Page 38 of Sweet Home Highlander
“Makenna?” Aisla asked. “Are you well?”
“Oh,” she said, startled. She made a visible effort to compose herself and then nodded. “Aye, of course.”
“What is it? What has happened?”
“Nothing. A minor disagreement.”
Aisla’s frown deepened. “With whom?”
But the answer to her question came striding around the same row of orchids, his face missing its customary smirk. Julien’s expression was carefully schooled into a mask of impassivity, though a muscle jerked in his jaw at the sight of her. For an instant, something like guilt flashed in his eyes.
Aisla rounded on him, her own suppressed emotions finding a target. “What have you done, Julien?”
His smirk reformed almost instantly, like a suit of armor. “I’ve done nothing.”
“You’ve upset Lady Makenna.” She turned to her new friend in apology. “Please don’t mind him and whatever he has said to you. His mouth doesn’t know how to conduct itself at the best of times.”
Makenna sniffed. “He was rather rude.”
Aisla’s gaze narrowed on Julien. “Would it be so very difficult to be kind to my—” She broke off, reaching for the right word. Makenna was her sister by marriage. Herfamily. Aisla squashed the ache that rose in her throat. “My friends while we are here?”
“I wasn’t being unkind,” Julien drawled. “She was simply not willing to listen to reason regarding her husband.”
“What about her husband?”
Flushing hard, Makenna shot him a panicked look, but Julien just shrugged, though Aisla couldn’t help noticing that rogue muscle leaping in his cheek again. She’d never seen Julien agitated about anything.
“I confided in Lord Leclerc about some matters at Brodie,” Makenna explained. “’Tis naught to be concerned about.”
“Please accept my apologies, Lady Makenna,” Julien said with an easy smile and an overly elegant bow—though he looked like he’d ingested something inedible. “I did not mean to cause offense.”
Makenna inclined her head to indicate his apology was accepted. Clearly there was more going on, but despite her curiosity, Aisla did not want to pry, not when her sister-in-law still looked like she was on the verge of tears. She drew a breath, looking from one to the other with dubious care. “Well, now that that’s settled, who’s up for a ride?”
It took some convincing, but eventually they were all saddled up. A strange tension remained in the air as they rode, Julien lagging a few lengths behind them. Aisla peered at her companion, and the rigid set of Makenna’s jaw. The young woman was here, riding with Aisla, but at the same time she seemed to be so very far away.
“I’m so sorry Lord Leclerc upset you,” Aisla said. Julien could be such a thorn when he wanted to be, and clearly, he’d had a dig at Niall’s sister. Or her marriage.
Makenna came back to herself, and breathing in deeply, forced on a wobbling smile. “Nae. I mean, aye, he did, but…’tis nothing of importance.”
Aisla didn’t believe her. “He mentioned your husband, the Brodie laird.”
Makenna buttoned back up again, her expression tightening, and Aisla presumed all was not well within her marriage. She also knew just how difficult speaking about such things could be. And unlike Julien, Aisla knew when to ease off.
“When I was at Maclaren—the first time,” she said, catching Makenna’s eye. She smiled, a way of indicating that Aisla should go on, “there were so many things about my marriage that felt…flawed. And I was at a loss as how to fix anything. I thought that perhaps, with the baby…”
That the baby would bring Niall back to her. That he’d become the person he’d been during his visits to Montgomery, when they’d been falling in love. Though even then the idea of a baby fixing anything as big as a flawed marriage had been preposterous. Now, Aisla cringed at the foolish notion.
“What were some of the flaws?” Makenna asked, hastily adding, “If ye dunnae mind sharing them.”
“Not at all. He was absent so often, and I was so new to his clan. I didn’t know anyone, and though I’d assumed that he’d stay by my side until I was settled, this place and his friends seemed to pull him away from me instead.” Aisla directed her mount to follow Makenna’s as it took a well-worn trail into a copse of thick whitebeams.
“Ye felt as though he’d abandoned ye,” Makenna said.
“You could say it that way, yes. But truly, it was the drink that may have been the largest flaw. I don’t know why he felt the need to imbibe as much as he did. It was almost as if…as if he didn’t want to take a sober look at his decision to marry me.”
Aisla’s throat felt tight as she finally spoke the things she’d been thinking for years. The buried shame and embarrassment of wondering if Niall had regretted marrying her, or if he had seen the baby as a mistake. A blunder that had gotten him bound to a girl he’d liked well enough, a girl who he shared blood-boiling passion with…but perhaps a girl he didn’t quite want to spend the rest of his life with.
“Well, I cannae say why the dunderheid drank as much as he did back then,” Makenna replied. “But it’s no’ something ye need to fash over any longer.”
