Page 64 of Sweet Home Highlander
She would secure the divorce and she would return to Paris. Where she belonged. The spear of sadness took her by surprise. Why was she disappointed? Did shewantto stay? Oh, it was so dratted confusing.
“My lady?” Pauline asked, waking from her slumber. “Are you well?”
“Yes, Pauline.” She drew a deep breath. “I could not sleep.”
Her maid sent her a pointed look, and Aisla blushed. She was not blind and would have noticed that her mistress had not slept in her own chamber for most of the night.
“Of course, my lady,” she said.
“I need you to do something for me,” Aisla said, walking over to the small desk for a piece of foolscap and a pen. She wrote a hasty note. “Will you please deliver this to Lord Leclerc at once? I need you to take it, please, Pauline, with the utmost discretion. I must see him, alone, as soon as possible.”
“Are you sure that’s wise?”
Aisla blinked at the maid’s unusual boldness, though she’d gotten used to Pauline’s directness over the years. It was part and parcel of her being passionately and unapologetically French, and it was one of the reasons Aisla treasured her. “What do you mean?”
One eyebrow quirked upward. “The laird is a jealous man, if I recall,” she said carefully. “And he has not warmed to Lord Leclerc. I fear, my lady, if you meet with monsieur alone, especially today, that your Laird Maclaren will not look upon it with good humor.”
Aisla flushed, understanding exactly what Pauline was suggesting. But Julien was her friend, and she needed to clear her head. She couldn’t speak to Makenna—she was the laird’ssisterand too biased in her love for him to be of any objective help. Pauline, as much as Aisla loved her, was a maid. She had no one else. And if she didn’t figure out what she was going to do, she would lose her mind.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But it is not for you to question me, Pauline.”
A mildly chastened Pauline bobbed, though the worry remained in her eyes. “As you wish, my lady.”
“And he’s notmylord.” Aisla paused, her skin heating for no reason. “Before you leave, my blue riding habit, please.”
Once Pauline had left to deliver the summons, and she’d finished dressing, Aisla made her way quietly into the hallway. She paused in front of Niall’s door, noting there was no sound from within, before descending the staircase. It was still quite early, with the sun only just beginning its steep climb, but sounds in the kitchen of the staff readying for the day reached her ears. She had almost made it to the outer doors past the kitchen that led to the stables when a mocking voice stopped her in her tracks.
“And where are ye running off to this early, pray tell?”
Aisla’s feet stumbled to a halt as she turned to see the usual malicious scowl on the housekeeper’s face. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business, Fenella, but I feel like a stroll.”
“At this wee hour of the morning?”
Aisla gritted her teeth, but kept her face pleasant. She hoped the voices would not float above stairs and rouse her sleeping husband. “I could not sleep.”
They stared at each other in awkward silence until Aisla turned away. She owed the woman nothing.
“Enjoy yer…stroll.”
The woman’s voice drifted behind her, but Aisla was already out the door and hustling toward the stables. She felt the housekeeper’s eyes on her even after she entered the stables. Alerting a sleepy groom to a need for a horse, she waited impatiently as one was saddled and brought forward.
The brisk ride in the cool morning air felt inordinately good. Her mind had been on edge since she had awakened, although her body had been well and truly sated. In fact, she felt the delicious soreness between her thighs at the mare’s rolling gait, and she blushed, thinking of her husband. It’d been a long time for both of them, but that didn’t mean that Niall had forgotten how to make her body shake with pleasure. Several times, in fact.
Aisla’s blush intensified and she urged the horse into a faster canter to cool the blooming heat in her cheeks. Her hair, which she’d secured into a loose knot without Pauline’s expert tending, came loose from its pins and tumbled down her back in a tangled mess, but Aisla didn’t care. She was too busy trying to outrun the wicked memories of her husband’s sexual skill that had burst, unprovoked, into her brain. Her thighs throbbed, the knot of tension between them brightening to the point of pain.
Good heavens, she was going to fall off the horse if she wasn’t careful.
She made it without incident to the folly she’d indicated in her note to Julien. It was a lovely terrace, built like a miniature castle that stood on the edge of the loch, the exact halfway point between Tarbendale and Maclaren. Its marble columns were covered in twining vines, and it looked quite mystical in the sunlight. But Aisla was too distressed to notice as she dismounted, stripping off her gloves and pressing cold hands to her hot cheeks.
Julien was not yet there. She paced the cracked marble floor of the folly from end to end, waiting. She hoped that Pauline had not encountered any delay or couldn’t find him, though Aisla couldn’t imagine why he wouldn’t be in his chamber abed. She balked. He was a man, after all. And she hadn’t exactly been in her own bed last night, either.
Her worries were all for naught as the sound of approaching hoof beats reached her.
“Good God, Aisla,” said a hastily dressed Julien as he dismounted from his horse, tethering it beside hers. He hadn’t even bothered with a cravat or several of his shirt buttons over his rumpled breeches. His dark blond hair was tousled and his face unshaven, glittering with golden stubble. She’d seen him look worse after a long night of overindulgence in Paris. “What was so bloody urgent that that termagant you employ felt the need to drag me from the comfort of my bed?”
Aisla smirked. “Long night?”
“No.” He scowled. “What did Your Highness want?”
