Page 65 of Sweet Home Highlander
No longer able to maintain any semblance of composure, she sat on the crumbling stone bench and put her face in her hands, a sob breaking from her lips. “Oh, Jules, I don’t know what to do. The most terrible thing has happened.”
“What did that bastard do?” Julien hissed savagely. “I’ll kill him.”
“No, no, notthat.” Her blush went volcanic and she did not miss the instant narrowing of his eyes. He was nobody’s fool. She faltered on her words. “I made a wager with him.”
“A wager?” Julien echoed.
“I overheard him make one with his brother that he could not get me to change my mind about the divorce, and I was so enraged that I challenged him to another wager.” Her cheeks heated. “One of seduction. If I won, I would go back to Paris with you and Niall would handle the divorce proceedings without me. And if he won, I would stay here with him for the six weeks he wanted…one for every year I was gone.”
Julien knelt to take her icy hands in his. “Wager or no wager, you don’t owe him anything,chérie.”
She huffed a breath, tears pooling in her eyes. “Oh, Jules, I’ve been so wrong. so foolish. I thought I could brazen it out, ignore the physical attraction, but my heart…my heart…is utterly compromised.”
“What are you saying?” he asked, rocking back to his heels but still holding her palms. She met his pale green eyes, and for once, found she could not read them.
“That I can’t marry you.” She paused, gripping his hands. “I love you as a friend forever. And I adore you for coming with me here to face my past, but I can’t marry you. Or anyone.”
“You still love him.”
“I don’t know what I feel, but I would be a shell of a woman in a marriage, and you don’t deserve that. You deserve so much more.” She broke off with a sob. “God, how silly must you think I am.”
To her surprise, he chuckled and bent so that his forehead was touching hers. “Not silly,chérie. I understand. To be honest, I expected something like this.”
“You did?”
“You forget I’ve known you for the past six years, and I’ve never seen you like this with anyone.”
“It was that transparent?”
“To the trained roué, yes,” he said with his usual smirk, though it seemed forced. “But if you change your mind, my offer still stands. In friendship.”
Relieved, she flung her arms around his neck and drew him close. It felt as if a great weight had been removed from her shoulders. Not that the conversation had helped her decide what to do about her husband, but at least she didn’t have the pressure of Julien’s proposal hanging over her head. Or her promise to him. And she’d been truthful…shedidwant him to be happy. And he could never be with a thin mockery of a wife. Not even in the guise of friendship.
Julien drew back to wipe the tears from her cheeks, and they both froze at the sudden shadow thrown across the marble pavilion in the oath of the rising sun. Aisla turned to see the starkly enraged face of her husband.
“Well, is this no’ just bloody cozy?”
…
The sight that had greeted Niall had nearly made him stumble to his knees—his wife with her head on another man’s shoulder, him kneeling before her, both of them disheveled and half dressed as if they’d spent the past hour engaged in sweaty, pleasurable congress. Much like he and Aisla had been some hours ago, until he’d been rudely woken by Fenella.
“She’s gone to meet her lover,” the housekeeper had announced. “If ye care.”
“Enough, Fenella,” he’d groaned, resenting the intrusion. “My wife is probably in her own chamber.”
“Yer wife is off on a tryst with her Frenchman at this very moment. Come see for yerself if ye dunnae ken it.”
He hadn’t wanted to believe it, but the blatant certainty in Fenella’s expression had made him suddenly unsure. Aisla had not been in her chamber, and her tight-lipped maid had refused to say a word despite threats of dismissal. Suspicion had bloomed then, along with a sour, vicious spike of jealousy. Surely, she wouldn’t go to him after what they’d shared…physically and emotionally?
“Perhaps she wanted to go for a walk,” he’d said to Fenella, struggling to convince himself and to give Aisla the benefit of the doubt.
“If that’s what ye want to believe, then more’s the pity,” Fenella taunted. “But ask yerself this, why has yer wife gone in the direction of Maclaren?” She’d grinned, ugly and triumphant, and in that moment, Niall understood Aisla’s dislike for the woman. “And why did she send her maid there a half hour before?”
He ignored Fenella’s repellent demeanor under the damning information. It was too coincidental. His demons rose from the past to torment him. They were unappeased, wanting only to prick and disturb. Half crazed with an ugly mix of emotions, his doubts refused to settle. With a gloating Fenella on his heels, he’d started the journey toward Maclaren on foot when he’d sighted the two horses tethered at the folly.
Twohorses.
“I told ye,” Fenella had said softly behind him, but he hadn’t heard anything over the roaring in his ears.
