Page 12 of Sweet Home Highlander
Other feelings were another matter entirely. At eighteen, Aisla had been sylph-like and comely. At four and twenty, her beauty had sharpened with exquisite symmetry, fulfilling the promises of youth and then some. She was still slender, but her body had blossomed into womanhood. Niall was hard-pressed not to notice the fuller rise of her breasts, draped in gold-embroidered emerald silk, and displayed to plush perfection.
Those coppery eyes of hers were framed by long thick, dark brown lashes. And her mouth…God, thatmouth. Sensual and sinful in equal measure, its luscious curves beckoned a man’s kisses and incited dissipated thoughts of those lips descending elsewhere. A bolt of raw lust ripped straight to his groin.
Christ.
He had expected to feel something, but he hadn’t expected his reaction to her to be so bloody intense. She felt it, too, he knew. He saw it in the subtle flare of her eyes and the way she pinned her lips together. Whatever remained between them hadn’t lessened with time or distance.
Yet, she was asking for a divorce.
Niall lounged back in his seat, keeping his expression bland. “Why?”
“Because Julien…Lord Leclerc has asked me to marry him.” Her chin rose. “I’ve every intention of accepting.”
A flare of jealous fury burst to life deep in his center, but the rest of his body did not display it. Niall refused to look at the Frenchman, and it was in both their best interests. If he had to see the man’s gloating smirk right now, he’d lose the control that was keeping his body anchored to his seat. He maintained his stare. “Is that so? A bit premature, do ye no’ think?”
Aisla’s fair cheeks had turned a rosy shade of pink, but she continued to keep that pert chin of hers high. “We married for the wrong reasons, you must agree with that. There is no reason either of us should not find happiness with another.”
“Is that what ye’ve been telling yerself these last several years while ye’ve been gone? That ye deservehappiness?”
The word itself sounded so piteously light and airy. It lacked any real substance, any real weight or definition. What did happiness mean to the woman seated across from him? Did it mean society and parties and comfort in the arms of well-bred men in well-tailored clothes, like the fop she’d brought to Maclaren? Niall felt his control beginning to slip.
“I believe we both deserve it,” she said.
The Frenchman cleared his throat. “If you’ll see reason, my lord, Lady Montgomery chose to come here in person, rather than include painful details in her letter requesting—”
“Maclaren,” Niall said. “Her name is still Maclaren, and ye’ll do well to refer to her as such. And I’m alaird,not some dandified EnglishorFrench lord.”
“Of course,” Leclerc said, inclining his head. “Though, you are the son of a duke.”
Niall kept his eyes pinned upon Aisla, refusing to acknowledge the fool, and spoke before Leclerc could utter another word. “Any letter such as that would have only fed the fire in the hearth. My wife is here in person because I can’t ignore her when she’s sitting right in front of me.”
Aisla’s gaze narrowed, her lips flattening. “My mere presence never had that effect on ye before.”
The slip from her cultivated, proper English made him smile. Maybe she wasn’t as calm on the inside as her expression and poise would have him believe.
“It’s been years,wife. Ye might be surprised at all the things that have changed.”
Including him. She couldn’t know who he was any more. He’d spent the last several years neck deep—sometimes quite literally—in the lands Sorcha had foisted upon him after his marriage had crumbled. His sister had meant well, only wanting to give him something to concentrate on, to take his mind from the pain and loss. And it had. The crown-shaped ridge of land to the west of Tarben Castle had taken everything he had left to give, and in return, it had made him whole again. And when the people had started calling him their laird, it had felt like a new beginning.
He hadn’t done it alone. Ronan had made a substantial investment in the mines early on, the initial costs for such a serious and expensive venture more than Niall had been able to incur on his own. The day he’d turned enough of a profit to buy the lands from Sorcha had been one of the proudest days of his life, but he still had Ronan’s investment to pay back. It hung over him, even though his oldest brother had never mentioned it once.
Niall still had a long way to go, but he owed them. He owed his brother. He owed his clansmen. To be fair to them, he should have a wife whowantedto be their lady, who wanted to live in Scotland, who wantedhim. Not some flaky socialite who preferred to spend her nights in Parisian luxury.
Niall’s gaze shifted to the woman whose eyes had not left his. Too much knowledge rested in those siren’s eyes of hers now. No, his young and not-so-naive wife would have taken Paris by storm. His mouth twisted with bitterness. He’d seen it for himself.
“That you’re now laird?” Aisla replied with cool composure. “I imagine that is what you meant by changes?”
“Aye, one of them.”
“You never lacked for fortitude, Niall.” She broke off with a soft gasp at the lapse and then collected herself with the discipline of a seasoned soldier. “I beg your pardon, laird.”
The sound of his name on her lips stirred something within him, and his desiccated heart stuttered. He’d buried what had been left of it so mercilessly that he’d never thought to feel anything again.
“I prefer Niall.” The admission was out before he could stop it.
Her startled gaze met his as if she hadn’t expected it either, her hand fluttering beside her plate and reaching out for something. Courage, perhaps. Niall’s jaw clenched as he saw Leclerc take her palm into his and murmur something inaudible to her. Clearly, she took comfort in both because she nodded and squeezed his hand before replacing hers in her lap.
Niall’s chest tightened. The sudden vulnerability made him nervous; he hadn’t felt so unsettled in years. Six years to be precise.
