Page 66 of Sweet Home Highlander
His heart had taken a battering then, though his stupid mind had still insisted that the riders could have been anyone. Hope held out for a pathetic moment, until he’d recognized that golden hair and her beautiful patrician profile.Thenhe’d recognized the other.
Niall had never wanted to murder a person more than he had at that moment…and his target wasn’t either of the two lovers. It washimself—his stupid, gullible, desperate self. God, he was a bloody, blind bastard. He was a fool to believe that a leopard could ever change its spots.
Upon seeing him, his wife scooted out of the Frenchman’s reach with a gasp, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Niall released a smothered curse as Leclerc rose, but Aisla put a brave hand on his chest and shook her head. After a silent exchange, the Frenchman bowed but remained standing close.
“It’s not what you think, Niall,” Aisla began.
He wiped his face of all expression, though his rage remained close to the surface. “Nae?”
“We were talking,” she said. “I needed to talk to Jul…Lord Leclerc.”
“At this indecent hour, when the sun’s not yet fully risen?”
“Yes.”
His eyes dipped lazily over her, pausing on her disheveled hair and cheeks. Her hand fluttered up as if to pat the tangled strands in place, but then faltered in midair. He arched an eyebrow, and understanding made her copper eyes widen.
“This is not what you’re thinking,” she repeated.
“Is it no’?” he drawled. “Ye left my bed to run to another man? We both ken what that makes ye.”
Fury flared on Leclerc’s countenance. “Now, see here, you cannot speak to a lady in—” he began, but once more his wife’s lightest touch held him at bay. Niall felt the beast keen inside of him, half hoping that the Frenchman give him an excuse to resort to violence. Niall would welcome it. With relish.
“Julien, please, don’t make it worse,” Aisla told the man softly. He stopped, pale eyes wintry, and turned on his heel to stalk to the end of the folly with a volley of vile French oaths.
Aisla’s gaze drifted to the woman standing behind him, anger tightening her lips and flashing in her eyes. “You’d accuse me of infidelity now? After we’ve both forgiven one another? After we’ve both decided to trust one another? And yet, it looks as though Fenella has taken you by the ear, yet again.”
“She came to warn me of yer tryst!”
A look of pain flitted across her face. “And you believed her, as you always did.”
“Aye.” His voice was bleak. “I didnae want to, but here ye are. In the flesh. With him.”
Aisla stepped toward him, her heart in her eyes. Or was it guilt? Guilt that she’d been caught with her lover. Had she been honest with him the evening before, when she’d told him that she’d not once taken Leclerc to her bed? Or had she only been saying what he so desperately wanted to hear?To win the wager,he thought. Perhaps that’s why she’d come to meet Leclerc. To inform him it had been done.
His anger flared again, roiling like a caged animal in his chest. He wanted to hurt her, to hurthim. But most of all, damn her eyes, he wanted to kiss those lush lips and salve his body with hers. He cursed himself for his weakness.
“Niall,” Aisla said, her palm stretched toward him.
“Dunnae.” The word was curt. Like a bullet, it stopped her in her tracks, her eyes going wide at the danger in it. The sense of calm taking over was like a numb paralysis. Self-preservation, perhaps. “I’m well within my rights to call yer lover out,” he said.
He registered how she flinched after every cold word, but all the emotion on her face did was to kill the light burning inside of him. “I should have learned my lesson five years ago when I chased after yer skirts like a green lad and went to Paris.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You…you came to Paris?”
He swallowed his self-disgust. “Aye, to find ye. Once I’d been sober for some months, I wanted, stupidly, to win ye back. I thought I had a chance, but I was wrong, wasnae I? There ye were, young and beautiful and surrounded by yer fawning admirers. Ye had nae need of me.”
Niall remembered the day like it was yesterday. After Ronan had forced him to get sober, and Aisla still hadn’t returned after six months, he realized that his wife wasn’t coming back. She hadn’t gone to Montgomery as he’d expected. He’d gone there, too, his tail between his legs, only to be told that she had been living in Paris with her aunt. He’d expected to find her as miserable as he’d been. Instead, he’d found her laughing and dressed in sumptuous finery, her body on lascivious display, flirting and entertaining gentleman suitors as if she were an unmarried lass.
Everyone wanted her, panted after her like dogs in heat. And she’d reveled in it. Evidently, his wife had not missed any part of her prior life or meant to honor her marriage vows. Or him. He’d wanted to barge in there, toss her over his shoulder, and bodily cart her back to Scotland in the way of his Viking ancestors. If possible, she’d grown more beautiful than when she’d left, and his sorry heart had wanted nothing more than to feel the embrace of her arms.
But this Aisla seemed lost to him.
And then, as he’d stood obscured behind a silk folding screen, he’d overheard her conversing with one of her swains.
“What do you think about all these ladies hunting for husbands, Lady Montgomery?” the man had asked.
The name hadn’t stunned him. What came next had, though. His darling wife had laughed. “Marriage? Who would ever want to make such a ghastly mistake?”
