Page 6 of Sweet Home Highlander
“And I love ye, Niall.”
After two years of stolen kisses and fraught touches, all she’d wanted was him. It’d been indescribable the way he’d looked at her, those piercing blue eyes of his devouring every inch of her as they’d fumbled to remove their clothing. She’d blushed and gasped when he’d shucked out of his shirt and discarded his trousers. The love of her life was not shy, nor had he any reason to be. She’d studied him greedily, eyes roving a chest sculpted with sleek muscle, and legs that were lean and strong. Aisla had been shy, but his patience was endless as he’d coaxed each garment from her body—her dress, her stays, her shoes, her stockings and garters, her chemise.
“Ye’re the loveliest thing I’ve ever seen, lass,” he’d told her, his voice husky, when she finally stood nude. He’d kicked off his smalls, and the temperature in the small cottage had soared. Good Lord, she’d never seen a more magnificent sight.
“So are ye.”
And he had been. There’d been pain when he’d breached her maidenhead, but it had soon been eclipsed by a driving, burning passion that melted her bones and turned her brain to mash. Niall had taken her to the stars, and back again.
And she’d missed her flux shortly thereafter.
Aisla stole a glance at Julien, who was waiting patiently for her to continue. “We thought our parents would think us too young, and my brothers would have cheerfully murdered the man who had deflowered and ruined me. Neither of us wanted our baby to be born out of wedlock, though, so we left in secret to Inverness and then returned to Montgomery as man and wife. My mother was not pleased, nor was Niall’s sister, Sorcha. But I was in love and wanted to be with Niall for the rest of my life.”
“Sounds like a fairy tale.”
“It might have been that way at first, or maybe I was a naive, silly girl with roses in her eyes and blinded to reality,” she said with a sad smile, staring down at her palm and curling her fingers into a fist. “You see, Niall had lost his left hand in a cruel act of violence, but he was so brave and beautiful, and uncowed by life. I could see the pain of what he’d suffered, still there, buried deep inside of him, but foolishly perhaps, I thought my love could save him from it. But when we returned to Maclaren, things changed.”
“He was a cripple?” Julien asked.
She jolted at the word.
“No one who knew Niall would ever call him that,” she said with a brittle laugh. “The Marquess of Malvern chopped off his hand when he was a boy to prove a point. An eye for an eye, he’d claimed, as punishment for a fire that had been started by Niall’s two older brothers and injured Malvern’s steward. Back then, he’d practically owned the Maclarens before their lands were reinstated by King George.”
“I’ve heard of Malvern,” Julien said. “A sorry excuse for a man who deserved his end in Newgate from all accounts. To think he would do such a thing to a boy.”
“It was beyond cruel, but everything Niall did was in spite of that hand. He fought harder, worked longer, gave his all to prove his worth.” She licked her lips, weaving her fingers together, her voice dropping low. “It wasn’t enough, though. It was never enough.Iwasn’t enough.”
Julien reached over, his large gloved hand closing comfortingly over hers and squeezing. “How so?”
“Despite my happiness at being his wife, I missed my mother terribly. Oh, I’d been welcomed by the Duke and Duchess of Dunrannoch, to be sure, though they, too, had expressed disappointment at the hasty nuptials. It was my husband, though, whom I missed the most. Niall became…different. I did as well, I suppose. I hadn’t expected to feel so weepy and needy all the time, but my maid explained that it was part and parcel of pregnancy.”
She shrugged, blinking back the tears that suddenly stung her eyes at the thought of the child that had once kindled in her womb and the emptiness that had replaced it.Thatpain took her by surprise and she gasped, nearly doubling over.
“Chérie,” Julien said in concern. “Are you well?”
Aisla grasped for every ounce of inner fortitude she possessed. “Yes, I haven’t thought of this—or so much abouthim—in years.” She hadn’t allowed herself to. It had been the only way to escape the dull ache of the memories.
“You don’t have to talk about it now, either. We could discuss it another time. Or never again. It’s up to you.”
She blinked, almost desperate to take the way out he’d offered her, but a part of her knew Julien deserved to know her past before they attempted any future together. “No, you should hear it all before you decide I’m what you want.”
Releasing her hands, he reached into his pocket and handed her a handkerchief, watching as she dabbed it to the corner of her streaming eyes. “Go on,” he told her gently.
“Niall was a different person at Maclaren than the boy I’d known. I rarely saw him, and when I did, he stank of whisky.”
“He was a drunk?”
She nodded. “Apparently. He wasn’t the same boy who had wooed me at Montgomery. The clansmen at Maclaren treated Niall with a strange reverence, too, coddling him at every turn. He seemed preoccupied and spent his hours doing nothing of use, but brawling and carousing. And he drank far more than I’d ever seen him do at Montgomery during his visits. He became a stranger—a spoiled boy who didn’t care about anything but himself. I tried to fill my days with the children of Maclaren, teaching them to read while Niall filled his with everything but me.”
Aisla bit her lip. Including one woman in particular—Fenella. The girl had been a longtime friend of Niall’s and fancied that she would one day marry him. She’d been cruel toward Aisla from the moment she’d arrived at Maclaren, and Aisla had no doubt that Fenella had been the one to drive and deepen the wedge between her and her husband.
She folded the handkerchief into tiny squares, the old bitterness and shame boiling up inside of her. “They all hated me. It was as if I were some hurried, shameful secret. Or perhaps it was because I was from Montgomery, and not Maclaren. I was the outsider who had stolen the clan’s golden lad. They resented me for it.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” Julien said.
“Regardless, I thought at least with the baby, I’d have a place,” she went on. “But I was wrong.”
Julien waited in silence for her to go on, but Aisla was suddenly daunted. Her story wasn’t anywhere near finished, but she couldn’t bring herself to explain the next bit. It still made her furious to think about it.
