Page 81 of Sweet Home Highlander
New images assaulted him then. Ones of Aisla sitting in the folly, Leclerc kneeling before her, his hands holding hers in her lap. He could have been a suitor proposing to the love of his life. But Leclerc had explained since then that she’d summoned him to tell him she couldn’t marry him. Had she changed her mind? Had the threat of death made her see her own heart?
Niall had been rife with jealousy and bitterness, but he’d done the right thing. Theonlything.
“I won’t stand in yer way. I wish ye every happiness,” he’d told Leclerc, after communicating Aisla’s wish to see him. The man’s expression had been one of bewilderment, but he’d nodded and disappeared into the bedchamber.
Then Niall had taken his leave for Edinburgh.
The door to his study crashed open then, startling him from his thoughts. “I told ye I didnae wish to be disturbed,” he roared.
“’Tis only me,bràthair,” Ronan said, arching an eyebrow at the bottle and the empty glass sitting in the middle of the desk. “Are ye sure that’s a good idea?”
“’Tis better than the alternative.” In defiance, he poured another.
Ronan moved the bottle and glass out of reach. “There are better ways for ye to deal with the things that pain ye. We’ve been down this road before, and ’tis no’ a pleasant one, if ye recall.” His eyes narrowed. “How much have ye had?”
“Two,” Niall said. “Nae, three. I plan to finish the whole damned bottle in celebration.”
His brother made himself comfortable in the armchair on the other side of the desk, propping one booted foot up on the other as if he intended to stay a while. Niall groaned. He wanted to be alone with his misery. He did not needsaving.
Ronan lifted the glass in a mockery of a toast. “What are we celebrating?”
Niall slid the slim black file across the top of the desk. “My freedom. Her freedom. What she wanted from the start, only I was too stupid, too bloodyproud, to let her go. And yer stupid, sodding wager.” He laughed. “How the mighty have fallen!”
“I’ll toast to ye.” Ronan drained the whisky in one gulp, though he kept the bottle on his side of the desk.
Niall laughed again, humorlessly. “The sorriest sack of shite this side of Hadrian’s Wall, eh?”
“Nae,” he said. “Ye fought for what ye wanted.”
“And lost.”
Ronan nodded. “Perhaps, but at least ye tried.”
The words were slow in coming, but they came. Hisconfession.
“I wanted to win the wager…only my schemes rebounded on me. In the end, I wanted her to stay more than I wanted anything else, even the debt forgiven.” His eyes burned with an unfamiliar pressure. God, he wouldn’t cry. Men didn’t weep like ninny-headed idiots. “We were doomed from the start. And that, dear brother, is the remnants of our youthful folly.” He eyed the file from his solicitor balefully. “A blasted divorce.”
Ronan didn’t answer, but reached for the black case, untying the toggle, and scanning the documents within. It only took him a few minutes, but when he looked up, his expression was unreadable. “Perhaps ye should take a look, Niall.”
“To ken what divorce on paper looks like? Nae, thank ye.”
“Look.” Ronan shoved the open folio back toward him. Niall wanted to defy him, toss the entire sheaf of papers to the floor, but his eyes caught on the topmost sheet. He wasn’t enough in his cups not to understand what it meant.
“What the hell is this?” he said, his narrowing. “Some kind of jest?”
“Read for yerself,” Ronan said. “Looks like the two of ye were never married.”
It wasn’t a jest, far from it.
According to the testimony of his solicitor, he and Aisla had never completed a civil registration after they’d eloped to Inverness to wed. They had gotten married, Niall recalled, though the priest had been thoroughly stewed, to the point of slurring the prompted wedding vows at the time. If what he was reading was correct, technically, there was no official proof that their marriage had even happened.
“This makes nae sense,” he muttered, reading the documents a second time, and then a third. They had a remarkable effect on his sobriety. “We were wed.”
“No’ according to that, ye werenae.”
He blinked. “Then…”
“Ye dunnae need a divorce.”
