moment.
“Why wouldn’t I ask you?” he asked, his hand behind his straight back, his chin held high as he watched the dancers.
Aisla, however, couldn’t tear her eyes off of his lean, aristocratic profile. She had known Julien for nearly all of the six years she had lived in France, and though they had become close friends, they had never entertained the idea that it might become something more. Well…at leastshehadn’t entertained the idea. As bonny as he was, what with the luster of his blond hair falling around his ears in absurdly beautiful curls, and his even more ridiculously striking peridot eyes, Aisla hadn’t once felt that spark. That igniting of flames in her chest and stomach. A sensation she hadn’t experienced in so very long.
“Because you don’t love me,” she said.
“Oh, my poor provincial Scottish rose,” he murmured.
Aisla smothered her scowl. “Don’t be an arse.”
“I take that back. You’re more like a patch of prickly thistle.”
She bit back a smile at his humor. That was Julien…never serious. Even when he attempted it, that ever-quirked corner of his mouth would not fall flat. It was part of his charm, and part of his armor. Beyond the smiles and witty repartees, no one ever saw the true Julien Leclerc. Not even her.
“Tell me the truth, Jules.”
But it was already their turn to move into the center of the dance floor. As Aisla turned and changed dance partners, again and again, she kept meeting Julien’s eyes. Each time, he’d prop one eyebrow and make a silly face at her. When the quadrille music finally ceased and the four couples bowed and curtsied to one another, Aisla was near to bursting with curiosity. And not a little bit of alarm.
“The balcony,chérie,” Julien whispered in her ear, taking two flutes of champagne from the tray of a passing servant.
As they exited the stuffy ballroom and made their way onto a crowded terrace, Aisla took a long sip of her champagne. And grimaced. Even after years of drinking the stuff, she couldn’t abide the sweetness or the pop of effervescence. She longed for some of the stout ale she’d known back home at Montgomery. But here in Paris there was only wine, champagne, or sherry for ladies. So, she’d learned to drink like a society lady. She’d learned to speak like one, too, though, as Julien had pointed out just now, her brogue had a way of returning when she was caught by surprise. And his casual proposal of marriage had certainly done just that.
Julien led her to a stone balustrade, apart from the other guests milling about, and Aisla could feel his need to charm and jest fade away.
