Page 17 of Sweet Home Highlander
Aisla scowled. “A fewweeks?”
“At the least. Perhaps even a month or two,” the duchess said. “Mr. Stevenson promises to sort things out, but he’s advised for you to stay in Scotland until the situation is resolved.”
“Why?” Aisla asked, her suspicions riding high. It had to be an unlikely coincidence. The duchess would not have been part of her sons’ wager, would she?
“It will be less complicated if he needs to reach you quickly,” Lady Dunrannoch explained in an oddly strained voice, her eyes shifting away. “And if you are both in one place.”
Niall grinned, the rotter, and Aisla felt a renewed urge to kick him. “She can stay here at Maclaren,” he said.
The duchess shook her head. “Not with the festival. The rooms are being cleaned and aired, and I only have one room left, so Lord Leclerc will have to stay there.” She shot him a sideways look. “Unless, of course, you wish the man to stay with you, at Tarben Castle?”
The irked expression Niall sent his mother right then hinted to Aisla that he had not, in fact, involved the duchess in whatever ploy he and Ronan had cobbled together.
“He is no’myguest,” he grumbled.
“Or perhaps they could share the room here,” Lady Dunrannoch mused. “Though it would raise a few eyebrows.”
Niall’s expression blackened some more. “I dunnae give a damn where she sleeps.”
“Language, Niall,” Lady Dunnranoch said, her stony expression matching her son’s. “Very well then.”
“I do not have six weeks,” Aisla said, floundering for an excuse, but settling for the truth. “Julien’s mother is ill. He wishes to marry while she is still alive.”
The duchess gave her a sympathetic smile, though Aisla thought she heard Niall growl again. “If a divorce is what you truly want, my dear, then you must stay put as Mr. Stevenson advises.”
“Can this not be done via correspondence?”
“No, I don’t believe so.” The duchess waved a hand, but did not offer anything more. Aisla sat heavily in a chair as Lady Dunrannoch took her leave. “I’ll let the two of you continue your talk.”
Aisla didn’t want to talk. She wanted to rail and scream. She wanted to throw something, preferably at the man crowding the doorway. She had spent the first night back at Maclaren wide awake in that blasted bed, praying Niall would come to his senses and accept the idea of a divorce. She’d also spent much of that same night sinking into the mattress, recalling the first few days of their marriage here at the castle, when Niall had kept her in that same bed, making love to her until they were replete with exhaustion, and making plans for them and the baby growing within her belly.
It had been torture, and the second night, Aisla had eventually thrown off the blankets and dragged them over to the small sofa near the hearth, where she’d spent more time dwelling on the man her husband had become. How callous and unyielding he’d seemed at dinner the other evening, how utterly unperturbed at her arrival. How disturbingly cynical…as though nothing could ever reach him.
He’d made a show of nonchalance when she’d asked for the divorce, but his emotions had leaked out in small ways. The quiver of a frown. The tightening of his eyes. Still, he hadn’t lost his temper. It had given her hope that he would get on with things in a civil manner. But no, he wasn’t civil, and little had she known that opposition, and support for his unreasonable demands, would come from another, more practical source. She hadn’t foreseen a delay like this at all.
“This is impossible,” she said, her eyes lifting to Niall. “It’s much too long. There’s no way I can stay here.”
“Aye, I forgot how much ye hate the land of yer birth. If ye want a divorce so badly, a few weeks is no’ a high price to pay.” Niall’s cold glare met hers from where he still stood, radiating annoyance. “’Tis what is required,bhean.”
“I haven’t been your wife for six years! Ye lost the right to call me that long ago in Gaelic or any other language, ye ken?”
The corner of his full mouth quirked upward, and Aisla cringed, knowing the smirk was from the reappearance of her brogue. She struggled for composure, fisting her hands at her sides, just in case they gave into the inclination of tearing his hair out by the roots. He’d lost his bloody mind. There was no way she could stay this close tohim.
“I don’t hate Scotland,” she said in a calmer tone.
“Then why did ye leave?”
She blinked. “You pushed me away, Niall. Youtoldme to leave, if you recall.”
Anger rolled across his features. “I recall suggesting a return to Montgomery. A temporary return, ye ken. But ye decided to go to the Continent instead, and forget yer life here. Ye left me for all of Clan Maclaren to see, for me to become an object of pity once more.”
Her mouth went slack. “Pity?”
“Poor Niall Maclaren,” he scoffed in a derisive tone. “He cannae pleasure his wife with one hand so the lass ran off to find herself another husband with two. ’Tis the truth. I’m surprised the local bards havenae made it into a ditty yet.” His laugh was devoid of humor.
Her gaze fell to the leather-wrapped stump that was Niall’s left hand. She’d never seen him as less of a man because of it, but Niall’s bellicose, defeated attitude toward his injury was something only he could heal for himself. “You know that never mattered to me. I loved you regardless,allof you, flawed or otherwise.”
“Did ye?” he murmured. “Then why did ye turn to another?”
