Page 43 of Sweet Home Highlander
He did not miss the curl of triumph on Fenella’s lips, but he was too angry to care. “They’ve ridden to the ruins of the old keep, to the loch, to the village inn…”
Rage throttled any sanity he possessed. “The inn?”
“For hours,” she said, plunging the knife in deeper. She stood, bracing her palms on his desk. “They arelovers, Niall. She doesnae deserve ye. She never belonged here and she doesnae now.”
“Leave me.”
After he heard the door close, he reached blindly for the bottom drawer where he kept a bottle of whisky, for no other reason other than to keep old demons close. With a shaking hand, he poured a glass and stared at the amber liquid. The pungent fumes reached his nostrils and he inhaled deeply before taking a mouthful and spitting it back into the glass. Thanks to Ronan’s intervention, he hadn’t touched a drink in years. Six years to be precise. But hell, whisky had been wonderful at dulling the sharp edges of pain. Of making one forget how to feel.
Niall glanced up at the Rubens, watching the eagle gouge out the bloody liver of Prometheus.
He was no stranger to pain.
Hurling the glass and its contents into the fireplace, he stood. He wouldn’t think of his wife riding along the loch, the wind whipping her fair curls as she smiled at another. He wouldn’t think of her limbs tangled with her lover’s while she played mistress of Tarbendale. He wouldn’t think of her caught in the throes of passion, lips parted and eyes glazed in pleasure. Or walking down the aisle with another man. With a ragged oath, he flung the entire bottle into the smoldering hearth, the stench of whisky saturating the air. The Rubens taunted him.
He was Prometheus, and she the eagle, eating his liver. His suffering, his torture.
Niall quit the room.
“Where is my wife?” he demanded of a passing maid walking by with an armful of linens that smelled indecently of honeysuckle.
“I believe her ladyship is in her chamber, laird,” she said, bobbing and paling at the black look on his face.
He took the stairs three at a time, not bothering to knock on Aisla’s door before shoving it open and stalling mid-step. His wife was in the bath. Two faces turned to him, one fighting for composure and the other carefully blank.
“Out,” he told the maid.
“I am in the bath, Laird Tarbendale,” Aisla said calmly, nothing in her tone mirroring her unrest or indicating what she thought of his intrusion. “Stay, Pauline.”
“I see that. I require a private word.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“Nae, it cannae.” He glared at the maid. “Leave us.”
Aisla’s lady’s maid stared at him with no expression on her pinched face, before turning questioningly to her mistress, who nodded. Niall felt an irrational spurt of rage for all things French as she bobbed a graceful curtsy before leaving the room. He kicked the door shut behind her and prowled toward the large copper tub in which his wife was immersed. Her dark gold hair was piled high on her head and secured with pins, and the skin of her face and throat was flushed pink with the heat.
Niall paced away before his eyes could drop past her collarbone to the translucent surface of the water. He inhaled a strangled breath, only to be assaulted by her honeysuckle scent again. He wanted to lick it from that lustrous, damp skin. He inched backward two more steps.
“Nae roses?” he asked with a sardonic twist of his lips.
She cleared her throat. “You didn’t come here to talk about soap, did you?”
“Nae.” He dragged one of the sitting room chairs closer and sat.
Aisla clenched her jaw, the only sign that she wasn’t indifferent to his presence. “Might I finish my bath in private, and then we will speak?”
“I am yer husband,” he said, “and husbands have every right to be in the bedchambers of their wives. I also have the right to tell ye that the Frenchman is no’ welcome at Tarbendale. Or to be alone in yer company at any time.”
“You cannot make such a demand,” she said, sitting up and sloshing the bathwater. His eyes fastened to the wet slopes of her breasts that had become visible for an instant, before she blushed and sank back down. Niall could not tear the seductive image from his brain, however, nor the urge to peruse the rest of the womanly curves that lay beneath the steam. Her scent and her proximity were as potent as the whisky fumes in his study. He wanted to drink her up. Consume her.
“I can, and I have.”
Her brows slammed together. “How dare you?”
“I won’t have ye cuckolding me in front of my clan, ye ken?” he said, sitting back and folding his arms across his chest as if they could hold him back from lurching forward and snatching her from the bath.
Her eyes widened. “Cuckolding you? Julien is my friend, and has not made one improper advance since we’ve been here. He is agentleman.”
