Page 51 of Sweet Home Highlander
Niall could not recall the last time he’d been so spitting mad. He endured the raucous calls on the way back to the castle, weaving in between groups of celebrating Scotsmen and taking care not to jostle the screeching baggage over his shoulder. He didn’t want a back full of vomit for his efforts. He could feel her fists pounding on the small of his back above his kilt, hear her shrieking protests, but he knew that if he stopped he’d be hard pressed not to erupt in full view of everyone. He was holding on by a thin thread as it was.
“Put me down, yeamadan,” she cried. “I’m going to be sick, do ye hear me?”
Now, her brogue was back, fresh on a bellyful of ale and whisky. And calling him an idiot to boot.
He’d missed the musical sound of it on her tongue, and the truth was he hated her clipped aristocratic accents. Though his own mother was English and insisted his older sister Sorcha have English-speaking tutors, hearing the lilting brogue now reminded him a bit of the girl Aisla used to be. Too bad it only resurfaced with anger, and apparently, copious amounts of liquor.
She reeked of sweat and spirits, though the latter was likely because she’d jostled half of a glass of whisky over the two of them there at the end. He wrinkled his nose and wondered whether he used to smell as bad when he came to her bed after a night of heavy drinking. Worse, he imagined. He’d watched her, though, as she’d danced and flirted with Dougal Buchanan, drinking pint after pint and growing more animated by the second.
A part of him had wanted to feast his eyes on her—she’d been so beautiful and uninhibited during the reel, her face wreathed in delight—but another part of him lamented that it wasn’t him that had brought that passion to her in the first place. Once more, it’d been Dougal Buchanan.
He hadn’t missed Fenella’s pointed comment:some things never change, aye?Though he’d kept a tight rein on his emotions, her words had been like bringing a flame to tinder. Bitterness had exploded inside of him in an uncontrollable rush, making him nearly double over from the force of it. But he’d stood there and watched her make a fool of herself with a blasted smile on his face as if her antics meant nothing.
As if hefeltnothing.
A sob burst from the flailing woman over his shoulder. “Please, Niall. I feel ill.”
Heaving a grunt, he changed direction, heading toward the remote gardens on the western edge of the keep, situated near a stream that ran between Maclaren and Tarbendale. With any luck, it was well enough away from the revelry to be deserted. He dumped her unceremoniously to the ground, watching as she stumbled to a hedge and cast up every wretched one of her accounts. Sighing, she then leaned back against the trunk of a silver birch sapling, eyes closed.
“Feel better?” he asked after a moment.
“Some,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
Niall mourned the loss of those sweet, shortened vowels.
After several moments, she opened her eyes and looked up into the starlit sky. The moon was just rising, and the sky was twilight purple. The strains of a lone bagpipe reached their ears. “It’s so beautiful here,” she murmured. “I forgot how beautiful.”
“Did ye?” he asked quietly.
“Yes.”
Her eyes met his and darted away, rising once more to study the twinkling sky above. She drew several long breaths as if gathering her courage, and Niall waited. As much as he wanted to blister her ears for her heedless words earlier, he knew she was still a trifle disguised. Not that it was an excuse, but he knew from experience what anger did to drunken senses. He’d known what it had done to his. He swallowed hard, and scrubbed the bridge of his nose with his palm.
“This used to be our garden,” she murmured, taking belated stock of their surroundings. She leaned so far backward that she nearly toppled over. “I remember this tree,” she said, wide eyed. “We planted it the day we came to Maclaren.”
“Aye.”
He remembered, too. A whimsical Aisla had wanted something to be a memento of their marriage, something that would grow as they did. As their child grew, too. They’d chosen the tree together, and they’d spent many an early afternoon making love in the grass in this very copse. He stiffened, unsure whether he’d brought them here on purpose or whether it had simply been convenient at the time. Perhaps some combination of the two.
Niall looked around. He hadn’t been here in years, but someone had maintained it. His mother’s gardener, he suspected. Sweetly scented, thick rose bushes grew around the edges of the garden. A small stone bench sat in one corner near a working fountain with two cherubs. The tree Aisla was still staring at grew in the middle of the garden; its focal point, surrounded by the white marble bench beneath her skirts. The tree had matured and filled out in the last six years.
A look of sadness crossed her face, her full lips twisting with a bittersweet expression. He knew why. It was because it had survived when their marriage hadn’t.
“Do you remember that day when we came here?” she asked softly, her fingers tracing the marble edge of the bench. “To Maclaren?”
He leaned against an oak at the far end and folded his arms across his chest. “Aye.”
“We were so happy.” Her voice caught. “We were happy, weren’t we?”
“Sometimes.”
Their eyes joined in a meeting of shared, fraught history. She’d been deeply unhappy toward the end, he knew. After the loss of the babe, she’d retreated into herself, turning away from any comfort he, or anyone, could have offered. In hindsight, he hadn’t known how to react, and he’d chosen to curb his own pain with ale and whisky.
He flinched at the memory of his heedless words.
“Ye’ll have more children someday, Aisla,” he’d told her in all his youthful arrogance.
“It wasourchild, Niall,” she had sobbed. “Ours. And now she’s dead.”
