Page 52 of Sweet Home Highlander
And he had wept, even with the seed of doubt that she might have played him false. He’d had no proof, of course. Except his own suspicions and insecurities, steeped in the belief that he could never be enough for someone like her. How could she ever lovehim? A cripple?
And now, she’d danced with the Buchanan as if the man hadn’t been the one to drive a loch-sized wedge between them. With the tensions between the Maclarens and Campbells, he hadn’t expected to see Rose Campbell’s betrothed among the revelers. Had he only come because of the news of Aisla’s return? Or with some other nefarious purpose? Ronan’s words came back to him:I got the notion he hates ye.
Drawing a strangled breath, he cleared his throat, ready to tell Aisla that they should head to the stables and back to Tarbendale, but then she stood and weaved her way over to the fountain where a thick rosebush with blushing pink roses stood.
Her words were nearly inaudible as her fingers caressed one perfect bloom. “I planted this the day after I lost the baby.” He heard the broken sob there at the end, but Niall didn’t move. Hecouldn’tmove. Pain kept his back pressed to that tree.
“I didnae ken,” he said, though a bit stupidly, and only because he didn’t know what else to say.
“Why would you have known? You weren’t there,” she replied, though her tone held none of the bitter challenge that he had grown so accustomed to. She was simply stating the facts. And she was correct. In the days after she miscarried, Niall had thought it best to give her time and space to grieve. So he’d stayed away. In taverns, mostly, managing his own grief with as much ale and whisky as he could. The babe had started to feel like the one thing that had been tethering them together, and once it was lost, there’d seemed to be no hope left for them. He couldn’t hold on to her, and he’d been at a loss on how to regain her.
“I should have been,” he admitted, leaning his head back, against the tree. Closing his eyes, he could see perfectly just how much of an idiot he’d been. He saw the same behavior in a number of the young men here at Maclaren and Tarbendale. Good lads, but young, showing up for work at Tarben Castle and the mines with a splitting headache and bloodshot eyes every morning. A few of them had wives. Bairns.
“I was a fool,” he added, sliding down the trunk of the tree to sit upon the grass. He kept one knee bent, his arm resting on it as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ye needed me, and I wasnae there. I ken that, Aisla. I ken itnow, and I should have then.”
She was quiet as she crouched near the rose shrub, the petals of a bloom still sliding between her fingers. He’d been so selfish, so sodding drunk, all the time. At Montgomery, Aisla’s home, it had been different. No one had known him or had soft expectations of him. No one had thought of him as anything less. He’d been free…and happy. But once he’d returned with a pregnant wife to Maclaren, everything had changed. He’d felt useless and afraid thathewas lacking and not what she wanted. He’d let his fears win. And he’d lost her anyway.
“We were too young,” she whispered. “Maybe we were doomed from the start.”
He heard her despondency in the bleak excuse. “I dunnae believe that. There are plenty of people who marry young and make a success of it. Age was no’ our only obstacle.”
Aisla released the rose bloom and looked over her shoulder at him. “The drink, then? Because you claim you don’t drink now, and you’re…” She took a breath and averted her gaze. “You’re a completely different man.”
He held still, recognizing her words as a doorway, one he’d been angling for. She’d finally seen the one thing he’d wished her to: that he had changed, utterly and wholly. Niall’s mind jumped to Ronan’s wager, but he couldn’t press onward. It was too tenuous a moment, and he didn’t want Aisla to pull away. She was right. His habits had been, most definitely, their largest obstacle. He could admit that now, and had been able to for some time. He smiled faintly. “Was I as sloppy a drunk as ye were just now?”
Aisla rolled her eyes. “Worse.”
He nodded, accepting it as truth. “Well then, in that respect, yes, I’ve changed. But some things are more difficult to adjust.”
She straightened and turned to him, crossing her arms. “Such as?”
She wobbled a bit, and Niall got up fast, to catch her before she lost her footing. He led her back to the tree, and when he sat down, he eased her down beside him. She felt good there, tucked in close against him. The honesty of their frank conversation had scrubbed away every lick of anger and frustration over her outburst in the courtyard. With her defenses at half mast, perhaps this was the true Aisla.
“Such as trust. And jealousy,” he replied.
More specifically, the lack of trust, and an abundance of jealousy. They would be enough to threaten any relationship.
“I’m still possessive,” he whispered against the crown of her head, her soft blond curls loosened from their pins from the way she’d been carried upside down. “I cannae stand to see ye flirting with another man. No’ then and no’ now. And here ye are, showing up with Leclerc, saying ye want to marry him…knowing that the two of ye…” She stiffened beneath his arm, and he could feel her bristling to meet him in battle. He quickly redirected the conversation. “I’m sorry. But…why do ye want to marry him?”
Aisla’s arms and shoulders relaxed again. “Because he needs me. He needs my help. His mother is dying and wants to see him wed. I want to laugh and be happy. And because he’s my friend. My best friend.”
A friend. Well, it was true that when Leclerc looked at Aisla it wasn’t with any sort of fire. He likely saw the marriage as a pleasant and beneficial arrangement. Niall wasn’t certain how any marriage like that would inspire happiness or laughter, though.
“Ye used to laugh with me.”
He felt her shrug a shoulder with a soft hiccup. “I did, but there was nothing to laugh or smile about when I saw you drunk all the time with your friends. With Fenella.”
“Aisla—”
“You said you were possessive, that you can’t stand to see me flirt with another man. Don’t you think I felt the same? Why is it so impossible for you to understand the pain I felt when I found you in Fenella’s cottage? When I see you with her now?”
He closed his eyes, batting away the spear of guilt that always jutted out at his chest when he remembered that whisky-soaked night. Though, truly, little of it he did actually remember. But then Niall stopped—stopped pushing back the guilt, and instead, let it come. He’d been ignoring it, shoving it away, keeping it out of sight and out of mind. Anything to move onward and upward, away from the mess that had been his marriage. What he hadn’t done, he realized, as he and Aisla sat together under the tree having their first peaceful, amiable conversation, was feel the guilt fully. And accept it for what it was.
“I understand yer hurt. I felt it myself,” he said, thinking of Dougal Buchanan. “But I swear to ye, Aisla, I never slept with the lass.” He drew a breath and held it in his lungs for a protracted moment and then let it go. “Even if I were ape-drunk, I would never think to betray ye in that way.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered.
But he knew it did. Niall felt Aisla shift and begin to sit up and away from him. He took her by the arms to hold her in place. “Nothing has ever happened, and it never will. She’s my housekeeper. A friend. Nothing more. I give ye my word, Aisla. The word of a sober man.”
